Documentary sales powerhouse Autlook arrives at IDFA with a mix of world premieres and titles screening in Best of Fests. Among the latter are two documentaries in this year’s race for the International Oscar, Asmae El Moudir’s Cannes hit The Mother of All Lies (representing Morocco) and Estonian hopeful Smoke Sauna Sisterhood (which has already won Anna Hints a Directing Award at Sundance).
Autlook boss Salma Abdalla points out that both of these Oscar contenders are attracting theatrical buyers at a time when most feature docs are still struggling for traction in cinemas.
“It is a very challenging time,” Abdalla says. “Of course, everyone is praising the Oppenheimer/Barbie comeback of the theatrical market but that mainly goes for very commercial mainstream projects. Those issue-driven documentaries we used to release before the pandemic, they are having a bigger issue at the cinemas. What works well are films like Smoke Sauna Sisterhood or The Mother of All Lies that are extremely cinematic experiences. There is a reason you go to the cinema. It’s not only the subject. It’s the format, the visual side…”
Audiences are becoming more demanding, she suggests. They want what Abdalla calls “real cinematic value.” Topical, hard-hitting docs can still find viewers – but will often need a vigorous outreach campaign to have a real impact, or may have to find their audience on the small screen.
In Amsterdam this week, Autlook is selling Girl Away From Home, a new short doc co-directed by Simon Lereng Wilmont (Oscar nominated for A House Made of Splinters) and Ukrainian auteur Alisa Kovalenko. This is part of a series titles ‘Kids On The Silk Road’ which includes stories of 15 kids who give an insight into their lives and challenges.
“All these films have different directors and are travelling to different festivals,” Abdalla explains of the project, which is now complete and expected to surface in its entirety in early 2024.
Autlook will be looking for broadcasters in Amsterdam who might be ready to acquire the series. Arte is already on board. The project was warmly received last month at Mipcom.
Receiving its international premiere in IDFA Luminous is Piet Baumgartner’s The Driven Ones. This has already been pre-sold to SVT. It follows five students enrolled in the highly competitive Masters programme at the University of St. Gallen in Switzerland. They’re expected to go on and become business leaders and captains of industry. The film asks what they need to sacrifice in order to shimmy their way up the greasy career pole. It’s a German-Swiss co-production made by Catpics and with the involvement of SRF, RTS/SRG and ARD.
Filmmakers with new docs still often aspire to get their movies into cinemas but Abdalla repeats her warning to them: “it is a very limited market and extremely competitive.”
Nonetheless, the Autlook boss sees reasons for optimism. “Broadcasters are buying a lot and you have some different partners, streaming entities like Filmin in Spain or Mubi. It is a market that is developing again despite the challenges we all have.”
One title Abdalla expects to cause a splash at IDFA is Vanessa Hope’s Invisible Nation, about Taiwan’s first female president Tsai Ing-wen (and which is screening in IDFA’s Frontlight section). This is produced by Good Machine founder and former Amazon head of production, Ted Hope.
“We felt it is a super important film because how much do we [in Europe] know about Taiwan?” asks Abdalla. “Taiwan is one of those territories constantly in the news because of tensions with China. It’s a crucial territory to understand geo-politics. We are expecting a lot of attention especially from festivals and broadcasters.”
Autlook is handling international rights (not North America).
Also new on Autlook’s slate is Chris Kasick’s Citizen Sleuth (in Best of Fests). This is about true crime podcaster Emily Nestor who has an audience of millions but faces some tough ethical dilemmas. It’s an unusual pick-up for Abdalla and her team as it already screened earlier this year at SXSW 2023 as well as Sheffield. Generally, she likes to board projects at the very beginning of their festival journey.
“For Citizen Sleuth, we made a very big exception…usually we would never take a film that is already released. But with this film, we felt it had such a strong appeal to a very broad audience,” Abdalla reflects. “We feel that it’s a good investigation into this [true crime] genre that is extremely popular, and that it is a very easy pitch.”
Other new titles will soon be arriving on the Autlook slate and the company hopes that some of its docs will surface in Sundance and Berlin early next year.
The company has had notable broadcaster and festival success in recent years with well-researched political docs like The Corridors Of Powerand Myanmar Diaries. Abdalla has been doing strong business too on Ella Glendining’s Sundance title Is There Anybody Out There and Majed Neisi’s Inside The Iranian Uprising (produced by Passion Pictures). The fact that these films are continuing to sell gives the Autlook boss confidence that audiences are still engaged by tough topical stories – as long as they are executed strongly enough.
