Wildcard Distribution has acquired the rights for Academy Award-winning writer/director Alex Gibney's documentary CITIZEN K from Kew Media. Wildcard, which handled the theatrical release of Gibney's No Stone Unturned last year, will release the critically acclaimed film in Irish and UK cinemas in December. The news comes ahead of the film's UK premiere at the BFI London Film Festival tomorrow.
CITIZEN K which premiered at the recent Venice Film Festival is an intimate yet sweeping look at post-Soviet Russia from the perspective of the enigmatic Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a former oligarch turned political dissident.
Benefitting from the chaos that ensued after the dissolution of the U.S.S.R., Khodorkovsky was able to amass a fortune in financing and oil production and became the richest man in Russia. But when he accused the new Putin regime of corruption, Khodorkovsky was arrested, his assets were seized and following a series of show trials, he was sentenced to more than ten-years in prison. Today, as an exile living in London, he continues to speak out against Putin's two-decade stranglehold on power.
