“Short Term 12,” the gritty indie that charmed both audiences and the jury at South by Southwest, will open in theaters Aug. 23, Cinedigm announced on Tuesday. Cinedigm bought Destin Daniel Cretton‘s movie after it premiered at the Austin-based festival, where it won both the Audience Award and the Grand Jury Prize for a narrative film.
At the time, Cinedigm’s VP of Theatrical Acquisitions Vincent Scordino said the film could be “transformative” for the company, which has expanded from providing software and digital cinema technology to distributing films and other video content.
The intimate film broaches several challenging subjects for audiences, including foster care and child abuse. Brie Larson stars as a supervisor as a facility for at-risk teens. Both forceful and sensitive, she works there with her boyfriend (played by John Gallagher Jr.). The appearance of a troubled teenager girl threaten to disrupt her already challenging life.
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The film will open the same weekend as ‘The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones,” “The World’s End,” “You’re Next,” “The Colony,” “The Grandmaster” and ‘Therese Desqueyroux.”
A lot of smaller festival films are opening in the second half of August. The week before, a pair of films that premiered at Sundance, “Ain’t Them Bodies Saints” and “Prince Avalanche,” both open in limited release.