Independent Film Company Acquires Cannes Darling ‘Tangles,’ Plans Awards Run

Leah Nelson’s hand-drawn feature Tangles, one of the most warmly received films at this year’s Cannes and Annecy festivals and on its way to Ottawa, has finally found a North American distributor.

According to Variety, which broke the news, Independent Film Company and Sapan Studio have acquired the film’s North American rights. IFC will give it an Oscar-qualifying theatrical run before the end of 2026, followed by a wider expansion in early 2027.

Adapted from Sarah Leavitt’s graphic memoir Tangles: A Story About Alzheimer’s, My Mother and Me, the film follows a young woman who returns home to help care for her mother as Alzheimer’s begins to take hold. Nelson has described the film as a dark comedy, one that finds humor, awkwardness, and family absurdity amid the painful realities of caregiving and grief.

The film retains the book’s sparse, expressive, black-and-white aesthetic, using occasional bursts of color when its protagonist’s emotions spill over. Nelson told Cartoon Brew that animation allowed her “to get inside her psyche and use animation to visualize her emotions, not just depict what happened to her and her family. This was my north star throughout the adaptation and all the way through production. The graphic novel was always within reach, and I referred to it often as a way of reminding myself what had captured me about the work in the first place.”

Tangles features an A-list voice cast, including Abbi Jacobson, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Bryan Cranston, Seth Rogen, Sarah Silverman, Pamela Adlon, Beanie Feldstein, and Wanda Sykes. With distribution now secured, it becomes an immediate contender in this year’s incredibly competitive animated feature Oscar race.