Cinephobia Releasing, headed by former Artsploitation Films and TLA Releasing founder Ray Murray, has acquired all North American rights to Sergio Tovar Velarde‘s LGBT dramedy “The Divine Tragedy,” (“La tragedia divina”), an ode to gay diversity and brotherly reconciliation. 

The deal was closed at Buenos Aires’ Ventana Sur Río de la Plata, negotiated by Murray and Alfredo Calvino, founder-CEO of the Brazil-based Habanero Film Sales. 

“The Divine Tragedy” represents the latest feature from Tovar Velarde whose debut “Mi último día” (2008) played San Sebastian’s Latinos Horizontes, while the co-directed “The Misfits” (“Los inadaptados”) won an Audience Award at the 2011 Guadalajara Film Festival and four-story “Four Moons” (“Cuatro Lunas”) took best Mexican feature at the 2014 Monterrey Film Festival and foreign feature at the Outflix Film Festival. Tovar Velarde’s latest film, “Mundos Cósmicos,” opened in theaters in April 2024.

Written with Orlando Manrique, “The Divine Tragedy” turns on Cristián, a refined traditionalist homosexual who is abandoned by rich husband Carlos after a 24-year relationship. 

Leaving a world of luxury, Cristián is forced to live with his also gay younger half-brother Roy, a wild sexual hedonist moving from one Poppers-souped coupling to another, all with anonymous partners. 

With Carlos, Cristián’s main claim to existence is that he organized dinner parties. Abandoned, he discovers a gift for pastry cooking and returns to acting, rediscovering a sense of self-respect and his brother, accepting Roy’s differences and discovering a commonality of sentiments. Whether Roy is really happy with a life of sexual depravation or can fully change is another matter….

Artús Chavez (“Un buen divorcio”) plays Cristián, Pablo Gómez brother Roy. The film’s building emotional force derives from the brothers’ discovery of care and concern for each other and Roy’s pride in Cristián’s rebuilding of his life.  

“It’s a film that celebrates the right to reinvent oneself, to fail without guilt, to make a fool of oneself, and to start over. ‘The Divine Tragedy’ is, above all, a letter of self-love and reconciliation with all the good and bad in oneself,” said Tovar.

Visually, “The Divine Tragedy” is “a constant exploration,” he added. “Influenced by pop aesthetics, comics, anime, and Almodóvar’s films, its visual language oscillates between the histrionic and the intimate. The camera has a restless gaze, that of an insatiable voyeur.”

“The Divine Tragedy” is produced by Tovar Velarde’s career-long producer Edgar Barrón, as well as Max Blásquez and Tovar Velarde.

“I met Sergio and Edgar more than a decade ago when we joined forces in order to take ‘Four Moons’ to audiences worldwide. The film was a huge success, exploring gay identity at different stages of life from a raw, intimate and honest perspective,” said Calvino. 

“I see ‘The Divine Tragedy’ as a film that intends to update that portrait to  embrace current diversity in an irreverent and visually audacious way. I am thrilled to work again with two really talented professionals that I consider friends, in this, their most recent production that, as the director puts it, is ‘a film that celebrates the right to reinvent oneself, to fail without guilt, to make a fool of oneself, and to start over.’”

“Sergio Tovar Velarde breathes fresh air to gay comedy-dramas with this romantic romp – sex, romance and a zany cast of Almodovarian  characters makes this film an absolute delight. We are proud to bring it to North American audiences,” said Murray.