Return Of Jeff Lipsky

Adopt Films, the new distribution shingle co-headed by former October Films founder Jeff Lipsky, had a veritable shopping spree at the recently concluded Berlin International Film Festival, where the newbie company, co-managed with Tim Grady, picked up U.S. rights to some of the Festival’s top award winners. The company announced pickups of CAESAR MUST DIE, the prison-set docudrama of inmates performing Shakespeare by Italian veterans Paolo and Vittorio Taviani, which was awarded the Berlin Golden Bear for Best Picture; as well as the rights to BARBARA, which won for its director, German wunderkind Christian Petzold, the Silver Bear as Best Director. Set in East Berlin in 1980, BARBARA is the riveting and compassionate story of a pediatric surgeon, whose desire to emigrate to the west has banished her to a small country hospital far from freedom.  German actress Nina Hoss plays the lead role, marking her fifth collaboration with writer-director Petzold.  Adopt Films plans to release both films at the end of 2012 and will mount an Academy Award campaign for the directors and their lead actors. The first release for the new company, THE BALLAD OF GENESIS AND LADY JAYE, a music-and-art documentary with a subversive twist that premiered at last year’s Berlin Film Festival, will make its U.S. bow on March 8^th. Lipsky took a very non-traditional route in the past 15 years, deciding to leave the distribution business to direct four well received feature films. However, in the past year, he saw that there were opportunities for a new distribution shingle to thrive in the art market. While he has not given up on his filmmaking career, clearly his distribution business is taking center stage at the moment. Good luck, Jeff…..

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