MVD ENTERTAINMENT GROUP ANNOUNCES THE RELEASE OF  SIGNE BAUMANE’S AWARD-WINNING ANIMATED FEATURE  “MY LOVE AFFAIR WITH MARRIAGE”  

Story: Ralph Greco, Jr.

MVD Entertainment Group has acquired North American rights to acclaimed writer-director Signe Baumane’s (Rocks in My Pockets) award-winning animated feature film My Love Affair With Marriage. Featuring the voice talents of Dagmara Dominczyk (HBO’s Succession, The Count of Monte Cristo), Matthew Modine (Oppenheimer, Full Metal Jacket), Michele Pawk (Anastasia, Cradle Will Rock), Stephen Lang (Avatar, Don’t Breathe) and Cameron Monaghan (Tron: Ares, Showtime’s Shameless), MVD is planning its debut on digital, video on demand and physical media in Sept 2024.

Set against a backdrop of historic events in Eastern Europe, My Love Affair With Marriage follows Zelma (Dominczyk), who navigates through a series of romantic encounters, each one shaping her understanding of love and marriage. With unflinching honesty, she grapples with the conflicting forces of passion and disillusionment, her own desires, fears, and insecurities, painting a raw and intimate portrait of the human heart. Told from a woman’s point of view, the film blends historical, biological, societal, and emotional arcs with a lively sense of humor and musical numbers, tackling issues of love, gender norms, domestic violence, fantasies and toxic relationships to propel a woman’s journey toward independence and liberation.

My Love Affair With Marriage premiered at the Tribeca Festival in June 2022 and went on to screen at over 110 film festivals around the world, winning 25 awards. Director Signe Baumane recently completed a 24-city tour around the U.S., presenting the film to audiences, holding Q&As and giving away original drawings from the film. A Latvian / USA / Luxembourg co-production, the film took seven years to complete and was financed with the help of nearly 1,700 individual donors along with grants from many arts and cultural institutions. According to writer-director Baumane, “Animation is a very time and labor consuming storytelling medium. For seven years, our teams worked on making sets, photographing them, animating, scanning 60,000 drawings, coloring and compositing them. After all this work we are thrilled how audiences have responded to the film. Although set in specific time and place, we have found that the story of a young woman’s quest for perfect love and lasting marriage resonates across cultures and genders around the world – that the question: ‘Can you find love and be happy if you are different?’ It’s unequivocally universal.”

Baumane took the journey to complete the film with her life partner and producer Sturgis Warner (Mother’s Song), who said, “After seven years of production and nearly two years of traveling with the film to cinema audiences around the world, we are honored and excited to sign a North American distribution deal with MVD to bring the film to wider audiences.”

Following 8 Above’s North American theatrical release of the film in the fall of 2023, the company’s founder and CEO Jon Reiss introduced the film to Eric D. Wilkinson, MVD Entertainment Group’s Director of Acquisitions. “The moment I saw the film, I immediately fell in love with it,” said Wilkinson. “The groundbreaking, original and traditional animation, the story, the music, the humor and universal themes all resonated with me. This is an important and critically acclaimed movie that film lovers need to see and I’m proud to be bringing this to audiences this fall.”

My Love Affair With Marriage has not only wowed audiences, but critics as well. A New York Times “Critic’s Pick,” they called the film “remarkably beautiful.” The Hollywood Reporter said of director Baumane, “this portrait of the artist as a young woman is the work of an inspired filmmaker, and it was worth the wait,” and RogerEbert.com hailed the film, saying, “Funny, moving, and visually stunning throughout.”

My Love Affair With Marriage was produced by Signe Baumane, Raoul Nadalet, Roberts Vinovskis and Sturgis Warner and executive produced by John Jencks, Adam Rackoff and Matthew Modine. The deal was negotiated by 8 Above’s Jon Reiss, on behalf of the filmmakers and The Marriage Project, LLC and by Eric D. Wilkinson on behalf of MVD Entertainment Group.

Jon Reiss is a critically acclaimed filmmaker, author, and media strategist. He began his film career at the notorious Target Video, shooting seminal punk bands, including Black Flag, Iggy Pop, Throbbing Gristle, and The Cramps. Reiss then filmed and edited a series of videos documenting Mark Pauline’s Survival Research Laboratories. After directing numerous music videos, including, notoriously, Happiness in Slavery for Nine Inch Nails, he graduated to directing feature films, including Bomb It, Better Living Through Circuitry, and Cleopatra’s Second Husband.

8 ABOVE is a theatrical distributor and rights management partner dedicated to connecting award-winning independent films with audiences. Working in close partnership with filmmakers, 8 Above develops strategies that build community and social impact around unique theatrical experiences. Founded by distribution pioneer Jon Reiss, 8 Above has developed bespoke audience-building strategies and theatrical campaigns for independent films, specialty films, and documentaries, including Hooligan Sparrow, Sam Now, The First Step, Two Gods, The Disrupted, Maya Angelou: And Still I Rise, Sweetheart Dancers, Surviving Sex Trafficking, Nasrin, and No Small Matter.

MVD Entertainment Group is an independent studio and full-service entertainment distribution company, exclusively representing an extensive catalog with thousands of audio and visual products and content for digital, VOD and packaged media worldwide.

 

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