Lidia Damatto, O2 Play
O2 Filmes is one of the largest and most successful production outfits in Brazil. The company has a thriving advertising business but also makes award-winning movies. It’s close to 20 years now since it enjoyed its biggest international success with Fernando Meirelles’ multiple Oscar winner, City Of God (2004). Meirelles co-owns the company alongside Paulo Morelli and Andrea Barata Ribeiro. The trio launched O2 in 1991.
Since 2013, O2 has also had its own distribution arm, O2 Play, founded by Igor Kupstas, which releases films in cinemas and also licenses content to platforms all over the world. It also now has its own international sales arm too, overseen by Lidia Damatto, who joined the company in the spring.
“We are kind of a hybrid because we do distribution here in Brazil, theatrical and digital, and we are also aggregators…and we have this international sales arm, representing Brazilian projects which we are distributing in Brazil,” Damatto explains the company’s very wide range of activities.
Documentaries are playing an increasingly important part in O2 Play’s activities. One of its recent feature docs, Secrets from Putumayo, directed by Aurélio Michiles, was a premiere at Hot Docs in the spring and is now on the company’s Cannes slate. Atmospherically shot in black and white, this tells the story of how, in 1910, Sir Roger Casement, British Consul in Rio de Janeiro, undertook an investigation into allegations of crimes against Indigenous communities committed by the British-registered Peruvian Amazon Company. It features narration from the gruff-voiced Irishman Stephen Rea (star of Neil Jordan’s Oscar winner, The Crying Game).
Secrets from Putumayo has just been selected for the Galway Film Fleadh (20-25 July) where Damatto will be looking to entice UK and Irish buyers.
“We think that it is a film which could really work in the UK,” she says of the doc, which has been made in English and whose central character, Roger Casement, later a poet and Easter Rising leader, was a very important figure in British and Irish history. (He was eventually hanged by the British at Pentonville Prison in North London in August 1916).
Multiple distributors are already circling the project.
Another doc on the O2 Play slate is Chorão: Marginal Alado produced in partnership with MTV. Entitled Outcast Rockstarin English, this is about the life and career of outrageous Brazilian singer Chorão, leader of the Charlie Brown Jr. band. Chorão died of a drug overdose in 2013 but he and his band have enduring cult appeal. The doc was a runaway success after being released day and date in Brazil earlier this year. (It outperformed Oscar winner The Father).
Oscar winner Meireilles was one of the co-founders of O2. He has a passion for documentary – and sometimes his colleagues act directly on his tips. For example, O2 Play is releasing Jesse Dylan’s new doc Soros, about financier and philanthropist George Soros, on the recommendation of Meirelles, who saw and admired the film at the Telluride Festival.
“I am really fond of documentary. Igor (Kupstas) really likes documentaries. We always look for documentaries, we always consider them,” Damatto states.
It remains tough to release feature docs in Brazilians cinemas. However, O2 Play can find audiences for them in several different ways, targeting streaming platforms and TV channels.
Damatto has several years of experience in international sales. She was previously Co-founder and Managing Partner of film consultancy agency MORETHAN and worked as Sales, Acquisitions & Festivals Manager for FiGa Films. Wearing both a seller and a buyer hat, she has been attending Cannes virtually this week and also participated in the pre-Cannes online screenings.
These are challenging times. Currency devaluations are one hazard, making deals significantly more expensive for Brazilians. So are the erratic policies of the president, Bolsonaro, who has cut off almost all funding for the film business and for arts in general.
So far, the market has been relatively slow. Nonetheless, Damatto is glad to be part of it. “We’re looking for content but still not really buying anything right now because the situation with theatres here in Brazil is still very complicated,” the O2 exec reflects. “EFM (in Berlin) and Cannes you have to be a part of – there is no other option. So we decided to be part of Cannes online.”
Damatto describes the hectic pace of business being done during the pandemic in different time-zones via online screenings and zoom meetings – a process that may seem convenient but also has obvious drawbacks.
“I think the advantage of actually going to Cannes or Berlin is that you are able to fully immerse yourself in the festival and the market. When you are at home, you don’t feel like you have the same level of commitment…you have your normal day-to-day life. Also, especially when you’re working with new partners, it’s always a different experience meeting with them, taking them out to lunch and then closing a deal as opposed to having a video call with someone for 30 minutes where the audio keeps dropping off and the image is frozen and all of that. It has been a blessing having these online events. They’re better than not having them…but they are not as effective as the physical events are!”
