Maya Da-Rin’s feature debut has secured distribution. Variety reports that KimStim snagged North American rights to “The Fever.”

Co-written by Da-Rin, “The Fever” follows Justino, “a 45-year-old member of the indigenous Desana people, who is a security guard at the Manaus harbor. As his daughter prepares to study medicine in Brasilia, Justino comes down with a mysterious fever,” the source teases.

“The original idea came to me while shooting two documentary films in Amazonia where I met some indigenous families who had left their forest villages to live in the city. I wound up getting close to one of these families and our relation is what sparked the project,” Da-Rin told Cineuropa. “So, in a way, my starting point is based on true stories. But they interest me most of all because they were stories of people I might have met as I went about my daily activities. We are all aware of how cinema has the propensity to exoticize indigenous peoples and tends to see them through a romantic and positivistic prism, as remnants of that which western cultures were in the past and not as contemporary complex societies.”

“The Fever” has screened at the Toronto International Film Festival and Locarno Film Festival, among other fests. The drama will make its New York premiere at New Directors/New Films in December.