“The Echo Chamber,” Andrea Pallaoro’s drama starring Alicia Vikander, Luca Marinelli and Susan Sarandon, has already landed distribution across a raft of key international territories ahead of its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival.

Paradise City Sales has closed deals for Spain with Vertice360; Australia and New Zealand with Umbrella; Poland with Gutek; Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary and Romania with Aero Films; former Yugoslavia and Bulgaria with MCF Megacom; and Taiwan with AV Jet. More territories are under negotiation.

Paradise City Sales is also handling North American sales alongside UTA Independent Film Group. The film will be released in Italy by 01 Distribution, while O’Brother will distribute in Benelux. 

The film centers on Leo and Anne, whose relationship becomes caught in a cycle of attraction and separation as the boundaries between intimacy and dependence, care and control and presence and absence steadily begin to collapse. Ava’s presence — and particularly her voice — reaches across different layers of the story, bringing buried emotions and memories to the surface.

“The Echo Chamber” carries autobiographical echoes of Bernardo Bertolucci. The film grew out of a story and screenplay by the late Italian master, together with Ilaria Bernardini and Ludovica Rampoldi; Pallaoro subsequently took on the project and developed the screenplay further with Bernardini and Rampoldi after Bertolucci’s death. 

The film also has a strong musical component. Sarandon, Marinelli and Vikander all perform songs in the film, whose licensed music also includes tracks by Jamie xx, Marianne Faithfull and Nick Cave, Nina Simone and Imagine Dragons. 

Pallaoro previously attended Venice with “Medeas,” “Hannah” and “Monica.” The latter competed at the festival and earned its star Charlotte Rampling the Volpi Cup for best actress. 

“The Echo Chamber” was produced by Nicola Giuliano, Francesca Cima, Carlotta Calori and Viola Prestieri for Indigo Film, alongside Paolo Del Brocco for Rai Cinema, with Jacques-Henri Bronckart and Tatjana Kozar producing for Belgian co-producer Versus Production.