Earlier today, Variety announced that GKids had bought the North American rights to The Girl Without Hands after its international premiere at Cannes. The animated feature is written and directed by Sébastien Laudenbach, who is making his feature film debut after receiving acclaim for his short during the 2010 Cannes Film Festival, “Vasco.”

Based off of one of the multitude of Brothers Grimm fairytales, The Girl Without Hands has more of an Into the Woods feel than a neutered Disney makeover. The movie begins with a miller selling his daughter to the Devil due to hard economic times. The girl is able to escape from the Devil because she is protected by her purity, but the Devil seeks revenge on her by removing her hands. Undergoing a hard journey towards happiness, she decides to abandon her family and meets a goddess of water, a gardener and a prince during her trip. Perhaps the adult fantasy feature might have the same happy ending that is expected of all fairytales.

Founder and president of GKids, Eric Beckman, said of the acquisition, “[We] were blown away. The film has an utterly transporting beauty and poetry, while the story unfolds with the powerful dream logic of a fairytale, taking you into the darker, deeper, primal origins and emotional core of the Grimm’s tales. With magic and cruelty, sublime beauty and tenderness, The Girl Without Hands is at once timeless and unlike anything you have seen before, a stunning example of the potential of the medium of animation as a powerful cinematic art form for adult moviegoers.”

The Girl Without Hands has already been acquired by Pyramide International for the worldwide rights. No release date has been set for North America or worldwide, but the movie will next be seen at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival in June.