NEW YORK -- Koch Lorber Films has acquired North American theatrical and home video rights to the Argentinean Falklands War drama "Blessed by Fire," winner of this year's Tribeca Film Festival Founders Award for best narrative feature.

Tristan Bauer's film, which also earned Spain's Goya Award for Spanish-language foreign film, centers on a 40-year-old journalist (Gaston Pauls) who is shaken by the suicide of a fellow soldier. He returns to the Malvinas Islands, where he fought more than two decades earlier, bringing disturbing wartime memories of him and his comrades to life in his mind and onscreen.

The film will continue playing at film festivals nationwide before beginning its theatrical run in second-quarter 2007.

"This powerful film about the emotional traumas suffered during wartime has really become an in-demand favorite on the festival circuit," Koch Lorber president Richard Lorber said. "Given the world's ongoing conflicts, it truly taps into something to which we can all relate."

Edgardo Esteban and Gustavo Romero Borri adapted the screenplay from their book, with the help of Bauer and Miguel Bonasso.

Lorber negotiated the acquisition with the Spanish sales group Latido Films.