Last week in Biarritz, FIPADOC hosted a panel titled “Dive into the Baltic Sea.” The discussion, introduced by the festival’s new Head of the Co-Production Forum Ove Rishøj Jensen and moderated by National Film Centre of Latvia’s Zane Balcus, was split into two parts. The first focused on a French-Estonian co-production case study, whilst the second invited the contributions of three heads of acquisitions working for some of the region’s public broadcasters – Erko Lyytinen, of Finland’s YLE; Junita Budvytiene of Lithuanian LRT, and Zane Valeniece of Latvian LTV.
Balcus handed the mic to French producer Laurence Uebersfeld of Lufilms. During her contribution, Uebersfeld shared her experience of working with Estonian partners on one episode of Martin Meissonnier’s docuseries Happiness@School. The three-part project, budgeted at around €450,000, aimed to showcase some of the world’s best educational practices. Each episode focused on a different age group, and one main school was featured per episode. One of the episodes targeting students aged 12-14 was located in Estonia.
“In the world a lot of pupils are dropping out, that’s what we noticed. In France, for example, many pupils say they’re afraid to go to school. So Martin wanted to explore what could be done at a time when education has changed so much. For older pupils like us, we went to school because we could only learn things there. Today, students can find them on their phones. So now the whole system must evolve,” she explained.
“The idea was to look for schools with good results, but also where students seemed to be happier than in others… [Later, we found out that] Estonia was actually the country performing the best in Europe.”
In 2019, Uebersfeld visited IDFA and contacted the only two Estonian attendees to set up a meeting. With one of them, producer and documentarian Riho Vastrik, the collaboration began almost immediately. One week after their chat, Vastrik agreed to join the project and they both started working on the papers needed to apply for the minority co-production grants offered by the Estonian Film Institute.
Uebersfeld underscored how important and stimulating the collaboration with Vastrik has been, especially in terms of access to schools and his local market knowledge.
After a busy Christmas break (and winning a €30,000 co-production grant), the project was set to enter production on 12 March 2020. But the pandemic was just around the corner, and the director was sick for several months.
But later that summer, Uebersfeld managed to meet Vastrik in Tallinn. They agreed to translate the film in Estonia, have a French cinematographer onboard and to use local filmmakers for the other roles. Vastrik and his line producer organised the shoot and worked closely with the director to satisfy his artistic and technical needs. The project was then edited in France and bought by Estonian pubcaster ETV. The team also set up a dedicated platform – currently available in English, French and German – which will be online for at least two more years, thanks to the support provided by the Erasmus programme.
In the second part of the FIPADOC event, the floor was given first to Lithuanian Junita Budvytiene (attending remotely). During her presentation, the head of LRT acquisitions gave figures on purchased hours of documentary content from foreign companies – notably, these were 996 in 2022, of which 318 were first run. Next, she touched upon the agreement sealed with different broadcasters and sales agents such as the BBC, ITV, Dogwoof, RAI, Autlook, Taskovski, Cats&Docs and TVP. She also stressed how non-fiction programming is still slot-based. LRT’s main channel, for example, broadcasts documentaries on Saturday/Sunday for two hours, starting from midday. Current series within this slot include the likes of Asia’s Wild Secrets; Wonders of the Ocean; Dawn to Dusk and Animal Einsteins. Meanwhile, LRT Plus offers different late afternoon and evening slots focusing on biographies (Monday, 7.30 pm), ancient history (Tuesday, 7.30 pm), science (Thursday, 7.30 pm) and art and music (Monday, 9.30 pm).
YLE’s Erko Lyytinen cited A House Made of Splinters, in the running this year for an Oscar, as a great example of the type of projects YLE is looking for. In broader terms, he described them as high-quality docs with a wide reach, and primarily appealing for Finnish audiences. He confirmed YLE’s full commitment to buying ready-made films, to co-production and to pre-buys. Speaking about the network’s non-fiction programming, he said: “We changed, we’re not slot-related at all. Slots represent [the] history of TV.”
He argued that people don’t seek out these doc slots or simply don’t wait for a given date to watch a documentary. Thus, most of YLE’s work is based on a tailor-made release strategy aimed at targeting specific core audiences. In particular, he mentioned a new 4×25 docuseries in the making, titled Game of Minds, which revolves around e-gaming and the game Counter Strike: Global Offensive. To attract its core audience, the show is set to be released in autumn during the days of a popular e-gaming event in Helsinki. It will be accessible on YLE’s own streaming platform and aired on the linear channel at a later stage.
Finally, Latvian Zane Valeniece (also attending remotely) touched upon her work with LTV and how the team prefers to co-produce projects at a very early stage – even though they remain open to seeing rough cuts as well – adding that the topics covered should be primarily of interest to Latvian audiences.
The panel was rounded off by a short Q&A session.
