New Europe Film Sales has acquired international sales rights to "Moonfish," an animated feature by Daniel Zvereff featuring the voices of Morgan Spector and Lucy Liu, ahead of its screening in the Biennale College section of the 83rd Venice International Film Festival. The deal marks a notable coup for New Europe and underlines the growing prestige of animation within Biennale College, whose backing of the project as a production grant recipient is a first for an animated film in the programme's history.

The story follows a grieving astronaut on a solitary deep-space mining mission who must meet a strict corporate quota to return home, with his year of isolation gradually blurring his sense of reality. It was produced by Rebecca Wyzan for Present Company, Mireia Vilanova for Lucky Accident Productions and James Belfer for Cartuna, with Spector and Liu serving as executive producers; Zvereff wrote, directed and served as lead animator. Zvereff, a Brooklyn-based filmmaker whose shorts have screened at Sundance, SXSW and Palm Springs, developed the project over the 14th edition of Biennale College – Cinema, the Venice festival's advanced filmmaker training programme launched in 2012.