Here TV, America’s first and largest LGBTQ+ video channel, has acquired all rights for the feature film “Family Members” (Los Miembros de la Familia), nominated for Best Feature Film at the Berlin International Film Festival in addition to the Grand Jury Prize at Milan and Santiago.
Now that Here TV has completed its first acquisition of 2020, the LGBTQ+ premium network is looking to focus once again on all rights acquisition deals for independent award-winning titles. This signals Here TV’s return to the distribution business several years after it acquired all rights for the Yōjirō Takita masterpiece “Departures,” which won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.
“Here TV has theatrical releasing in our DNA,” says Paul Colichman, CEO of Here Media. “Not only have we done it successfully, winning the Oscar against such amazing distributors as Sony Classics and Janus Films, but we have owned our own independent art theaters. As the art house film business reinvents itself during the pandemic, Here TV’s strong digital marketing and publishing expertise makes this a logical time for us to aggressively build our multiplatform distribution strategy.”
Directed by Mateo Bendesky, “Family Members” follows siblings Lucas and Gilda as they travel to a small Argentine beach town to fulfill the last wishes of their recently deceased mother. Once they are ready to return home, they find themselves stranded by a nationwide bus strike. Lucas, obsessed with bodybuilding and contact fighting, sees the nearly deserted town as fertile grounds for exploring his sexuality. Trapped in limbo, the two confront the empty space left by their mother’s suicide as they bid farewell to adolescence.
Bendesky’s films have played numerous international film festivals including Cannes, Berlin, Toronto and Rotterdam. He is a TIFF Talent Lab alumnus and has been awarded fellowships from the MacDowell Colony and the Argentinian National Endowment for the Arts.
“I’m very happy that Family Members will be reaching American audiences through Here TV,” says filmmaker Mateo Bendesky. “In these complicated times, where so many things are happening on such different fronts—especially in the US—I wish the film’s message of hope for a better and brighter future, no matter how bleak the present might look like, will bring a glimpse of light, or at least some smiles and laughter.”
Produced by Agustina Costa Varsi and Diego Dubcovsky with music by Santiago Palenque, Here TV plans to release the film theatrically this summer followed by a debut on VOD and all Here TV platforms.
Watch the trailer here:
