AFM: U.S. Deal for ‘Cellar’ Starring Jean Marc Barr (EXCLUSIVE)

By Stewart Clarke

LOS ANGELES (Variety.com) – Cinema Epoch has taken the U.S. rights to “Cellar,” the Igor Voloshin movie that stars French-American actor Jean Marc Barr. Starline recently boarded sales on the Slovak-language picture.

In the film , Barr (“The Big Blue”) plays a jobbing rock musician. His marriage and life are put to the test as he has to decide whether to take the law into his own hands when his teenage daughter goes missing after heading to an all-night rave.

It is unusual for the first deal to be for the U.S. with a non-English-language title, but Cinema Epoch has a new Cinema Epoch Classics label for international cinema and has stepped up.

Cinema Epoch will launch “Cellar” on Amazon Prime in November followed by a cable and VOD rollout in January. “Jean Marc Barr brings a very calculated and intense performance in Voloshin’s strikingly photographed and edge of your seat directed thriller,” said Gregory Hatanaka, president of the L.A.-based indie distributor.

“’Cellar’ brilliantly and terrifyingly taps into a deep-seated fear shared by parents everywhere, regardless of culture or tongue,” added Julie Delaney, Starline’s director of worldwide distribution.

A three-way co-production between Slovakia’s Furia Film, Russia’s Gate Film and the Czech Republic’s 8Heads Production, “The Cellar” was largely filmed in the Slovak Republic. It was released domestically in September through local distributor Itafilm. It will come out in the Czech Republic later in November via Mirius Film Distribution.

The “Cellar” deal follows the pact between Starline and Cinema Epoch for Tom Collins’ Irish period drama “ Penance .”