Beth B’s tribute to a New York No Wave icon has secured North American distribution. Kino Lorber landed rights to “Lydia Lunch: The War is Never Over” with plans to release the doc in the summer, a press release announced. The film will be accompanied by a career-spanning Beth B retrospective.

“Lunch has forged a lifetime of music and spoken word performance devoted to the utter right of any woman to indulge, seek pleasure, and to say ‘fuck you!’ as loud as any man,” Beth B told us ahead of the film’s world premiere at the 2019 edition of DOC NYC. “In this time of endless attacks on women, this is a rallying cry to acknowledge the only thing that is going to bring us together: art, the universal salve to all of our traumas.”

Beth B and Lunch have known and worked with one another since the late ’70s. “We broke boundaries, confronting audiences with uncensored poetry, music, and films,” the director recalled. She described Lunch as a “survivor who creates a dialogue of universal truth through her music and spoken word performances,” and emphasized how the musician, director, actor, lecturer, women’s empowerment coach, feminist writer, and spoken word performer “continues to expose the patriarchy, sexual abuse, the cycle of violence, and corporate greed with stubborn resistance.”

In a statement, Beth B said she’s “proud to be working with Kino Lorber to release this film.” Her other credits include docs “Call Her Applebroog” and “Breathe In, Breathe Out” and narrative features “Salvation!: Have You Said Your Prayers Today?” and “Two Small Bodies.”