NEON announces it has acquired worldwide rights to Impact Partners’, RadicalMedia and Stacey Reiss Productions Spaceship Earth, directed by Matt Wolf, which made its World Premiere at Sundance where it was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize. The documentary earned rave reviews out of the festival with critics hailing the film as “truly out of this world”, saying that it “has the excitement and involvement of a fictive sci-fi narrative.” Spaceship Earth was produced by Stacey Reiss and Wolf.

Using archive material and present-day interviews with surviving Biospherians, the documentary follows a group of counter-cultural visionaries who, in 1991, built an enormous replica of earth’s ecosystem called Biosphere 2. When eight “biospherians” went to live sealed inside, they faced ecological calamities and cult accusations. Their epic adventure is a cautionary tale about the forces that threaten our planet, and also an inspirational tribute to what a small creative group can achieve.

Tom Quinn and Jeff Deutchman negotiated the deal for NEON along with John Sloss from Cinetic Media on behalf of the filmmakers. Executive producers are RadicalMedia’s Jon Kamen, Dave Sirulnick, and Stanley Buchthal, Impact Partners’ Dan Cogan, Jenny Raskin and Geralyn White Dreyfous, Paula Froehle, Steve Cohen, Pierre Hauser, Nion McEvoy, Leslie Berriman, Lessing Stern, Andrea van Beuren and Sarah Johnson.

Wolf’s previous feature documentaries include Wild Combination: A Portrait of Arthur Russell, about the cult cellist and disco producer Arthur Russell; Teenage, about early youth culture and the birth of teenagers; and Recorder: The Marion Stokes Project, about the activist Marion Stokes, who recorded television 24 hours a day for 30 years.

NEON most recently made history with four Academy Award wins for Bong Joon Ho’s PARASITE, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay and Best International Feature.