Buyers are beginning to pick up the aroma of Russian sales outfit Antipode Sales and Distribution’s hot new Iranian feature doc Growth, which tells the story of one of the world’s most popular drinks…coffee.
There are many different myths and anecdotes about the origins of the drink, one of them being that a shepherd named Khalid from Abyssinia (Ethiopia), noticed the strange effect of the coffee plant on his goats and then decided to chew on the coffee berries himself.
The feature doc is 130 minutes in length and directed by Vahid Alvandifar. It has been percolating for some time but is now close to completion. Its producer is Siavash Nikaeen. Antipode has been giving buyers an early taste of the film during IDFA.
Growth is just one of several new titles brewing on the Russian outfit’s IDFA slate.
Another recent pick-up is Evgeny Mitta’s Catch 2012, a new doc about the mass protests in Moscow in 2012 against election manipulation and corruption – and about how aggressively the authorities moved against the protesters. As the doc reveals, for many of the protesters, these were life changing events.
Antipode has also been busy selling Yulia Vishnevets’s Hey! Teachers!, which has been screening in IDFA’s Best of Fests. This is an observational documentary about two idealistic teachers from Moscow who take jobs in a provincial town in Russia. They try with very mixed success to engage with often disruptive and resistant adolescent students. The film comes to IDFA following successful screenings in Cracow, Shanghai and elsewhere.
Meanwhile, in Docs For Sale, Antipode has been introducing buyers to its new football-themed documentary Ivan’s Game, directed and written by Tomislav Zaja. The film tells the story of one of the greatest Croatian football players of all time: Ivan Gudelj, a defensive midfielder described by the Yugoslavian press as a Balkan version of Franz Beckenbauer. His blossoming career ended abruptly when he contracted Hepatitis B.
“He lost everything because of his illness,” Dasha Grozovskaya, sales exec at the Moscow-based company says of the footballer who manages to rebuild his life in spite of his crippling illness.
Antipode has been active in the international sales market for eight years now, since 2012. It handles feature, animation and documentary titles from all over the world.
“We are an independent private company from Russia. This is sometimes not easy! We try to find films that are in demand from both buyers and festivals,” Grozovskaya explains of the Antipode strategy. “We are not limited by anyone or anything,” she continues, pointing out that Antipode has no link with any state institutions in Russia.
The Antipode exec has noticed changes in buyer tastes in recent months – a certain weariness with the type of political docs that used to be so popular. “Now people arelooking for something unexpected – universal, humanistic films,” Grozovskaya suggests.
Underlying Antipode’s global footprint is another of its new features, Lucía Vassallo’s Phone Line 137. This hard-hitting Argentinian doc explores violence against women. It follows a group of social workers and psychologists who are available every day of the year to help women who suffer cases of gender, sexual and family violence within Buenos Aires.
Meanwhile, the company is also selling Andreas Hoessli’s The Naked King, and recently clinched a deal for it with Al-Jazeera. Narrated by British actor Sam Riley, the film draws links between the revolution in Iran in 1979 and what happened in Poland with Solidarity a few months later.
Grozovskaya pays tribute to IDFA for its online industry offering this year. “It works. It is good that they didn’t cancel the festival. It’s great to know we are still…on the boat!” she says.
