Cinema Guild Takes North American Rights to Angela Schanelec's My Wife Cries
Cinema Guild has acquired the North American rights to My Wife Cries, the new film from German director Angela Schanelec, according to Deadline. The deal, reported on 29 October 2026, puts the company in charge of how the film reaches audiences in the United States and Canada.
Those rights are the permission to release a film in a particular country or region. The company that holds them decides when and where the film opens, books cinemas, pays for prints and advertising, and keeps a share of the money the film takes in.
The deal was negotiated by Peter Kelly and Dylan Foley of Cinema Guild, and Kevin Chneiweiss of Paris-based SBS, which is also one of the film's co-producers.
Schanelec wrote and directed the film, and she also edited it. Marius Panduru shot it. The cast is led by Vladimir Vulevic, Agathe Bonitzer, Birte Schnöink and Pauline Rebmann. It is sung in German, runs 93 minutes, and is a co-production between Germany and France. Kirill Krasovski produced it for Blue Monticola Film, with SBS Productions, Maier Bros. and Unitbase as co-production partners.
The film began its festival life in the Competition section of the 76th Berlin International Film Festival, the Berlinale, in February 2026. Competition is the main prize-giving strand, and the Berlinale lists the film with a screening date of 17 February. Later in the year it played the Main Slate of the 64th New York Film Festival, which ran from 25 September to 12 October. That was its U.S. premiere.
Schanelec is no stranger to Berlin's top prizes. She has won the Silver Bear for Best Director for I Was at Home, But… and the Silver Bear for Best Screenplay for Music.
Festivals matter because they are where many films find their buyers. Sales agents, the middlemen who sell films to distributors, and those distributors watch new titles in cinemas full of other buyers. A deal such as this one often follows a festival screening by months, and it sets the film's release plans for the territory that has been sold.
No release date for the United States or Canada has been announced. Cinema Guild's plans for the film will become clear as the company sets its schedule.
