Munich-based sales company Global Screen has picked up international rights to high-profile documentary “Julian Schnabel – A Private Portrait” by Italian director Pappi Corsicato, which will be introduced to buyers in Berlin at the European Film Market.
Good Films has already picked up “Schnabel” for Italy. A U.S. sale is expected imminently.
Corsicato described the documentary in a statement as “an intimate portrait of the enfant terrible of the art scene and, last but not least, one of the world’s most famous artists.”
This first feature-length Schnabel doc looks at the American painter and Palme d’Or-winning film director (“The Diving Bell and the Butterfly”) through both a private and public lens, and includes exclusive footage from Schnabel’s personal archive. It features his friends Al Pacino, Hector Babenco, Laurie Anderson, Jeff Koons and Bono, among others.
The 90-minute film begins with Schnabel preparing a retrospective at the Brant Foundation in Connecticut in 2013 when he receives word that his dear friend Lou Reed has died, which prompts him to reflect about his own life as an artist and as a man, according to promotional materials.
It covers the beginnings of the Brooklyn-born artist’s career, the artistic scene in 1980s New York, Schnabel’s desire to make films, and his personal and artistic crises over the years.
“Schnabel” is produced by Riccardo Scamarcio, Valeria Golino and Viola Prestieri and written by Corsicato, who also executive produced.
Corsicato, who started as an assistant on Pedro Almodovar’s “Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!” and whose subsequent comedy “The Seed of Discord” went to Venice, has ventured into documentaries before with a doc about pioneer Italian graphic designer Armando Testa, which also screened at the Venice fest.
“This highly visual documentary is made for the world market,” said Alice Buquoy, senior sales and acquisitions manager at Global Screen.
