Pride Pictures will bring international queer films to North America

Indiecan Entertainment, a Canada-based distributor of independent films, is launching a new arm focused on LGBTQ-themed movies, Pride Pictures.

Pride Pictures will bring international queer films to North America, Indiecan President Avi Federgreen said in a press release.

“There’s a lot of wonderful films made by amazing queer filmmakers from around the world that never get seen by North American audiences other than in festivals, and I’m excited to help some of these films find the audiences they deserve,” he said. “I really feel that we need to bring light to these amazing films by amazing filmmakers that are underrepresented in the filmmaking community.”

Kirk Cooper, who has been a programmer for numerous film festivals, will be head of acquisitions for Pride Pictures. “The mandate is to offer a platform where queer films can be seen by all, not just the queer community,” Cooper said in the release. “Given the climate that we are in, films can play an important role in education as well as entertaining many.”

The first two films to be distributed by Pride Pictures are Light Light Light from Finland and Eudaimonia from Canada.

In Light Light Light, directed by Inari Niemi, a young girl named Mimi arrives in a Finnish village shortly after the nuclear accident at Chernobyl in 1986. “She immediately fills 15-year-old Mariia’s life with radiating light,” according to the film’s description. Twenty years later, Mariia returns to the village to care for her sick mother and remembers the summer with Mimi. Writer-actress Juuli Niemi wrote the screenplay for the film, based on the 2011 novel Valoa Valoa Valoa by Vilja-Tuulia Huotarinen.

Dylan Rhys Howard’s Eudaimonia is the story of Prudence, a dishwasher and housecleaner who is telepathic. She creates eccentric characters out of stolen clothing and stages confrontational performances in the street. She’s estranged from her mother, who is also telepathic. But her mother’s terminal illness forces Prudence to learn how to make meaningful connections with others.

Pride Pictures plans to release both films this summer.