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Exclusive: Rebecca Eskreis has signed on to direct ClearMind, a thriller about the dark side of Virtual Reality therapy and the slippery slope of using simulated life to avenge the real.

The film scheduled to enter production in Northern California next spring is the second from Eskreis, whose feature directorial debut, What Breaks the Ice, was recently released in theaters, on demand and on digital platforms via Cinedigm. 30 Miles from Nowhere’s Seana Kofoed penned the screenplay and will produce with River Place Production’s Kristin Tegtmeier Higgins (The Boy’s Gone). Miriam Hoffman is handling casting.

Eskreis is represented by Sara Alexander of Alexander Creatives and Stuart Rosenthal at Goodman, Genow, Schenkman.

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Exclusive: Freestyle Digital Media has acquired North American VOD rights to The Xrossing, an Australian coming-of-age thriller from director Steven J. Mihaljevich. The digital film distribution division of Byron Allen’s Allen Media Group/Entertainment Studios...

Back in the summer of 1985 a couple of rambunctious Irish lads—one 10, the other 13—were out and about in their Dublin neighborhood, up to their usual tricks. No worries there—they had promised their mums they’d return for supper.

“Aye, sure we will, ma,” had they said, or words to that effect, before they went rambling. But instead of coming back for dinner, they set out on an adventure, a romp that would take them from Dublin across the Irish Sea to Wales, on to London and then New York. All without the benefit of a ticket, a passport, any form of ID. The story of their escapade made headlines on both sides of the Atlantic.

“They decided that they would go on a little wander,” notes Garret Daly, director of Nothing to Declare, an Oscar-contending short documentary on the singular odyssey of Keith Byrne (the younger of the...