Films Boutique Takes Worldwide Rights to Mani Haghighi's NYFF-Bound Documentary
Berlin-based sales agency Films Boutique has acquired worldwide rights to Iranian filmmaker Mani Haghighi's new documentary, I Deserve a Lover Whose Every Rise Sets Fiery Dooms Raging Across the Skies, ahead of its world premiere at the 64th New York Film Festival (Variety, 11 August 2026).
The film is set between Tabriz and Tehran in the weeks between the 12-Day War and subsequent U.S. and Israeli attacks on Iran. It follows two artists — Nasser Bakhshi, a painter, conceptual artist, collector and curator, and his partner Roghayeh Najdi — who have assembled a vast private archive of photographs, documents, discarded objects and traces of anonymous lives (Variety, 11 August 2026).
Films Boutique, whose CEO is Jean-Christophe Simon, described the project as Haghighi's "most formally inventive and culturally urgent documentary feature to date" (Variety, 11 August 2026). Film at Lincoln Center, which programmes the festival, calls Haghighi an "unorthodox Iranian filmmaker" and the documentary "lively, stimulating" (Film at Lincoln Center).
The documentary is one of three world premieres in the festival's Main Slate, alongside Ava DuVernay's 14th and Tony Gilroy's Behemoth! (Film at Lincoln Center, 5 August 2026). The broader 2026 lineup also includes titles such as Misty Green, A Long Winter and Clarissa (Variety, 5 August 2026).
Haghighi, a Tehran native who works as a director, screenwriter and actor, is no stranger to the festival circuit or to Films Boutique. The two previously collaborated on his 2018 comedy Pig, which screened in competition at Berlin, and his 2022 thriller Subtraction, which premiered at Toronto (Variety, 11 August 2026).
What makes this acquisition notable is the meeting of a sales agency known for championing arthouse cinema with a filmmaker working in a country where production conditions are increasingly difficult. Haghighi's subject matter — private archiving as an act of cultural preservation in a period of military conflict — gives the film a political dimension that will likely draw distributor attention as buyers assess the NYFF slate. Worldwide rights mean Films Boutique will handle sales across all territories, shopping the film to distributors in individual markets.
The 64th New York Film Festival runs as part of Film at Lincoln Center's annual programme. I Deserve a Lover Whose Every Rise Sets Fiery Dooms Raging Across the Skies sits in the Main Slate, the festival's flagship selection.
