Poet Mary Oliver Doc Directed By Sasha Waters Acquired By Kino Lorber

EXCLUSIVE: Kino Lorber is following up its Oscar win for Mr. Nobody Against Putin by acquiring another premium documentary – Mary Oliver: Saved by the Beauty of the World.

The distributor announced today it has picked up North American rights to Sasha Waters’ film about the late Pulitzer Prize-winning poet whose works, remarkably, became bestsellers – highly unusual for a poet. Among her legion of fans are Stephen Colbert, Steve Buscemi, and Helena Bonham Carter who read from her poems in the documentary. Oprah, too, is a big proponent of Oliver’s work, as is Maria Shriver. Director John Waters was a longtime friend of the author going back to her years living in Provincetown, MA.

Kino Lorber plans to release the film theatrically on July 3 at IFC Center in New York followed by a digital, educational, and home video release.

“If poetry had a pop icon, Mary Oliver would be it,” notes a release. “Celebrated best-selling poet, Pulitzer Prize-winner, lover of dogs and long walks in the woods, openly queer but intensely private, Oliver was America’s unlikely contemporary mystic, stalking the ponds and forests of Cape Cod for nearly fifty years in order to open herself – and her readers – to the known and unknowable world.”

The release continues, “From a lonely childhood to literary fame, Oliver’s life was shaped by devotion to nature, paying attention, and the long journey toward learning to love and to be loved. Her poems inspire liberals and conservatives, atheists and believers, naturalists and urbanites, speaking directly to contemporary anxieties about attention, presence, and the human relationship with the natural world – issues that feel especially pressing in an era of climate crisis, digital distraction, and social fragmentation.”

The deal for Mary Oliver: Saved by the Beauty of the World was negotiated by Kino Lorber VP of Acquisitions Karoliina Dwyer.

“It’s so hard to make a movie about poetry, but cinematic translator Sasha Waters has nailed it,” commented Kino Lorber Chairman & CEO Richard Lorber. “Oliver’s words and [Sasha] Waters’ frames work together to dissolve that elusive membrane separating interior and exterior worlds, with enthralling, vividly visualized correlatives of what Oliver learns from nature in examining her own complex emotions. Fueled by poetry, it’s filmic fusion to be cherished.”

Waters’ credits include Garry Winogrand: All Things Are Photographable, a documentary about the renowned street photographer.

“We are thrilled to partner with Kino Lorber on the release of Mary Oliver,” Waters said in a statement. “With their longtime cultivation of discerning documentary audiences, Kino Lorber is the ideal partner for a film that dives deep into the literary and cultural significance of Mary as both person and poet.”

Mary Oliver: Saved by the Beauty of the World is a production of American Masters Pictures, directed and produced by Sasha Waters. The film was originated by executive producer John Keith and Leah Weinkle and produced by Waters’ Pieshake Pictures and American Masters Pictures, led by executive producer Michael Kantor.

The Mary Oliver documentary held its world premiere in March at the True/False festival in Columbia, MO. It has since gone on to screen at DOC NYC Spring Selects, the Martha’s Vineyard Film Festival and the Miami Film Festival. Waters gained access to Oliver’s personal archives to make the film. But as she told Thom Powers, the Miami Film Festival’s documentary programmer, during a Q&A that followed the MFF screening, using the archive came with some restrictions.

“One thing that was interesting about working with the estate was that we were told that we could not excerpt any poems,” the director explained – meaning any poems used in the film had to be quoted in their entirety. “We got a kind of waiver for that, for the opening of the film, much later in the process. But in some ways, it was helpful because it meant that we had to be judicious about choosing longer poems. And there are so many, many poems to choose from.”

For the film, Waters interviewed Stephen Colbert, director John Waters (no relation to Sasha Waters), and many poets who admire Oliver’s writing.

“So many people who I interviewed brought books with them and wanted to read [from the poems],” Oliver recounted at the Miami Q&A. “And so that kind of gave us an architecture. But in some ways, we thought of the poems almost like the way that musical numbers function in a musical, where they both stop the dramatic action but advance the plot… We tried to use the poems, not chronologically [according to when they were written], but with the degree of emotional truth.”