Sony Pictures Classics' Oscar Winning "THE COUNTERFEITERS" Grosses Highest Per Screen Average in Its Opening Weekend

Business Wire, Feb 26, 2008

NEW YORK -- Sony Pictures Classics collected another Oscar for the Best Foreign Language film last night with Austrian writer-director Stefan Ruzowitzky's THE COUNTERFEITERS. This is the first time an Austrian film has won this award. The film in it's debut weekend posted the highest per-screen average of all the weekend films with a $12,559 per screen at the same time picking up the Oscar gold for Best Foreign Language Film. This is the ninth Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film for the team running Sony Pictures Classics.

THE COUNTERFEITERS is the true story of Salomon "Sally" Sorowitsch played brilliantly by Karl Markovics - a masterful member of the criminal underground, who, upon being sent to a German concentration camp, agrees to help the Nazis in their organized counterfeit operation nicknamed "Operation Bernhard" set up to finance the war effort against the Allies.

Sony Pictures Classics' release "The Lives of Others" the debut film of writer, director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, picked up an Academy Award last year for Best Foreign Language Film and continued to play in theatres throughout the year and grossed more than 11 Million dollars.