At Sheffield 2023 Business Doc Europe sat down with Kim Christiansen of DR Sales. DR Sales is the international sales department of the Danish public broadcaster and one of the leading Nordic distributors of high-end audiovisual productions – in particular, the team focuses on award-winning documentaries, drama series and children’s content.
DR Sales’ content aims to engage and educate the audience while stimulating important conversations able to strengthen the public broadcaster’s impact on society, the company says.
“DR Sales is looking for contemporary stories of all popular genres but we have a reputation of engaging mainly in geopolitical [themes], current affairs, social issues, society – in all its various shapes – and in character-driven films,” explains Christiansen while zooming in on the type of non-fiction content his team seeks to acquire.
Speaking about how the company is staffed, he tells us: “We have ten people employed full-time, four people working directly with sales and festivals plus myself doing co-productions, financing and acquisitions.”
Among the top titles in DR Sales’ rich slate of documentaries, Christiansen highlights six Nordic productions which world-premiered at this year’s edition of CPH:DOX. These are Puk Damsgaard and Søren Klovborg’s The Hostage Takers, Linus Mørk’s Remains, Karrar Al-Azzawi’s Baghdad on Fire, Kristoffer Hegnsvad’s Soviet Bus Stops, Julie Bezerra Madsen’s It’s Always Been Me, and Tonje Hessen Schei and Michael Rowley’s Praying for Armageddon.
While the DR Sales team is putting “full focus” on these six titles, two of them in particular stand out. “Our main activity at Sheffield is taking part in the ever strong MeetMarket, during which we are always introduced to great new projects. We’re also handling sales here for the whole slate and promoting Praying for Armageddon as well as doing a lot of crucial networking. […] We’re looking for strong new projects at any stage that fit our taste, editorial policy and could do equally good on festivals and commercially.”
Praying for Armageddon is having its UK premiere in the Debates strand of Sheffield Docfest 17 June.. DR Sales labels the movie as “a political thriller that reveals the power and influence of U.S. fundamentalist evangelicals as they aim to fulfil the Armageddon prophecy.” Meanwhile, the Sheffield programming team defines it as “journeys among church pastors, congressmen and crusading bikers, who all believe we are on the precipice of a holy war,” which utilises “the investigative journalism of Lee Fang.” The doc includes the testimonies of Frank Schaeffer, the expelled son of the pro-life movement; Palestinian journalist Mohamed El Kurd and a Rabbi taking a stand against radical Christian Zionism, amongst others. Praying for Armageddon was recently screened at Krakow and Movies That Matter, and was produced Christian Aune Falch, Torstein Parelius and Ingrid Aune Falch for Oslo-based outfit UpNorth Film.
The other top priority project is The Hostage Takers. Produced by Søren Klovborg, it shows the intimate and eerie accounts from Alexanda Kotey and El Shafee Elsheikh, two members of the brutal ISIS prison guards known as the ‘The Beatles.’ The pair held hostage and beheaded the American war correspondent James Foley. The picture gained an Honourable Mention in the F:ACT award strand of the Danish gathering and also screened at Movies that Matter and Krakow.
Finally, Christiansen shared with us his takes on the current climate for sales and the state of the non-fiction market: “At the moment, the market for docs is complicated because many streamers seem to hold back on acquisitions, but we’re less affected since our films usually have very strong bonds to TV and public broadcasters in particular. Also, we see it as an interim period since the world is in a stage that needs real strong stories dealing with the complexity of our lives and our planet – and not just films about rapists, serial killers and awkward celebs and royals.”
“We’re very optimistic about the future of docs, and that is why we are looking very much forward to the latter part of 2023 and 2024 where we will have new powerful, amazing films premiering at the biggest festivals and we’ll be making sure they will be available to screen on as many platforms as possible worldwide.”
