United States TV Premiere!

For Immediate Release
1-15-08


ABDUCTION GETS U.S. TELEVISION PREMIERE
Will air on award-winning PBS series Independent Lens

Washington, D.C. – An award-winning film about a 13-year-old Japanese girl kidnapped by North Korean spies will get its biggest American audience in the summer when it airs on national TV. “ABDUCTION The Megumi Yokota Story” will have its U.S. television premiere on the Emmy-Award winning PBS series Independent Lens, on Thursday, June 19th at 10:00 P.M. ET (check local listings).

Safari Media, the production company behind the film and the Independent Television Service (ITVS), the leading source of independently produced programs on U.S. public television that producers and co-curates Independent Lens, reached a deal last June to air the program but made the official announcement today.

“ABDUCTION” tells the story of Megumi Yokota, who went missing while walking home from school in 1977. The film follows her parents’ 30-year struggle to bring her home. Hailed as an “Extraordinary…work of narrative mastery” by the Los Angeles Times and “Engrossing” by the New York Times, the film has won six festival awards and been shown in 22 countries, including Japan where its theatrical release lasted over 25 weeks.

“We’re really pleased that the film will air on the PBS series Independent Lens,” said Chris Sheridan, who co-directed “ABDUCTION” along with his wife, Patty Kim. “The families in the film really want Americans to listen to their story and this will be the best way for them to tell it to a wide audience.” Independent Lens reaches close to one million viewers each week.


About Independent Lens
Airing Tuesday nights at 10:00 PM on PBS, Independent Lens is a film festival in your living room. Hosted each week by independent film actor, Terrence Howard, the acclaimed, Emmy-Award winning anthology series features documentaries and a limited number of fiction films united by the creative freedom, artistic achievement and unflinching visions of independent producers. Independent Lens is jointly curated by ITVS and PBS and is funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), a private corporation funded by the American people, with additional funding provided by PBS and the National Endowment for the Arts.
For more on Independent Lens, visit www.pbs.org/independentlens/about.html
For more on the film, visit www.abductionfilm.com

“ABDUCTION” is produced in association with the BBC. The Executive Producer of “ABDUCTION” is Jane Campion, the Oscar-winning director of “The Piano”.

Independent Lens contact:
Voleine Amilcar, voleine_amilcar@itvs.org, and 415-356-8383 x 244
Safari Media contact: Yuko Lanham, 1-703-350-3616