“Touch Me Not” has secured North American distribution prior to its North American premiere at next month’s Toronto International Film Festival. Kino Lorber scored rights to the Berlinale winner, Variety confirms.
Written and directed by Adina Pintilie, “Touch Me Not” fuses reality and fiction to explore intimacy. The drama follows characters’ attempts to “overcome old patterns, defense mechanisms, and taboos — to cut the cord, and finally be free,” Pintilie told us. “When I was 20, I thought I knew everything about love, about how a healthy intimate relationship should be, and how desire functions,” the Romanian filmmaker recalled. “Today, after 20 years of trials and tribulations, all of my views about intimacy — which were so clear — seem to have lost their definition, and grown more complex and unsettlingly contradictory. As a reflection of this personal journey, ‘Touch Me Not’ touches on these questions of human longing and (in)ability to touch or be touched, to make contact with each other.”
The film made its world premiere at the Berlinale, where it won the Golden Bear and best first feature prizes.
“’Touch Me Not’ pushes the envelope in every direction, erasing the line between fiction and documentary, and looking deeply into a place films rarely look so honestly: our most fundamental experiences of intimacy and sexuality in all its forms,” said Kino Lorber’s Wendy Lidell. “Audiences will find their lives changed by ‘Touch Me Not.’”
The pic will have a theatrical run in January, followed by a VOD and home video release.
