As a distributor, we specialise in geopolitical investigations and current affairs, with a focus on strong investigative journalism, human rights, history and environmental topics. We distribute films worldwide and all platforms and, although we can exclude territories to comply with other contracts, we are unlikely to take on films with numerous rights restrictions.
Our boutique feature department takes on 6 – 8 feature-length documentaries per year. Our festival manager, Olivier, specialises in placing these films in festivals and screenings around the world.
Our TV department takes on 50-70 films per year. For this department, we can consider any documentary formatted for television (52 mins single docs and series and series of 30 mins) that falls into a clear genre. Our strongest genres are current affairs, history, science and technology/lifestyle. Our weakest genres are arts & sports. Due to the demands of our clients, films that are 100% subtitled are challenging for us but we will consider them if they are exceptional.
Ideally, we acquire our films at rough cut, but if there is already a main commissioner or at least 50% of the funding in place, we can also consider projects at an earlier stage.
We rarely acquire films that are more than 12 months old but we can consider older films for our back catalogue.
Buyers tend to prefer versions of less than 60 mins so we always ask producers to make a shorter edit of any feature version.
Please check out our catalogue for examples of latest acquisitions. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to reach out.
Kathryn Bonnici
Head of Acquisitions & Development
www.javafilms.tv