Sony Classics Lands Doc ‘The Truffle Hunters’

Sony Pictures Classics has acquired worldwide rights to Michael Dweck and Gregory Kershaw’s documentary The Truffle Hunters. A source pegged the deal at $1.5 million.

In the vein of Honeyland, which is competing for best feature documentary and international feature film Oscars next month, Truffle Hunters is set deep in the forests of Northern Italy, where the prized white Alba truffle — a delicacy consumed by the wealthiest patrons in the world — is found.

The film made its world premiere Sunday at the Sundance Film Festival in the World Cinema Documentary Competition and drew raves. The Hollywood Reporter‘s review called it “striking for its visual poetry and the painterly quality of its images” and added, “Like Honeyland, The Truffle Hunters also suggests a melancholy sense of a disappearing way of life dating back to old-world Europe.”

Luca Guadagnino, Lance Acord, Leslie Berriman, Jackie Kelman Bisbee, Sam Bisbee, Geralyn White Dreyfous, Bruce Heavin, Christos Konstantakopoulos, Adam Lewis, Melony Lewis, Nion McEvoy, Wendy Neu, Cameron O’Reilly, Matthew Perniciaro, Patty Quillin, Michael Sherman, Regina K. Scully, Jim Swartz, Susan Swartz, Lynda Weinman and Jamie Wolf executive produced the film.

Submarine negotiated the deal.