Oli Harbottle, Head of Distribution & Acquisitions at leading UK documentary outfit Dogwoof, gives an upbeat forecast for the UK doc sector in 2021. He also predicts that Dogwoof will be able to survive any continuing slowdown in the theatrical business caused by the pandemic.
Harbottle was speaking to Business Doc Europe after attending last week’s IDFA Forum. “It was a pretty slick operation,” he said of the online event at which one of Dogwoof’s projects, Max Duncan and Xinyan Yu’s Made In Ethiopia was being pitched. The film explores the way Chinese investment is shaping the “Global South”, Africa in particular. Dogwoof is a co-producer and is also handling world sales having boarded the project during Sheffield.
“There are half a dozen (other Forum) projects with which we would like to get involved. That could be as a co-producer or a traditional sales agent,” Harbottle said.
Historically, Dogwoof has found rich pickings at the Forum, acquiring such titles as McCurry: The Pursuit Of Colour (which will be ready next year) and 3D dance doc Cunningham at recent editions. “And then there are other projects which appeared at the Forum which maybe we didn’t pick up immediately, but have ended up with us,” he added, citing the example of Maite Alberdi’s The Mole Agent, due to be released in the UK next month (and which Dogwoof has been selling internationally since Sundance).
Harbottle acknowledges that the theatrical boom in docs enjoyed in recent years thanks to such ‘blockbusters” as Free Solo and Three Identical Strangers may be hard to sustain in a post-COVID world.
“I Am Greta is a great example,” Harbottle said. “We came into this year thinking that would be a great theatrical proposition.” Cinemas were open but with limited capacity when I Am Greta was released in the UK earlier this autumn, but then closed. “Our theatrical hopes for that one were dashed,” Harbottle says of a title that is currently doing bumper business online.
Dogwoof has been doing virtual Q&As for all its new releases including Alexander Nanau’s awards contender Collective. However, with I Am Greta, these were harder to arrange for the very good reason that the teenage activist and global media personality was back at school. “That keeps her busy. She had press demands from all over the world and we had to be sensitive to everyone’s requests.” However, Thunberg has fully supported the release.
The question now is when theatres will re-open and whether audiences will swarm back to docs.
“Obviously, we would love cinema to play as important a role as it [would do] if life returns to normal. Some films will still be made with that intent, with that king of big production value and the big screen in mind – but who knows if it will ever return to the Free Solo/Apollo 11 box office heights.”
Harbottle pointed out that the arrival of more big platforms, among them Disney Plus, HBO Max and Apple, is strengthening the streaming market yet further. These companies are open to showing feature docs. Apple, for example, has just launched Werner Herzog and Clive Oppenheimer’s Fireball: Visitors From Darker Worlds.
The allure of documentaries has been underlined in the UK in recent months by the number of distributors and sales agents now handling them. “There is an element of truth that documentaries on the production side is less complicated, slightly easier to keep going during a pandemic. I imagine documentaries are filling some gaps,” Harbottle says of why rivals are marching into the business. However, docs were working in the marketplace long before COVID-19 struck.
Dogwoof has high hopes for its new shaggy dog doc Stray (IDFA Best of Fests) which it will be releasing in the UK in spring (at the same time Magnolia will release it in the US). The film, which sees the world from the point of view of stray dogs in Istanbul, is a confirmed crowd pleaser. “It’s a beautifully shot, stunning film. I think it will be light relief after a year of lockdown. People love dogs and it will be nice escapism.”
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y has sold to many theatrical distributors around the world. Other titles on the Dogwoof sales slate, for example 76 Days about the start of the pandemic in China, have been picked up primarily by broadcasters, many of whom will be looking to get it out in time for the first anniversary of the Wuhan lockdown in January.
With the North American market becoming ever more accessible, Dogwoof is looking to work regularly with US partners like Magnolia, Neon, IFC and Kino-Lorber, all of whom support the US release of documentaries. The company also has close links with the major streamers.
“We are feeling very good about our slate,” Harbottle says as he looks to 2021. New films that Dogwoof will be pushing early in the year in the UK Include MLK/FBI, Assassins and 76 Days.
“The rest of the year is still unfolding…yeah, we’ve ridden the storm of 2020. We’ve adopted new rules. Digital releasing is working. Our own platform Dogwoof On Demand is really building up. Who knows about theatrical, but we are a flexible and nimble company. We are in sales. We are in production,” Harbottle says of the resilient, vertically integrated Dogwoof model.
“If theatrical takes a hit, there are other things we can leverage.”
