Kino Lorber has acquired domestic distribution rights to “Computer Chess,” Andrew Bujalski’s comedy that won the Alfred P. Sloan Award at Sundance.
Kino Lorber has planned a national theatrical release in the summer or fall, and the film will make its international debut next week at the Berlin Film Festival. It will also screen at the South by Southwest Film Festival in March.
The Sloan Award honors a movie for for its treatment of science and technology, and Bujalski's fourth feature is set during a weekend tournament of chess software programmers in the early 1980s. Shot in black and white, it documents the developers as they compete with their different algorithms.
Patrick Riester, Myles Paige, Hames Curry, Robin Schwartz, Gerald Peary and Wiley Wiggins star in the film, which Houston King and Alex Lipschultz produced.
“I doubt I'll ever make a weirder movie than this one — when we were shooting we really had no clue who would end up seeing it, or how", Bujalski, right, director of “Beeswax” and “Funny Ha Ha,” said in a statement. "For a company with the history and pedigree of Kino Lorber to take us on feels like a great, unexpected victory, and we eagerly anticipate working with them to lure the unsuspecting into dark rooms for a strange experience."
Andrew Herwitz, president of The Film Sales company, made the deal with Richard Lorber, CEO of Kino Lorber.
Lorber said the film would appeal to “geeky tech lovers, young and old, as well as the indie art house crowd.”
