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Network Releasing has picked up all UK rights to five feature films as it continues to build its slate of independent cinema titles in 2011.

In a deal inked with Animist Films, the distributor has picked up THE WILD HUNT. Directed by Alexandre Franchi, the Canadian production has been billed as "Lord of the Rings Meets Lord of the Flies" and is a contemporary, fantasy action film. A medieval re-enactment game turns into a Shakespearean tragedy when a non-player crashes the event to win back his girlfriend. Combining folk myth, fantasy and reality, the film stars Mark A Krupa, Ricky Mabe, Tiio Horn and Trevor Hayes.

Directed by Lisa Johnson and starring Linda Cardellini (Scooby Doo, Brokeback Mountain), Michael Shannon (Boardwalk Empire, Superman: Man of Steel) and John Slattery (Mad Men, Rabbit Hole), RETURN is a new take on a soldier who returns from a tour of duty. When Kelli (Cardellini) returns to family life with Mike (Shannon) and children she finds it difficult to adjust to home life and she is charged for a misdemeanour after a drunken night out. Part of her rehabilitation requires therapy, where she meets Bud (Slattery). But when she embarks on an affair with him, matters come to a head when she is redeployed in this compelling American Indie drama screened as part of Directors' Fortnight at the Cannes Film Festival.

Cristian Jemenez' BONSÁI is a Franco-Chilean co-production billed as a story about love, books and plants, based on a novel by Alejandro Zambra. Julio (Diego Noguera) meets Gazmuri (Natalia Galgani), an established writer, who needs someone to type up the manuscript of his latest novel. Although he fails to get the job he tells Blanca, his neighbour and lover, that he is transcribing the novel, when in reality he is writing his own novel about a romance he had himself 8 years earlier with a woman called Emilia while studying in Valdivia. Both RETURN and BONSÁI were acquired in a deal with Rezo Films.

The Franco-Bulgarian feature AVÉ was screened in Critics' Week in Cannes. Starring Anjela Nedyalkova and Ovanes Torosyan. While hitchhiking to a funeral, a young man Torosyan) meets a 17-year-old runaway (Nedyalkova) who is looking for her drug-addicted brother. The Bulgarian-language Avé is directed by Konstantin Bojanov, whose previous projects include Invisible, an acclaimed documentary about heroin addicts in Sofia and has been inspired by road movies like The Passenger and Five Easy Pieces. The deal was inked with Le Pacte.

AUSENTE (ABSENT), is the second feature from Michael Berger, and deals with the subject of same sex attraction. The intense feelings between a swimming teacher and one of the members his swimming team is the subject of a compelling forbidden relationship thriller from the Argentine auteur behind last years' critically acclaimed Plan B, which is also part of the Network Releasing catalogue. Carlos Echevarria stars as Sebastian, the gym and swimming teacher who conceals his attraction for his young male students, and Javier de Pietro stars as Martin, the outwardly shy but inwardly self-assured 16 year-old who aims to snare the older man. Network Releasing acquired the film in an agreement with Rendez-Vous Pictures.

Managing Director Tim Beddows commented, "We are excited about the deals we have made as we continue to grow our film arm and Network Releasing as a home for alternative independent cinema."