Latest in First Run Features

EXCLUSIVE: First Run Features is promising "a robust awards campaign" for The Quiet Epidemic, after acquiring U.S. distribution rights to the documentary about Chronic Lyme and tick-borne disease. The film directed by Lindsay Keys and Winslow Crane-Murdoch will begin a one-week Oscar-qualifying run…

Seymour Wishman, who was president of distributor First Run Features for nearly four decades and produced the documentary feature Sex & Justice, has died. He was 79. First Run confirmed that he died January 29 in Bridgewater, CT. Wishman started out as a criminal and civil rights attorney in New York and New Jersey…

New York-based indie film releaser First Run Features has taken North American rights to Daniel Karslake's doc For They Know Not What They Do, which spotlights four families of faith with LGBTQ children. The distributor is planning a virtual theatrical release for the film from June 12, collaborating with indie…

First Run Features has acquired rights to A Gray State, the documentary from A&E IndieFilms that examines the death of David Crowley, the Iraq War veteran-turned-filmmaker who was found dead with his family in 2015. That came after the enthusiastic reaction of libertarians, Tea Party activists and members of the…

On the day that Canadian-based White Pines Pictures dropped Fred Peabody’s critically acclaimed documentary All Governments Lie: Truth, Deception, and the Spirit of I.F. Stone, into theaters for its Oscar-qualifying run, First Run Features is stepping up to help push the film out wider in the U.S. Executive produced…

First Run Features has picked up rights to Garrett Zevgetis' documentary Best and Most Beautiful Things, a coming-of-age story that celebrates outcasts of the world. First Run is eyeing a December theatrical release for the film, which is produced by Zevgetis, Ariana Garfinkel, Jeff Consiglio and Jordan Salvatoriello…

The Cannes Film Festival is in full swing and at least two distributors are bowing their Cannes cache this weekend. Zeitgeist Films is debuting Elena in the U.S. The film won awards in Cannes and elsewhere before its long (and somewhat bizarre) road to the screen. Sundance Selects, meanwhile will roll out French César…

A slate of documentaries are part of this weekend’s specialty offerings including The Weinstein Company’s high-profile Bully, which should garner some decent box office cha-ching based on publicity alone due to its fight to reverse an R rating from the MPAA. But before it was in the media spotlight, its filmmaker…