Specialist documentary distributor Java Films has sold the 1 x 52’ documentary Musk vs Bezos: The New Star Wars to RTBF, ZDFinfo, TVE, SIC, and HRT Croatia, with more sales in the offing. The France 5 commission from Magneto tells the story of the ongoing vicious space race between two of the richest men in the world.
“This timely and entertaining true story explains the consequences for the rest of us, as two billionaires develop the capacity to monopolise all future terrestrial communications. When Musk first tried to buy a Russian rocket back in 2001, the chief engineer of the Russian Space Agency thought he was a joke. By 2008 SpaceX had a contract with NASA to supply flights to the International Space Station,” writes Java Films.
Java Films will be in Biarritz for Le Rendez-Vous market with 20 other new documentaries. These include Chip War, an ARTE commission from French prod company Babel Doc, which has pre-sold to RTS. Chip War explains how the persistent shortage of semiconductors, essential to our daily lives, is reshaping geopolitical relations, fuelling inflation and increasing tensions between America and China. It’s estimated that 10 million cars worldwide were not produced in 2021 because manufacturers did not have enough semiconductors. Only a few countries can produce these specialised chips, and 63% of all chips are produced in Taiwan.
Java Films will also launch a new film from multi-award-winning director Anne Poiret, titled Ukraine: The Road to War. This is Java Films’ first project with Talweg Productions, and their third project with Anne Poiret, having already worked on the films Mosul: After the War and The Envoy.
Ukraine: The Road to War, commissioned by France 5, has been over a year in the making. It traces the geopolitical history of the Ukrainian conflict from 2014 onwards, setting the current conflict into the context of the eight years of war in the Donbas which preceded it. It tells a powerful story of the high-level political negotiations and the war from 2014 and 2022 by the juxtaposition of geopolitical insights from major players, such as François Hollande, who was president of France during those early negotiations, with real people in Ukraine personally affected by the ongoing conflict.
In 2021, Java Films documentaries screened at 150 festivals around the world, winning 32 awards & 5 special mentions. These include the multi-award winning Shadow Games by Eefje Blankevoort & Els van Driel, and Chloe Fairweather’s equally prize-laden Dying to Divorce, which was sold to WDR/ARTE, NRK, DR, SRF, SBS, SIC, ORF, SVT, VRT, TV3, Al Ghad, HRT, TVN, Filmin, BBC Arabic, WMM, TG4 and iWonder.
