New doc sales outfit Dogwoof Global Sales has confirmed details of its first IDFA slate.
The company, a subsidiary of UK distributor Dogwoof, is headed by Vesna Cudic and Ana Vincente. Dogwoof Sales aims to handle between five and six titles a year. All of these titles will be released in the UK by Dogwoof.
Dogwoof Sales was launched after Dogwoof took on UK distribution rights to How Much Does Your Building Weigh, Mr Foster?, a feature doc profiling the revered British architect, Norman Foster. “The producers were very happy with the way Dogwoof distributed the film in the UK and were interested to see if Dogwoof would represent the film internationally”, Cudic explains.
From launching with the Foster doc, Dogwoof sales has now ramped up its slate. Its IDFA roster is headlined by
Girl Model, an exposé of the trafficking of young Russians into the world of Japanese modelling. Girl Model, which Dogwoof picked up following Hot Docs, has already been pre-sold to BBC Storyville in the UK and to Danish broadcaster DR2. Dogwoof is in advanced negotiations with, among others, SVT Sweden, SF in German-speaking Switzerland, and reports strong interest from YLE. Carnivalesque is the film’s US sales agent.
New on Dogwoof’s slate is Jerry Rothwell’s Town of Runners, a doc about an area in Ethiopia renowned for nurturing many of the world’s greatest long-distance runners. This will be released in the UK by Dogwoof in the run-up to the London Marathon and the 2012 Olympics.
Other titles Dogwoof is handing at IDFA include Jeanie Findlay’s Sound It Out, about the last surviving vinyl record shop in North East England, We Are Poets (about British teen poets competing at America’s slam poetry competition Brave New Voices) and Melissa – Mom and Me, about the friendship between two women who first met in unusual circumstances as strippers in Japan.
Dogwoof Sales is intended as a boutique operation. Distribution remains the company’s core business. “We don’t really see ourselves as going into competition with other sales agents”, Cudic comments. “We are trying to do something a little different. I think the key is that we are guaranteeing films (we handle) distribution in the UK.” The company aims to concentrate primarily on theatrical docs.
By Geoffrey Macnab