After acquiring the film earlier this year, after its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival, where it attracted plenty of critical acclaim, including winning the festival’s prestigious Directing Award: U.S. Dramatic, VICE has today announced that the global youth media company and content creation studio, will open Cutter Hodierne’s "Fishing Without Nets" on September 26 at The Cinefamily in Los Angeles, and on October 3 at the Cinema Village in New York, which will be followed by a nationwide expansion. 

The film will also be available on VOD from October 28 if it doesn’t play at a theater near you.

The acclaimed feature, shot in East Africa with Kenyan actors of Somali descent, Hodierne’s "Fishing Without Nets" tells the story of a young Somali lured into the world of piracy to support his family, tackling the very well publicized "Somali Pirates" phenomenon, but specifically from the Somali point of view – something that other films on the subject rarely make an effort to acknowledge, let alone conscientiously incorporate – making this one that much more worth paying attention to.

The film is an expansion of director Hodierne’s short film of the same name which won the Jury Prize in Short Filmmaking at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival. His feature film debut, it combines action-thriller sensibilities with the intimate, textured qualities of an arthouse film, humanizing the pirates by bringing us inside their moral dilemmas and incredible struggles.
 
Director, Cutter Hodierne said: "I always wanted to make and release a film with a forward thinking digital media company. Making this movie has been the ultimate filmmaking experience for me and I’m so excited that this adventure story, told through the eyes of Somalis, will reach an even wider audience through this innovative distribution agreement."
 
"Fishing Without Nets is a rare opportunity to look inside the world of pirating in Somalia in a human story told with authenticity and humanity. Cutter is a remarkably talented young director with the ability to capture the real life drama behind the newspaper headlines," said VICE Chief Creative Officer and Executive Producer of the film Eddy Moretti. "This is exactly the kind of project VICE is excited to be involved in, and it’s the first of a series of films VICE will produce and finance in the coming months."

VICE’s Eddy Moretti and Shane Smith act as executive producers alongside Think Media Studios’ Joe LoConti. Brian Glazen and Stephanie Pinola. WME Global assembled financing for the film and closed the North American deal. International is being handled by Altitude Film Sales.
 
The team who produced the original short—Raphael Swann, John Hibey, and Cutter Hodierne—returned as producers and partnered with Ben Freedman and Rupert Wyatt ("The Escapist," "Rise of the Planet of the Apes") of Picture Farm, along with Victor Shapiro.

With today’s release news comes a first release trailer for "Fishing Without Nets;" and underneath are some images from the upcoming film.