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Buffalo 8 Distribution has acquired the North American rights to Jan P. Matuszyński’s Leave No Traces starring Tomasz Ziętek (Corpus Christi), Sandra Korzeniak (Influence) and Jacek Braciak (Edi).

The film, which debuted at the Venice Film Festival, is Poland’s official selection for Best International Feature at the upcoming Academy Awards. Buffalo 8 will release the film theatrically in February of 2022.

Based on true events in 1983 Poland, Leave No Traces follows the story of Jurek – a young man who becomes an enemy of the state after he’s the sole witness to the violent murder of a high school student at the hands of militia. The oppressive regime leverages the full weight of its infrastructure to pressure and intimidate Jurek and people close to the case, using the militia, secret service, courts and the media in an attempt to cover up the killing.

“The entire Buffalo 8 team is thrilled to release Poland’s 2022 Academy Award candidate,...

Leave No Traces Venice, day nine. There’s something almost ineffably melancholic about watching a festival empty out. As I type these words, twenty-four hours or so before the awards will be announced, the press room I’ve spent an unhealthy amount of time in, is now home to a smattering of survivors. The end is nigh, people are flocking home, and the jury led by Bong Joon-ho is busy picking this year’s winners somewhere on the island. It’s been a strange, uneven ride, with a lineup so front-loaded it was perhaps only natural that the fest’s second week wouldn’t live up to the sheen of the first few days. But the last stretch was still home to some belated surprises, among them, Jan P. Matuszyński’s Leave No Traces. A follow-up to his 2016 Locarno prizewinning The Last Family, Matuszyński’s second feature is based on...

“Leave No Marks” would be a more apt translation from the Polish title of “Leave No Traces,” referring as it does to a horrifying command from one police officer to another, heard early on in this marathon fact-based drama: “Hit the stomach so you leave no marks, not on the back.” They’re in the middle of administering a merciless, unprovoked beating — a hard rain of combat boots and handheld batons — to a very soft target in 18-year-old student Grzegorz Przemyk, holding nothing back but acute physical evidence of their ire, even as the victim’s stunned best friend looks on. Those missing marks, or traces, are only the first deception in the state’s protracted, punishing efforts to disprove what they know really happened, and Jan P. Matuszyński’s film unravels the conspiracy with earnest, exhaustive fury.

It’s a true-crime story that could be dramatized with equal power as a tight,...

New Europe Film Sales has closed several deals for “Leave No Traces,” from Polish director Jan P. Matuszyński (“The Last Family”), which has its world premiere in competition at the Venice Film Festival. Variety has been given exclusive access to the film’s trailer.

Produced by Aurum Film, the production house behind Jan Komasa’s Oscar-nominated “Corpus Christi,” pic has sold to Imagine Film Distribution for Benelux and Scanorama for Lithuania. As previously announced, the film was also picked up by Memento Films Distribution for France.

Set in Warsaw in the 1980s, “Leave No Traces” is based on the real-life story of a young man (Tomasz Ziętek) who witnesses the fatal beating of his friend (Mateusz Górski) by the police. Determined to testify about the killing in court, he must stand up to the full force of a communist regime that employs the secret service, the police force, the media...