First SXSW Sale: Cooking Documentary ‘El Bulli’

SXSW

Kino Lorber has acquired all U.S. rights to El Bulli: Cooking in Progress from director Gereon Wetzel. The documentary will be the inaugural film of the company’s new theatrical label Alive Mind Cinema with a platform release that begins July 27 at New York’s Film Forum.

The film, which screened Saturday and Sunday as part of the SXGlobal program, follows chef Ferran Adrià, known as one of the most innovative cooks in the world. He co-owns the restaurant El Bulli in Cala Monjoi, a cove near Roses in the Catalan province of Girona, which is a few hours from Barcelona. Wetzel shows the breadth of Adrià’s experimentation from start to finish as he and his crew create the next yearly menu.

“We immediately embraced this remarkable film about a man and his visionary passion as an emblem of what our Alive Mind label stands for: the discovery of the extraordinary in the quotidian, the magical in the mundane,” said Kino Lorber co-president and CEO Richard Lorber. “El Bulli: Cooking in Progress delves into the most universal transformative process (cooking!), in the most fascinating and elemental way.”

Kino Lorber exec Elizabeth Sheldon negotiated the deal with Peter Jager and Astrid Guger of Autlook Films.

Kino Lorber states that the Alive Mind Cinema distribution label will specialize in topics related to personal transformation, progressive spirituality and cultural change in releasing more than 20 titles per year, six to eight of them in theaters.