Sony Classics snaps up three pics at Cannes

By Steven Zeitchik and Gregg Goldstein

CANNES (Hollywood Reporter) - Sony Pictures Classics went on a shopping spree during the final days of the Cannes Film Festival, snapping up North American rights to three movies.

They include the animated autobiographical documentary "Waltz With Bashir," in which Israeli filmmaker Ari Folman tries to recover blacked-out memories of his experiences fighting in the 1982 Israel-Lebanon war.

Also on Sony's tab: Belgian brothers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne's Albanian immigrant drama "The Silence of Lorna," and Norwegian filmmaker Bent Hamer's portrait of an elderly train driver "O'Horen."

All three buys bolster Sony Classics' roster of 2008 awards bait; the company has won the foreign-language film Oscar the past two years. It is one of the few studio specialty divisions with a strong appetite for foreign fare. The studio had already acquired James Toback's boxing documentary "Tyson" at Cannes, which wrapped Sunday.

Reuters/Hollywood Reporter