As doors opened on CPH:DOX 2024, Salma Abdalla, CEO of Vienna-based sales outfit Autlook, was striking an upbeat note. After all, the company is arriving in Copenhagen after a strong start to the year. At Sundance in January, Autlook closed an eye-catching global deal with Netflix for Ibelin, its film about a gamer’s secret life, directed by Benjamin Ree. Business was also brisk at the Berlinale last month.
“It was a very good atmosphere in Berlin where we met most of the theatrical buyers,” says Abdalla of a festival at which Autlook had several films in official selection, among them the hard-0hitting Palestinian doc No Other Land, and Ruth Beckermann’s crowd-pleaser Favoriten (about the kids from very mixed backgrounds in a Vienna school). Both titles are also screening at CPH.
Abdalla believes that docs are now benefiting from the increased confidence among indie distributors after the theatrical successes of such art house dramas as Anatomy of a Fall, Zone Of Interest and Fallen Leaves. “Now they know there is an audience again, and there is some cash flow coming in for the good and solid art house distribution companies in Europe and Asia. That means they can go a little broader with their selection. They have been extremely risk averse for the past two years, but this has changed!”
Many buyers were keen to nab Ibelin but Netflix was prepared to pay a license fee which Autlook would have struggled to match if the company had sold the film territory by territory. However, the streaming giant has agreed to allow the film to play in cinemas in Norway (through Euphoria).
Autlook has two world premieres in Copenhagen this week, Once Upon A Time In A Forest by Virpi Suutari and Motherboard, Victoria Mapplebeck’s autobiographical smartphone-filmed feature about motherhood, filmed over almost two decades.
“It’s really epic and with a lot of humour,” Abdalla says of Motherboard. “You’ve got a whole life in there with all its ups and downs.”
Mapplebeck started filming it 20 years ago when she was pregnant and skint. Both the director and her son Jim will be at CPH for the screenings and Q&A’s. Autlook picked up the documentary at IDFA Forum.
These two titles were also part of Autlook’s market slate in Berlin.
No Other Land, about a Palestinian activist resisting forced displacement of Palestinians by Israeli settlers, received very strong reviews in Berlin. “We’ve got tons of offers. We are collaborating with Cinetic. They are holding a window for a certain amount of time – and when this window expires [at the end of April] we will be able to sell the film,” the Autlook boss explains why no deal memos have yet been signed.
Favoriten has now sold to various international territories and Abdalla reports US interest in the title too.
Autlook’s new music doc Omar and Cedric: If This Ever Gets Weird is screening both at SSXW and at CPH. Directed by Nicolas Jack Davies, this is about cult rock bands At the Drive-In and The Mars Volta, and the musicians behind them, Omar Rodríguez-López and Cedric Bixler-Zavala. Another music doc on the current slate is Zucchero Sugar Fornaciari by Giangiacomo de Stefano and Valentina Zanella.
Vanessa Hope’s much-admired Taiwan documentary, Invisible Nation, profiling Taiwan’s first female president Tsai Ing-wen, is also in the CPH programme.
Meanwhile, the coimpany’s The Making of a Japanese, directed by Ema Ryan Yamazaki, is screening at Thessaloniki International Documentary Festival this week. The doc looks at how Japanese “identity” is moulded at an elementary school in Tokyo. (The director was also the editor on recent Sundance hit Black Box Diaries, looking at a prominent and disturbing #MeToo case in Japan.)
Autlook is now beginning to look forward to the major festivals later in the summer. One new film Abdalla is very optimistic about is Ed Sayers’ Super Nature, a carbon free wildlife movie shot on super 8mm. “It’s a real pleasure to watch,” she says of the film which is executive-produced by Asif Kapadia and Nikki Parrott. “I think it is going to be loved by audiences. It’s extremely enjoyable to watch.”
Autlook also hopes to be involved in Don’t Let the Sun Go Up, the new feature from Moroccan director Asmae El Moudir, whose earlier feature The Mother Of All Lies played in Cannes and sold very widely last year. It was recently released in French cinemas where it has posted over 13,000 admissions in its first week in cinemas.
Alongside feature film projects, Autlook is involved in various series. Draw For Change!, looking at the daily lives of female illustrators around the globe who use their drawings to empower women and fight for gender equality, is still continuing. Its final episode, Open Letter, about the threat to democracy in the US and directed by Laura Nix, is close to completion. This is currently being done as a 50-minute version – and the aim is to have it ready for broadcast in the run up to the US election.“What we feel is that broadcasters are very much interested in buying political investigations still,” Abdalla reflects on one continuing market trend. “So this is what we are looking for [in terms of] acquisitions.”
