The South Korean documentary “Planet of Snail” was invited to the 11th Tribeca Film Festival set to open in New York next month, the film’s local distributor said Thursday.

The movie by director Yi Seung-jun will compete with 11 other entries from nine countries for a prize in the World Documentary Feature Competition section of the festival, Zoa Films said.

“Planet of Snail” is about the intimate relationship between a deaf-blind man and his loving wife suffering from a distorted spine. The film won the top prize at the Amsterdam Documentary Film Festival, the world’s largest documentary film festival, last year.

The Tribeca Film Festival was founded in 2002 by the renowned Hollywood actor Robert De Niro and two others in a response to the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the consequent loss of vitality in the TriBeCa neighborhood in Lower Manhattan. This year’s festival is set to take place from April 18 to April 29 at locations around New York.

Last year, South Korean director Park Jung-bum won the prize for Best New Narrative Director with “The Journals of Musan,” his drama about a North Korean defector trying to start a new life in South Korea.

“Planet of Snail” will open at U.S. theaters this summer, according to its U.S. distributor, The Cinema Guild. The film’s domestic release is scheduled for March 22. 

(Yonhap News)