In a story from The Hollywood Reporter, Sony Pictures Classics has picked up the U.S. and Latin American rights to David Michod's debut feature Animal Kingdom.

The film had its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival last month.

Michod wrote and directed this tale of a 17-year-old boy who gets thrust into the Melbourne underworld when his mother dies. The crime drama stars Guy Pearce, Ben Mendelsohn, Joel Edgerton and Luke Ford.

It won the world cinema dramatic award at Sundance.

"There is nothing more exciting than the birth of a major filmmaker," stated Sony Picture Classics Michael Barker and Tom Bernard. "David Michod is about as major as they come. Just when you think you have seen every conceivable angle on the gangster movie along comes a movie like Animal Kingdom that is so fresh it feels like a reinvention of the genre."