My Name Is Happy by Nick Read and Ayse Toprak
“This is a film that surprises everyone,” Salma Abdalla, CEO of Vienna-based sales outfit Autlook, enthuses about the company’s stealth awards contender Three Minutes – A Lengthening.
Bianca Stigter’s film premiered over a year ago at the 2021 Venice Festival and in Telluride. Since then, the documentary has emerged as a strong critics’ favourite, with 100% positive ratings on the Rotten Tomatoes website. It is based around only three minutes of footage. In 1938, an American tourist David Kurtz on a European holiday, shot some film featuring the Jewish inhabitants of Nasielsk, a small town in Poland. This material, by then in a parlous state, was later stumbled on by his grandson Glenn Kurtz, whose 2014 book ‘Three Minutes in Poland. Discovering A Lost World In A 1938 Family Film’ inspired the documentary.
Narrated by Helena Bonham Carter, Three Minutes – A Lengthening provides a unique visual record of a community that, shortly afterwards, would be obliterated by the Nazis. “It has a very fresh and different perspective. It’s a very accessible narrative but it is also unconventional at the same time,” Abdalla says of Three Minutes, which is released in the UK next month by Curzon. Super LTD, the specialist arm of US distributor Neon, released Three Minutes in the US in August.
“This film gives us an idea that history can repeat itself at any time. That is happening now actually,” Abdalla adds.
Certain territories (notably in Asia) still remain to be sold on the film. Meanwhile, Autlook is in Amsterdam this week with several new projects.
One title with strong IDFA connections is The New Greatness Case, directed by Anna Shishova-Bogolyubova, about a young Russian teenager whose life is turned upside down after she is arrested and accused of trying to overthrow the state. The doc was supported by the IDFA Bertha Fund. After Russia invaded Ukraine, the director and her producer Vladislav Ketkovich both fled Russia.
“We had ideas of making the film anonymous but they [the filmmakers] both believed in what they were telling. They wanted to stand behind this movie,” Abdalla notes. ZDF/ARTE is now aboard the project.
Another Autlook title building up awards momentum is Myanmar Diaries by the [anonymous] Myanmar Film Collective. This is Oscar qualified having won the Best Documentary award at the Berlinale. The film, made in collaboration with Dutch filmmakers Corinne van Egeraat and her partner Petr Lom, deals in terrifying, humorous and satirical fashion with life under the military dictatorship. ARTE has now come in for Germany and France and is looking to broadcast it next February on the second anniversary of the 2021 coup. The film has also been sold to the ICA for the UK. “This is really the only film that came out of Myanmar since the military coup,” says Abdalla.
In the company’s third Oscar contender Sirens, Lilas and Shery, co-founders and guitarists of the Middle East’s first all-female metal band, wrestle with friendship, sexuality and destruction in their pursuit of becoming thrash metal rock stars.
Autlook has also been doing strong pre-sales on One In A Million, the new doc by Jack MacInnes and Iota Azzam. Pitched at the 2020 IDFA Forum, this refugee-based story follows the transformation of an 11-year girl selling cigarettes on the Turkish streets into an 18 year old German woman.
Just before IDFA, the company picked up My Name Is Happy (a world premiere in Frontlight and directed by Nick Read and Ayse Toprak). This is about a young Kurdish woman trying to rebuild her life after being the victim of an act of extreme male violence.
“It has all the ingredients to make a film successful. First of all, it has a wonderful main character, a very brave woman. It is a female story. Femicide and abuse against women is a rising issue in most societies after the pandemic and this really gives you a good idea what we are dealing with. It is emotionally very engaging,” the Autlook CEO commented. “It is happening in Turkey but you can easily relate it to all over the world.” Channel 4 is one of the UK partners and is expected to be supportive of a theatrical window for the film.
Other titles on Autlook’s IDFA slate include Steve James’ The Compassionate Spy, Lowndes County And The Road To Black Power by Sam Pollard and Geeta Gandbhir, The Corridors Of Power by Dror Moreh, Black Mambas by Lena Karbe, Innocence by Guy Davidi and Matter Out Of Place by Nikolaus Geyrhalter.
