Sony Pictures Classics has announced that they will release Fernando Trueba and Javier Mariscal’s bossa nova-themed animated film, They Shot the Piano Player. The film will be screened in theaters in New York and Los Angeles on February 23, 2024, before expanding to the rest of the United States in the following weeks.
The movie is produced by Cristina Huete of Trueba PC (Chico & Rita) in Spain, along with Serge Lalou for Les Films d’Ici (JOSEP) in France, Janneke van de Kerkhof for Submarine Sublime (Buñuel in The Labyrinth of Turtles) in the Netherlands, and Humberto Santana in Portugal. It is executive produced by Nano Arrieta of Atlantika and Fabien Westerhoff of Film Constellation.
From the duo behind the 2012 Academy Award-nominated animated film Chico & Rita, They Shot The Piano Player is narrated by Jeff Goldblum and features a who’s who of the best of Brazilian music, including João Gilberto, Caetano Veloso, Gilberto Gil, Vinicius de Moraes, Milton Nascimento and Paulo Moura.
In They Shot the Piano Player, a New York music journalist goes on a quest to uncover the truth behind the mysterious disappearance of young Brazilian piano virtuoso Tenorio Jr. A celebratory origin story of the world-renowned musical movement bossa nova, the film captures a fleeting time bursting with creative freedom at a turning point in Latin American history in the 60s and 70s, just before the continent was engulfed by totalitarian regimes.
The film marks the second collaboration between Sony Pictures Classics and Trueba after the 1992 Academy Award-winning Belle Époque.