Kino Lorber Acquires ‘Mary Oliver: Saved By The Beauty Of The World,’ Documentary About Poet Beloved By Stephen Colbert, Oprah & More

The distributor announced today it has picked up North American rights to Sasha Waters’ film about the late Pulitzer Prize-winning poet whose works, remarkably, became bestsellers – highly unusual for a poet. Among her legion of fans are Stephen Colbert, Steve Buscemi, and Helena Bonham Carter who read from her poems in the documentary. Oprah, too, is a big proponent of Oliver’s work, as is Maria Shriver. Director John Waters was a longtime friend of the author going back to her years living in Provincetown, MA.

“If poetry had a pop icon, Mary Oliver would be it,” notes a release. “Celebrated best-selling poet, Pulitzer Prize-winner, lover of dogs and long walks in the woods, openly queer but intensely private, Oliver was America’s unlikely contemporary mystic, stalking the ponds and forests of Cape Cod for nearly fifty years in order to open herself – and her readers – to the known and unknowable world.”

“It’s so hard to make a movie about poetry, but cinematic translator Sasha Waters has nailed it,” commented Kino Lorber Chairman & CEO Richard Lorber. “Oliver’s words and [Sasha] Waters’ frames work together to dissolve that elusive membrane separating interior and exterior worlds, with enthralling, vividly visualized correlatives of what Oliver learns from nature in examining her own complex emotions. Fueled by poetry, it’s filmic fusion to be cherished.”