Sunday, May 28, 2000Prize-winning 'Dream Catcher' will open in Paris
By Margaret A. McGurk
The Cincinnati EnquirerThe Cannes Film Market yielded good news for The Dream Catcher, a prize-winning independent film made partly in Cincinnati and Dayton.
A European distributor has acquired the rights to distribute the movie to French theaters and will open it in Paris this fall.
Director Edward Radtke of Yellow Springs said the French firm will pay for 10 to 15 subtitled prints of the movie, which has scored rave reviews at European film festivals since it first showed at the Los Angeles Independent Film Festival in 1999.
“We're really, really happy,” Mr. Radtke said. “I also think that it's going to have somewhat of a domino effect in other markets” in Europe.
The deal with what the director called “a small boutique distributor in Paris” has been in the works for months, but was finally signed at the Cannes Film Market (which takes place at the same time as the film festival).
“It's a start. It will get me out of debt,” Mr. Radtke said. He noted that the company will fly him and co-stars Maurice Compte and Paddy O'Connor to Paris to publicize the movie when it opens.
Though it has screened at 15 film festivals worldwide, the movie has no North American distributor. Mr. Radtke, who wrote the script for The Dream Catcher with his Minneapolis-based writing partner, Marc Nieson, noted the irony that the movie about a pair of American runaways should hit Parisian theaters first.
“It's a real indication of the kinds of audiences that embrace the film, and the state of independent filmmaking and what distributors looking for in this country versus other countries,”he said.
“Maybe, just maybe, if it really generates some legitimate attention over there, U.S. distributors will at least reconsider it.”
The Dream Catcher Awards
• Best Director, 1999 Los Angeles Independent Film Festival
• Youth Jury Award, 1999 Locarno (Switzerland) International Film Festival
• Two special jury awards, 1999 Thessaloniki (Athens) International Film Festival
• Grand Prize Jury Award, 2000 Cinema Jeune Public de Vale de Marne (Paris)
• Ohio Independent Filmmaker of the Year, 2000 Cleveland International Film Festival
• Special Jury Award, 2000 Festival du Film de Paris
• Grand Prize Jury Award, 2000 Minneapolis International Film Festival
Other festival appearances
1999 Deauville (France) Festival of American Film
1999 Rencontres Festival (Paris)
1999 Filmfest Hamburg (Germany)
1999 Chicago International Film Festival
1999 London Raindance Film Showcase
2000 Rotterdam International Film Festival
2000 San Francisco Asian American International Film Festival
2000 Istanbul International Film Festival
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