Chinese director Lou Ye’s pandemic docu-drama, which makes its North American premiere this week at the Toronto International Film Festival, will be released commercially in early 2025. North American rights to the film, which premiered at Cannes in May, have been acquired by indie distributor Film Movement, with sales being handled by the film’s co-producer, The Coproduction Office.

Plans for the film's North American rollout include a 2025 theatrical release and distribution across leading digital platforms and in the home entertainment market.

Set in January 2020, “An Unfinished Film” follows director Xiaorui as he convinces his cast and crew to resume filming a film that was halted ten years earlier. As filming nears completion, rumors of an illness begin to circulate. Some of the cast and crew manage to leave before the hotel is sealed off by security guards. Everyone left on set is locked in their hotel rooms, and the director must decide whether to halt filming again as Wuhan remains in lockdown in the early days of a terrifying pandemic.

“Few films have so expertly captured the way Covid created such traumatic temporal disruptions in its early days, with sudden alterations in physical and emotional routines causing time to both stretch and collapse,” Variety’s review from Cannes read.