Sony Classics Opens The Only Living Pickpocket as Awards-Season Films Arrive
Sony Pictures Classics has opened The Only Living Pickpocket in New York, starting with a limited release on six screens across New York and Los Angeles, according to Deadline. A limited release means a film opens in a small number of cinemas first, often to see how audiences respond before it spreads wider.
The film's first New York venues are AMC Lincoln Square, the Angelika Film Center and Bam Rose. In Los Angeles it is playing at AMC Burbank, AMC Grove and the Laemmle Royal. It is the directorial debut of Noah Segan, and John Turturro plays Harry Lehman, an ageing pickpocket working in New York. Steve Buscemi, Tatiana Maslany and Will Price also star.
The film premiered at Sundance and has a Rotten Tomatoes score of 97%, which places it in the site's Certified Fresh category. Turturro won the Golden Eye Award at the Zurich Film Festival for his performance. A Regal promotional post from August said the film would reach Regal cinemas on 30 October.
Several other titles opened the same weekend, and they show how varied the awards-season calendar has become. Mubi released Pawel Pawlikowski's Fatherland in limited release at four theatres, two in New York and two in Los Angeles. The list includes Film Forum, Film at Lincoln Center, AMC Burbank and the Laemmle Royal. The film premiered at Cannes, where Pawlikowski won the Best Director award. It holds a Rotten Tomatoes score of 91%.
Fatherland follows Hans Zischler as Thomas Mann and Sandra Huller as his daughter Erika, on a road trip across Germany in the summer of 1949. Huller and Zischler carry the story, and the setting is a country still rebuilding after the war.
Mubi also debuted Making Marie Antoinette, a documentary by Eleanor Coppola. It records Sofia Coppola at work directing her 2006 film Marie Antoinette. The documentary premiered at the Telluride Film Festival and opened on 20 screens nationally, including venues in New York and Los Angeles.
Bleecker Street, working with LD Entertainment, released Anton Corbijn's thriller A Talent For Murder on 876 screens. That is a far wider launch than the limited openings, and it gives the film a national footprint from the start. Helen Mirren plays the crime novelist Patricia Highsmith. The film had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), and it is based on Joanna Murray-Smith's 2014 play Switzerland.
Two films already in release also grew that weekend. A24 expanded You Can See Everything to a wide release, meaning it moved into many more cinemas. Netflix widened its run of La Bola Negra, which won the TIFF audience award.
Many of these films began their journeys at festivals such as Sundance, Cannes, Telluride and Toronto. At those events, sales agents and distributors decide which films will find buyers, and which will reach cinemas or streaming services. The path from a festival premiere to a cinema screen can take months, so a weekend like this one shows the results of decisions made well before the opening.
