Kino Lorber acquires Hungary’s Oscar entry “Kills on Wheels”

PanARMENIAN.Net - Kino Lorber has acquired North American rights to Attila Till’s “Kills on Wheels”, Hungary’s official submission to the 2017 Academy Awards, Variety reports.

The dark comedy thriller, featuring wheelchair-bound assassins, had its world premiere at this year’s Karlovy Vary film festival and won the Golden Alexander award at the Thessaloniki International Film Festival, where a shared best actor award was given to actors Zoltan Fenyvesi, Szabolcs Thuroczy, and Adam Fekete.

“Kills on Wheels” also won the Roger Ebert Award at the 2016 Chicago International Film Festival where the jury commended the film as “genre-mashing,” “highly entertaining,” and “distinguished by the equanimity with which it treats its protagonists, who are rarely seen on the silver screen.”

The film stars non-professional disabled actors in the lead roles and focuses on two twenty-something close friends and roommates at a disabled care facility. When they meet the ex-fireman and wheelchair-user (played by able-bodied star Thuróczy, seen in last year’s “White God”), the trio decides to strike a unique partnership and sell their services to the mafia as a gang of hired assassins.

“I was inspired after meeting several people in wheelchairs while I was volunteering with the disabled,” Till said. “It was crucial to me to make a movie about disabled people where they aren’t played by actors and have the opportunity to act themselves and be the real heroes.”

Kino Lorber is planning to open “Kills on Wheels” in theaters during the spring, before an on-demand and home media release in early fall 2017.

The producer is Judit Stalter, who runs Laokoon Filmgroup with two co-owners Gábor Sipos and Gábor Rajna. The trio is known for holocaust drama “Son of Saul,” which won the Academy Award for best foreign language film, a Golden Globe, and the Cannes Grand Prix in 2016.

The deal was negotiated between Kino Lorber CEO Richard Lorber and Wendy Lidell and Laokoon Filmgroup’s Judit Stalter.