There’s nothing like another Sundance Film Festival to give a boost to the nonfiction business. No disrespect to TIFF, Hot Docs, IDFA, or any number of festivals that showcase documentary films, but there is no bigger or more important marketplace for documentaries than the one that takes place this time of year in Park City, Utah. From 20 Feet From Stardom to Searching for Sugar Man, every year the majority of the year’s most prominent docs were launched at Sundance. How might this year’s festival define the forthcoming year in documentary film? Here are four trends to look out for at Sundance 2014.
1. The doc business is hotter than ever before, with more films likely to find a greater variety of outlets.
Ever year most entertainment journalists focus on the festival’s fiction film market, which features fierce bidding wars between companies like Fox Searchlight and The Weinstein Company over movies like The Way Way Back and Fruitvale Station. While the nonfiction bazaar is less starry and less money is outlaid for individual films, bidding can be just as competitive. As a recent New York Times article noted, all 16 of the documentaries in last year’s competition found distributors.
Box office grosses for docs aren’t necessarily getting any bigger, but the number of distribution outlets continues to expand, with more and more viewers watching docs on myriad online and VOD platforms, from iTunes to Amazon, Netflix to Hulu, YouTube to Vimeo to Vudu.
Corporations with an interest in alternative content are seeing that independent documentaries actually have a leg up on independent fiction. For decades, indie dramas relied on recognizable stars to give them selling power, but that power has diminished in recent years, making it harder for those films to stand out among the ever-growing digital library of titles.
Many docs, on the other hand, can reach identifiable audiences with grassroots marketing and social media outreach campaigns. The Weinstein Company didn’t have to think too hard about how to market their recent Salinger doc, for instance, considering the several generations of Catcher in the Rye fans in circulation. And whether or not this year’s topical Sundance films are any good, distributors shouldn’t have a difficult time finding potential audiences for them, whether it’s Whole Foods shoppers and farmer’s market aficionados in the case of Fed Up, or the LGBT community and political liberals for The Case Against 8. And since films like Food, Inc. and How to Survive a Plague have preceded them, marketing departments don’t have to reinvent the wheel.
2. Expect new distributors and broadcasters to but into the action. And expect the old guard to pursue new strategies.
Though HBO continues to be the most prominent broadcaster of documentaries, CNN is the new big fish in the documentary pond, having stepped up in a significant way with its CNN Films brand. At last year’s Sundance, CNN purchased broadcast rights to two of the festival’s biggest conversation-starters, Blackfish and Pandora’s Promise, giving them a small-screen commitment and partnering with theatrical distributors to get the docs into theaters. They’re already involved in a number of docs at this year’s festival, having produced Ivory Tower, about the rising cost of higher education, as well as WHITEY: United States of America v. James J. Bulger, Joe Berlinger’s exposé about the famous gangster. They’ve also acquired one of this year’s most anticipated films, Steve James’ Roger Ebert portrait Life Itself. Meanwhile A&E has also become a major player, having backed one of this year’s biggest titles, Amir Bar-Lev’s Jerry Sandusky scandal doc Happy Valley.
Among art house distributors, the most prolific buyers of nonfiction content continue to be those working simultaneously in the theatrical and VOD domains. These include Magnolia, which released Blackfish, RADiUS-TWC, which released 20 Feet From Stardom, Cutie and the Boxer and Inequality for All, and IFC Films/Sundance Selects, which released Dirty Wars and The Summit. But watch out for fledging players Cinedigm, which picked up last year’s Sundance entrant Narco Cultura, and Netflix, which has preemptively purchased this year’s Mitt Romney doc Mitt.
3. Expect more filmmakers to opt for self-distribution.
Old-fashioned distributors such as Sony Pictures Classics, Zeitgeist, Oscilloscope, and First Run Features are sure to be buyers at this year’s Sundance. But if the past few years are any indication, numerous documentary filmmakers will choose to retain rights and take on the job of self-releasing their own films, embracing the potential risks and upsides of assuming those responsibilities.
Filmmakers like Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady took the D.I.Y. approach with Sundance 2012 entry Detropia, for example, taking a slow grassroots road to distribution and finding moderate proceeds along the way. But a more powerful example is Dave Grohl’s 2013 music doc Sound City, for which service distributor Variance Films was hired to help with marketing and theatrical bookings, while the filmmakers mounted an aggressive digital rollout on iTunes and other platforms, including Grohl’s own website. By appealing directly to the musician’s worldwide audience, the doc became one of the most downloaded movies out of the festival. As the makers of Sound City discovered, where there’s a built-in fanbase there’s a way.
4. The best documentaries in this year’s festival might come from overseas—and audiences might actually notice them.
Historically, Sundance has been known for its domestic docs, but in recent years the festival’s World Cinema Documentary Competition has shown signs of improvement. Whether this is a result of Sundance programmers developing a sharper eye for global docs, or of top foreign producers and filmmakers recognizing the value of a Sundance launch, we’re not sure.
But following a strong selection last year, which featured Who is Dayani Cristal?, The Summit, Jehane Noujaim’s rough cut of The Square, A River Changes Course and The Machine Which Makes Everything Disappear, all of which found distribution, expectations should be high for this year’s slate. Based on the track record of its Oscar-winning producers John Battsek and Simon Chinn (Man on Wire, The Imposter, Searching for Sugar Man), the World film to watch is Nadav Schirman’s The Green Prince, a chronicle of a Palestinian turned Israeli spy. Other global films on the industry’s radar are Concerning Violence, an archival doc about third world struggle from The Black Power Mixtape director Göran Hugo Olsson and The Notorious Mr. Bout, a portrait of a Russian war profiteer and documentary filmmaker, directed by Tony Gerber and Maxim Pozdorovkin.
While it might be a thumb in the eye of the U.S. documentary competition, what would happen if the most celebrated doc of the festival came from overseas? (Last year’s Oscar winner Searching for Sugar Man emerged from the World Cinema competition, but with its famously U.S.-based subject few people seem to remember that fact.) If it happens again, Sundance might just consider accepting its world-class status and break down its borders. After all, who needs different competitions for U.S. and global docs? Unless they’re worried that American films can’t keep pace…
Anthony Kaufman has written about films and the film industry for The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Chicago Tribune, The Village Voice, and Slate. He is currently a regular contributor to Variety, The Wall Street Journal Online, Filmmaker Magazine, The Utne Reader, and writes the ReelPolitik blog for Indiewire.com.