Mediawan Rights, the distribution arm of the wider media group, manages scripted, unscripted, format and feature documentary sales, keying European content onto international airwaves. And if initially heritage titles, foreign-language fare and time-tested perennials made up much of the catalogue, the group’s expanding footprint and well-capitalized partnerships promise a new yield of premium fare developed in-house and marked by global ambitions.
“We’ve seen a radical shift,” says Mediawan Rights CEO Valérie Vleeschhouwer. “Our catalogue from six years ago has little in common with that of today. We really wanted to move upmarket, to increase our own creative output in both fiction and documentary distribution to better respond to global demand. [In doing so] we’ve gone from being a local player to a truly international one.”
As distribution titles like the Emmy-winning doc “Kubrick by Kubrick” and the Dutch thriller “The Golden Hour” travel far and wide – with the former selling...
“We’ve seen a radical shift,” says Mediawan Rights CEO Valérie Vleeschhouwer. “Our catalogue from six years ago has little in common with that of today. We really wanted to move upmarket, to increase our own creative output in both fiction and documentary distribution to better respond to global demand. [In doing so] we’ve gone from being a local player to a truly international one.”
As distribution titles like the Emmy-winning doc “Kubrick by Kubrick” and the Dutch thriller “The Golden Hour” travel far and wide – with the former selling...
- 5/16/2024
- by Ben Croll
- Variety Film + TV
"But did he have rhythm?" Madman Films has revealed the first look trailer for an acclaimed documentary film titled Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat, made by Belgian filmmaker Johan Grimonprez. This film is an entrancing look back at a major moment in global politics during the Cold War, intertwining music history & pop culture with these events. Jazz & decolonization are entwined in this historical rollercoaster that led musicians Abbey Lincoln and Max Roach to crash the Un Security Council in protest against the murder of Patrice Lumumba. After Lumumba was murdered in 1961, the US State Department swings into action by sending jazz ambassador Louis Armstrong to Congo to deflect attention from the CIA-backed coup in the country. The doc features excerpts from My Country, Africa by Andrée Blouin (narrated by Marie Daulne aka Zap Mama), Congo Inc. by In Koli Jean Bofane, To Katanga & Back by Conor Cruise O’Brien (narrated...
- 5/5/2024
- by Alex Billington
- firstshowing.net
Chris Smith’s “Devo” will open the ninth edition of Chicago’s Doc10 documentary film festival on May 2.
The film, which premiered at Sundance 2024, charts the life of the art-movement-turned-band Devo from Akron, Ohio, through archival footage of the band and candid sit-down interviews with band members. Smith follows the band on their journey from Dadaist, Kent State radicals to unlikely icons of 1980s MTV. Currently celebrating their 50 years of De-Evolution Tour, Devo band members will join Doc10 in a live, virtual Q&a moderated by Wxrt’s Marty Lennartz.
Doc10, a four-day fest running May 2-5, features a selection of 10 documentaries making their Chicago premieres along with a package of 10 prestigious documentary shorts. The fest is hosted by Chicago Media Project, a company that has generated more than $8.5 million in funding for documentary projects. Cmp has directly supported over 150 films including “Icarus,” “Crip Camp” and most recently “Gaucho, Gaucho,...
The film, which premiered at Sundance 2024, charts the life of the art-movement-turned-band Devo from Akron, Ohio, through archival footage of the band and candid sit-down interviews with band members. Smith follows the band on their journey from Dadaist, Kent State radicals to unlikely icons of 1980s MTV. Currently celebrating their 50 years of De-Evolution Tour, Devo band members will join Doc10 in a live, virtual Q&a moderated by Wxrt’s Marty Lennartz.
Doc10, a four-day fest running May 2-5, features a selection of 10 documentaries making their Chicago premieres along with a package of 10 prestigious documentary shorts. The fest is hosted by Chicago Media Project, a company that has generated more than $8.5 million in funding for documentary projects. Cmp has directly supported over 150 films including “Icarus,” “Crip Camp” and most recently “Gaucho, Gaucho,...
- 4/3/2024
- by Addie Morfoot
- Variety Film + TV
Mexican directors Astrid Rondero and Fernanda Valadez’s Sujo won the Grand Prix at this year’s Sofia International Film Festival (March 13-24).
The Mexican-French-us co-production about a boy who must fight against the temptation of local gangs premiered at this year’s Sundance Film Festival where it won the Grand Jury Prize, and is being handled internationally by Alpha Violet.
The festival’s top prize has gone to a film from Mexico for the second year running after Carlos Eichelmann Kaiser’s Red Shoes won last year.
The international jury, presided over by Hungarian actor-writer-director Szabolcs Hadju and including outgoing EFM director Dennis Ruh,...
The Mexican-French-us co-production about a boy who must fight against the temptation of local gangs premiered at this year’s Sundance Film Festival where it won the Grand Jury Prize, and is being handled internationally by Alpha Violet.
The festival’s top prize has gone to a film from Mexico for the second year running after Carlos Eichelmann Kaiser’s Red Shoes won last year.
The international jury, presided over by Hungarian actor-writer-director Szabolcs Hadju and including outgoing EFM director Dennis Ruh,...
- 3/26/2024
- ScreenDaily
Juxtaposing the story of the murder of Congolese leader Patrice Lumumba with a musical tour of jazzman Louis Armstrong and with the expansion of the United Nations after the independence of many African countries in the 1960s might be tall order. Trickier still would be telling this complex story, full of many characters and plot swerves, in a nonlinear manner while filling the screen with written clues providing context like a bibliography of an academic thesis. Writer and director Johan Grimonprez sets himself a difficult task with “Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat,” yet accomplishes it with astonishing success. The film plays like both a dense historical text and a lively jazz concert while proving itself to be an invigorating piece of documentary filmmaking.
Touching on far more than the decolonization of Africa, Grimonprez’s ambitious essay film encompasses the political and historical upheavals the world over — including the alleged involvement...
Touching on far more than the decolonization of Africa, Grimonprez’s ambitious essay film encompasses the political and historical upheavals the world over — including the alleged involvement...
- 3/11/2024
- by Murtada Elfadl
- Variety Film + TV
MoMA’s annual Doc Fortnight begins as the Berlinale winds down, allowing the fest to grab freshly premiered titles from there, Rotterdam and Sundance. This year’s 23rd edition has 13 features, six shorts and three “evenings with”; I was able to sample about half of the work one way or another. Days after Zhou Tao’s The Periphery of the Base Berlinale premiere, his conceptually immaculate The Axis of Big Data makes its North American premiere here. The milky grey background of the opening […]
The post Doc Fortnight 2024: The Axis of Big Data, Preemptive Listening, Small Hours of the Night, Silence of Reason first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.
The post Doc Fortnight 2024: The Axis of Big Data, Preemptive Listening, Small Hours of the Night, Silence of Reason first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.
- 2/22/2024
- by Vadim Rizov
- Filmmaker Magazine-Director Interviews
MoMA’s annual Doc Fortnight begins as the Berlinale winds down, allowing the fest to grab freshly premiered titles from there, Rotterdam and Sundance. This year’s 23rd edition has 13 features, six shorts and three “evenings with”; I was able to sample about half of the work one way or another. Days after Zhou Tao’s The Periphery of the Base Berlinale premiere, his conceptually immaculate The Axis of Big Data makes its North American premiere here. The milky grey background of the opening […]
The post Doc Fortnight 2024: The Axis of Big Data, Preemptive Listening, Small Hours of the Night, Silence of Reason first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.
The post Doc Fortnight 2024: The Axis of Big Data, Preemptive Listening, Small Hours of the Night, Silence of Reason first appeared on Filmmaker Magazine.
- 2/22/2024
- by Vadim Rizov
- Filmmaker Magazine - Blog
The Sundance Film Festival welcomed a new class of indie film stars on Friday, handing out its annual awards in Park City, Utah.
Taking the festival’s grand jury prize in the U.S. dramatic competition was “In the Summers” from writer-director Alessandra Lacorazza Samudio. The film tells of two daughters who come of age navigating a turbulent but loving father during yearly visits to his home in New Mexico. “Porcelain War” won the U.S. Documentary competition, for its portrait of artists-turned-soldiers in the Ukraine.
Top prizes in the world cinematic category went to “A New Kind of Wilderness” for documentary, the tale of a wild-living family who must return to the modern world after an untimely death; “Sujo” won for narrative feature, about a 4-year-old orphan who may find it impossible to escape a future working for a drug cartel.
Incoming Sundance Film Festival director Eugene Hernandez began...
Taking the festival’s grand jury prize in the U.S. dramatic competition was “In the Summers” from writer-director Alessandra Lacorazza Samudio. The film tells of two daughters who come of age navigating a turbulent but loving father during yearly visits to his home in New Mexico. “Porcelain War” won the U.S. Documentary competition, for its portrait of artists-turned-soldiers in the Ukraine.
Top prizes in the world cinematic category went to “A New Kind of Wilderness” for documentary, the tale of a wild-living family who must return to the modern world after an untimely death; “Sujo” won for narrative feature, about a 4-year-old orphan who may find it impossible to escape a future working for a drug cartel.
Incoming Sundance Film Festival director Eugene Hernandez began...
- 1/26/2024
- by Matt Donnelly
- Variety Film + TV
Each week we highlight the noteworthy titles that have recently hit streaming platforms in the United States. Check out this week’s selections below and past round-ups here.
2024 Sundance Film Festival
Through Sunday, one can experience the 2024 Sundance Film Festival from the comfort of their own home, if it’s in the United States. Having seen over 50 titles in the lineup, in terms of films with tickets still available I can highly recommend Good One, Between the Temples, Tendaberry, Black Box Diaries, Ibelin, Kneecap, Didi, Brief History of a Family, Porcelain War, Sugarcane, Sujo, Seeking Mavis Beacon, Skywalkers: A Love Story, Union, Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat, and Realm of Satan. – Jordan R.
Where to Stream: Official Site (through Sunday only)
Amanda (Carolina Cavalli)
Sofia Coppola’s eighth feature doesn’t hit theaters for another few months, but you’d be forgiven if you thought it was actually Amanda, writer-director Carolina Cavalli’s darkly humorous,...
2024 Sundance Film Festival
Through Sunday, one can experience the 2024 Sundance Film Festival from the comfort of their own home, if it’s in the United States. Having seen over 50 titles in the lineup, in terms of films with tickets still available I can highly recommend Good One, Between the Temples, Tendaberry, Black Box Diaries, Ibelin, Kneecap, Didi, Brief History of a Family, Porcelain War, Sugarcane, Sujo, Seeking Mavis Beacon, Skywalkers: A Love Story, Union, Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat, and Realm of Satan. – Jordan R.
Where to Stream: Official Site (through Sunday only)
Amanda (Carolina Cavalli)
Sofia Coppola’s eighth feature doesn’t hit theaters for another few months, but you’d be forgiven if you thought it was actually Amanda, writer-director Carolina Cavalli’s darkly humorous,...
- 1/26/2024
- by Jordan Raup
- The Film Stage
A formally rigorous and free-associative dive into a decade’s worth of political fighting in the Congo, from roughly 1955 to 1965, Johan Grimonprez’s “Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat” is a fascinating and sprawling historical overview. Eschewing the usual mix of contextual talking heads, the Belgian filmmaker and multimedia artist instead adopts its narrative approach from the jazz that flows freely throughout the film and helps frame the political struggles of the Congo.
Continue reading ‘Soundtrack To A Coup d’Etat’ Review: Experimental Documentary Deftly Explores The Connections Between Jazz & The Congo [Sundance] at The Playlist.
Continue reading ‘Soundtrack To A Coup d’Etat’ Review: Experimental Documentary Deftly Explores The Connections Between Jazz & The Congo [Sundance] at The Playlist.
- 1/24/2024
- by Christian Gallichio
- The Playlist
“The Belgians cut off my hands in the Congo,” Langston Hughes wrote in his poem “Negro.” “They lynch me now in Texas.” The year was 1922, and racial segregation was the norm in the United States. Anti-Black racism in the South was such a millstone that the U.S. Senate failed to pass an NAACP-sponsored anti-lynching bill in January of that year, a list of simple protections that was prevented from coming to a vote due to filibusters.
Hughes’s poem is one piece of ephemera that comprises the massive tapestry that is Soundtrack to a Coup d’État. Director Johan Grimonprez’s documentary is primarily focused on the Democratic Republic of Congo and its struggle for independence from Belgian colonialism, during which time our government was using Black jazz musicians to, in its diplomatic tango with the Soviet Union, paint a portrait of American liberalism as benevolent.
The documentary focuses on...
Hughes’s poem is one piece of ephemera that comprises the massive tapestry that is Soundtrack to a Coup d’État. Director Johan Grimonprez’s documentary is primarily focused on the Democratic Republic of Congo and its struggle for independence from Belgian colonialism, during which time our government was using Black jazz musicians to, in its diplomatic tango with the Soviet Union, paint a portrait of American liberalism as benevolent.
The documentary focuses on...
- 1/23/2024
- by Greg Nussen
- Slant Magazine
Premiering out of Sundance’s World Cinema Documentary Competition, the impressionistic essay film “Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat” refracts the plot against Patrice Lumumba through a kaleidoscopic lens. Cutting between historical footage of the Un General Assembly and home movies shot in liberation-era Congo, weaving in a diverse set of perspectives, and setting the pace to a non-stop rhythm of bebop, rumba and classic jazz, director Johan Grimonprez evokes the euphoria of post-colonial possibility and the heartbreak of the dashed hopes and violent reprisals that would ensue.
“At first, I wanted to explore the colonial legacy of my own country,” says the Belgium-born Grimonprez. “I was already mesmerized by the story of Andrée Blouin, who was an independence leader, an advisor to [Ghana president] Kwame Nkrumah and chief of protocol for [first Congolese prime minister] Patrice Lumumba, but who was almost written out of history. And as a filmmaker, I like to explore those intimate stories within a wider,...
“At first, I wanted to explore the colonial legacy of my own country,” says the Belgium-born Grimonprez. “I was already mesmerized by the story of Andrée Blouin, who was an independence leader, an advisor to [Ghana president] Kwame Nkrumah and chief of protocol for [first Congolese prime minister] Patrice Lumumba, but who was almost written out of history. And as a filmmaker, I like to explore those intimate stories within a wider,...
- 1/17/2024
- by Ben Croll
- Variety Film + TV
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