On Tuesday at Copenhagen doc festival CPH:DOX, European broadcasters, funders and producers, as well as key players from the U.S. market, gathered for a private lunch at the Odd Fellow Palace to discuss the growing threats to journalistic political feature documentaries. The goal of the meeting was to determine ways to keep funding and distributing political docs without the support of U.S. mainstream producers and distributors, i.e., Netflix, Amazon, Apple and Disney.
Attendees included Barbara Truyen, chair of the EBU Documentary Group; Anders Bruus from DR (Danish Broadcasting Corporation); Lea Fels, Scenery production company partner; Christian Beetz, CEO of the German production house Beetz Brothers; Alexandre Marionneau, head of international coproduction for the Society and Culture Department of ARTE France; Geralyn Dreyfous, Impact Partners co-founder and Oscar-winning producer; producer Mette Heide, who owns the production company Plus Pictures; and Jigsaw producer Sarah Mowaswes.
Mowaswes, who lives in the U.S., is in Copenhagen to attend the CPH:Forum with the “Untitled Edward Said Documentary,” which she is producing alongside Alex Gibney. While the doc’s Forum pitch is closed, Mowaswes did reveal that the film, about the late Columbia University literary critic and prominent advocate in the United States of the cause of Palestinian independence, will be told using Said’s voice and archival footage.
“We have been given access by the family, so it’s really wonderful, but we pretty much know that we likely won’t get U.S. distribution,” Mowaswes said. “So we came to CPH to talk to European funders, talk to other funders and strike up the conversation about getting partners who are willing to take a risk in investing in a political story.”
Directed by Maiken Baird, the doc is currently being independently financed.
“Being Palestinian, you are political just by virtue of existing, and that was Edward’s life,” said Mowaswes. “It feels like when you step into Europe, people are more willing to talk about him. Seeing the success of ‘No Other Land’ abroad has been really nice, but we know that it is certainly going to be an uphill battle (with this film).”
Mowaswes is one of many producers at CPH:DOX seeking out European co-producers. The MAGA-ification of U.S. gatekeepers has had a chilling effect on development financing in America. Major platforms are only getting behind docs that aren’t going to rock the boat, or as one CPH attendee put it, “escapism docs.” Gibney’s “The Bibi Files,” which chronicles the corruption charges against Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, still has no U.S. theatrical distributor after its splashy Toronto world premiere in September.
But according to Fels, who is based in the Netherlands, if a U.S. production is looking to co-produce with a European company, filmmakers need to broaden their storytelling approach.
“It shouldn’t be that Americans come with stories that they want to tell just from a U.S. perspective,” said Fels. “It should be a collaboration and a mutual understanding of the stories they want to share. If an American filmmaker comes here to just get soft money so he can make his film about Elon [Musk], I don’t think that that is the right approach. The approach should always be about telling global stories. So, the question becomes how do we tell stories that are universal, but from different territories? I think there’s a lot to gain if we can do that.”
Beetz, who has worked with all the major streamers, agreed with Fels before adding that while there is money in Europe for docs, it’s not exactly easy to access.
“We work completely differently here,” said Beetz. “It’s more about collaboration, and we have a lot of funding systems in European countries that are still very strong, as well as public broadcaster systems, that have big appetites for big documentaries. But also, to be honest, it’s not that easy to reach this funding system. It’s quite complicated.”
Beetz also admitted that recently it has been a “struggle” to find a U.S. home for some of his European-financed docs.
“Netflix used to pick up our films, but right now the situation has changed completely because they are only interested in what I call the bikini shows,” said Beetz. “Youngsters in bikinis on beaches. They are not at all interested in political or social issues anymore. It would be interesting to find a new way in terms of distribution because the streamers went to the right.”
On March 24, Beetz Brothers unveiled their latest high-profile doc, “Tesla Files,” about the alleged danger of Musk’s political influence. The film is part of the CPH:Forum and being produced in tandem with German public broadcaster ARD.
“Tesla Files” is one of two docs about Musk currently in production. Gibney’s upcoming documentary “Musk” has distribution via HBO Max. In 2023, Universal Pictures Content Group acquired international rights to the film. It’s anyone’s guess if David Zaslav will be brave enough to possibly antagonize Trump and allow “Musk” to stream on Max.
Division of film rights, foregoing worldwide rights and selling territory by territory and lowering American doc budgets were also topics of conversation during the hour-long lunch.
“This was an interesting but also uncomfortable topic to discuss with the Americans in the room, but in Europe we have lower budgets than you do, but we still make fantastic documentaries,” said Truyen, whose remark was met with laughter. “If we could come to a budget that is good for everyone, and we can make [the doc] cheaper in the end, the IP will be with the producer, and that’s a good thing.”
