Emmett Till, photographed in 1954 with his mother, Mamie(Photo: AP)

If you had any doubt that ThinkFilm might be looking for a repeat of last year's documentary triumph at the Oscars, you can probably let it go. The company has followed its July theatrical scores—Murderball and The Aristocrats—with the late acquisition of Keith Beauchamp's haunting civil-rights doc The Untold Story of Emmett Louis Till, which is slated to open at Film Forum Aug. 17.

Beauchamp's film recounts the death of Emmett Till, a black teenager who was beaten, tortured and killed during a visit to Mississippi in 1955. He was alleged to have whistled at a white woman, and a jury acquitted his accused murderers in what Beauchamp portrays through new interviews and eyewitness accounts to have been little more than a sham trial. But Jet Magazine's publication of a photograph of Till's mutilated, unrecognizable face had already drawn unprecedented attention to racial violence in the South, and helped fuel the early momentum behind the Civil Rights Movement.

Till has screened everywhere from festivals to schools around the country since 2002, attracting enough word-of-mouth attention on its own to provoke the US Justice Department to reopen the Till murder investigation last spring. ThinkFilm distribution chief Mark Urman told The Reeler today that he had been eyeing the film since last fall. "It has accrued such amazing prestige and P.R., and we felt it needed to be brought to a national audience following its launch in New York," Urman said.

The two-week Film Forum engagement has been scheduled for months and coincides with the 50th anniversary of Till's death on Aug. 28. ThinkFilm's acquisition guarantees a wider release at an as-yet-undetermined date this fall, but Urman said that he expects a limited opening next month in Till's hometown of Chicago and a few other key markets. He added that any strategic resemblance to ThinkFilm's masterful handling of 2004's Oscar-winning doc Born Into Brothels is strictly coincidence.

"It will travel around this fall, once we’ve had a chance to set each market up publicity-wise," Urman said. "It is not at all the same as Brothels from our internal point of view, but it will but will look pretty similar to the public. Certainly if it gets an Oscar nomination!"

Meanwhile, ThinkFilm and the Hip-Hop Summit Action Network are co-hosting Till's invitation-only premiere Monday, Aug. 15—at the United Nations. So you might say the championship defense is off to a good start.