TORONTO, Sept. 11 (UPI) -- A new independent film distributor has purchased the North American film rights to "The Visitor," Thomas McCarthy's follow-up to "The Station Agent."
Overture Films, which seeks to distribute pictures that cost less than $30 million to make, picked up the rights in a $1 million deal closed early Tuesday at the Toronto International Film Festival, The Hollywood Reporter has said.
McCarthy's low-budget movie premiered last Friday at the festival.
Notes posted on the festival's Web site state that the film is about Walter Vale, a lonely widower and Connecticut college professor (played by Richard Jenkins,) who heads to New York for a conference and discovers an undocumented immigrant couple living in the apartment he has left vacant for some time.
Walter befriends them, however, when Tarek, a Syrian street musician played by Haaz Sleiman, is profiled by police at a subway station and jailed, Tarek’s widowed mother, Mouna, played by Hiam Abbass, arrives on the scene and Walter’s connection to the family deepens.
