Rialto Pictures has acquired all U.S. rights to five first-run films from France’s Studiocanal that includes Clement Michel’s romantic comedy The Stroller Strategy, starring Raphael Personnaz as a Parisian who accidentally becomes the guardian of an infant and Charlotte Le Bon as his former girlfriend whom he tries to win back by pretending he is the father of the child. The film will open at New York’s Angelika Film Center on June 14.
The five films will be released under Rialto’s new Rialto Premieres label. The other titles include Hotel Normandy, starring Eric Elmosnino and Helena Noguerra, and Demi-Soeur, directed by and starring Josiane Balasko.
The New York-based Rialto has worked with Studiocanal to reissue such classic films as Grand Illusion, The Third Man and Fellini’s Nights of Cabiria. Additionally, for the past year, Rialto has been the U.S. theatrical distributor of Studiocanal’s catalog of more than 2,000 titles.
Rialto Pictures was founded in 1997 by Bruce Goldstein. Adrienne Halpern joined him as co-president a year later, with Eric Di Bernardo joining the company as national sales director in 2002. Rialto’s library of classics includes films by Godard, Fellini, Renoir, Kurosawa, Bunuel, Costa-Gavras, Pontecorvo, Carol Reed, Michael Powell, Jules Dassin and Jean-Pierre Melville.
Beginning in June, Rialto also will tour The Hitchcock 9 — Alfred Hitchcock’s nine surviving silent films, all newly restored by the British Film Institute — in collaboration with the BFI and Park Circus Films.
