{"id":119494,"date":"2025-09-05T00:09:07","date_gmt":"2025-09-05T00:09:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/119494\/"},"modified":"2025-09-05T00:09:07","modified_gmt":"2025-09-05T00:09:07","slug":"j-k-simmons-drama-little-brother-secures-european-distribution","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/119494\/","title":{"rendered":"J.K. Simmons Drama\u00a0\u2018Little Brother\u2019 Secures European Distribution"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tEXCLUSIVE: Fledgeling French distributor Contre-Jour has acquired European rights to Sheridan O\u2019Donnell Little Brother<\/a> in one of the first significant deals for the new sales division<\/a> of L.A.-based company Apollo Management International<\/a> (AMI).<\/p>\n

\n\tDaniel Diemer plays a man tasked with picking up his troubled older brother (Philip Ettinger) from hospital in Albuquerque after a suicide attempt and driving him to the family home some 1,200 miles away in Seattle.<\/p>\n

\n\tAlong the way the estranged siblings are forced to confront their past and reconcile their fractured relationship.<\/p>\n

\n\tJ.K Simmons plays their father \u2013 a complex man desperately worried about his oldest son \u2013 who tries to direct the mission from afar.<\/p>\n

\n\tAlso featuring Polly Draper in the cast, Little Brother played a raft of U.S. festivals, winning the Audience Award at the 2023 Atlanta Film Festival and was released in the U.S. by Gravitas Ventures last September.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe film won praise for its sensitive and engaging handling of the material as well as for the performances of Diemer, Ettinger and Simmons, and also generated strong world of mouth.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cLittle Brother,\u00a0with its themes of empathy, mental\u00a0health, and family, is a story that crosses borders and profoundly impacts everyone who experiences it.\u00a0 We\u2019re very excited to partner with Contre-Jour to bring this film to European audiences,\u201d said O\u2019Donnell.<\/p>\n

\n\tFrench distribution company Contre-Jour was launched earlier this year by Yves Khachan, Lilou Parente and Aur\u00e9lien Dupard with the ambition of finding a place in cinemas for art-house gems they believe can command a wider audience.<\/p>\n

\n\tIt\u2019s releases to date include Iranian-German director Farahnaz Sharifi\u2019s My Stolen Planet, Thai filmmaker Sorayos Prapapan\u2019s Arnold Is A Model Student as well as a re-release of the 1970s classic The Ear by Karel Kachyna.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe company is aiming to release the film on 200 to 300 screens in key European territories including including France, Belgium, Germany, and Spain.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe\u2019re thrilled to partner with Contre-Jour. Their reputation for carefully curated releases makes them the perfect home for\u00a0Little Brother\u00a0in Europe. This theatrical rollout gives the film the platform it deserves,\u201d said Greg Bekkers of Two Lands Films and Apollo Management International, who brokered the deal, added:<\/p>\n

\n\tBekkers launched a sales division within the framework of his L.A.-based management company AMI earlier this year in help U.S. indie films find a wider releases inside and outside of the U.S.<\/p>\n

\n\tAlongside Little Brother, its inaugural slate also featured Miguel Duran\u2019s Adventure Tom, Vivian Kerr\u2019s Scrap and Chris Messineo\u2019s The Strange Dark.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"EXCLUSIVE: Fledgeling French distributor Contre-Jour has acquired European rights to Sheridan O\u2019Donnell Little Brother in one of the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":119495,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[84396,64,63,447,134,84397,84398],"class_list":{"0":"post-119494","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrities","8":"tag-apollo-management-international","9":"tag-au","10":"tag-australia","11":"tag-celebrities","12":"tag-entertainment","13":"tag-j-k-simmons","14":"tag-little-brother"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119494","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=119494"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119494\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/119495"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=119494"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=119494"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=119494"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}