WStill-frame from "Arbitrage", dir. Nicholas Jarecki, starring Susan Sarandon and Richard Gere. Photo courtesy of the Sundance Film Festival

The dramatic thriller "Arbitrage" starring Richard Gere and Susan Sarandon, produced by studios based in the US and Poland, enters the darker realms of New York's financial markets

The star-studded thriller unfolds in a world of New York financiers. "Arbitrage" stars Gere as hedge-fund magnate Robert Miller who is desperate to complete a fraudulent sale of his trading empire to a major bank. He commits a grave error that forces him to trust an unlikely ally and the drama takes an unexpected turn. Susan Sarandon plays Miller's wife charity, and Tim Roth is a determined detective who is on Miller's trail. Early in production, Al Pacino was slated by play the main role and Gere was hired after Pacino dropped out of the project.

"Arbitrage" was written and directed by Nicholas Jarecki, a New York native and graduate of New York University's Tisch School of the Arts. He is the author of "Breaking In: How 20 Film Directors Got Their Start" (Doubleday 2002) and director of the documentary "The Outsider", which followed film director James Toback (one of the filmmakers profiled in Jarecki's book) as he made a movie with no script in less than two weeks. In 2009 his film "The Informers", a collaboration with author Bret Easton Ellis, premiered at Sundance. 

Jarecki's production company Green Room Films produced "Arbitrage", together with Green Room Films, Artina Film, Treehouse Pictures and Poland's Alvernia Production. Alvernia joined the project as coproducer, investor, in addition to providing postproduction services and special effects. 

The film is the company's second American-Polish project after "Vamps", a comedy directed by Amy Heckerling. Cinematography on "Arbitrage" was done by Yorick Le Saux.

Screenings of "Arbitrage" at Sundance take place on the 21st, 22nd, 23nd & 28th of January, 2012.

Poland's presence at the festival is also represented by Grzegorz Jaroszuk's "Frozen Stories" produced by the National Film School in Łódź and EasyBusyProductions. See more on the film via the link below.

For more information about the Sundance film festival and a full programme, see: filmguide.sundance.org.

Source: imdb.com, alvernia.com