Documentary production is an obstacle course. With almost all subsidies on the islands extinguished, regional or national channels are the main option, however co-production with regional television is not easy and not only because of their budgetary limitations, but especially because of the limitations in their editorial line.
The documentary is still a way of telling stories of people with conflicts, however, the politicization of the directives of public television often leads them to avoid the most conflictive realities of contemporary society. Instead, they prioritize projects that address stories from the past either without edges or lacking a critical spirit. This prudence to show the unorthodox, the profound or the critical, is an unwritten norm that has been consolidated as a measure of self-censorship to which we, creators and producers, have largely resigned ourselves.
Given the aforementioned difficulties, last Tuesday, a delegation of four Balearic production companies, including Mosaic, travelled to Amsterdam to attend the IDFA, one of the most important documentary markets. This expedition was sponsored by the Association of Producers of the Balearic Islands (APAIB) and co-financed by the Institut d’Estudis Balearics. There we met a hundred producers, directors and curators of international television and discovered the potential that our documentary projects can have outside our borders, both in terms of financing and distribution.
Internationalisation is a step as difficult as it is necessary for Spanish audiovisual production companies, as the financing of our most authorial works is, unfortunately, outside our country and we think that international co-production is already a path of no return, not only for documentaries but also for any audiovisual format.
But what are the keys to international co-production?
– Ideally, start with a local or national partner. The regional or state television of your country is the first credential that a co-producer or commission editor will ask for to participate in the financing.
– “GLocal” theme, i.e. the documentary takes place in one place, but the story transcends cultural boundaries to be appreciated by any viewer.
– It is advisable to have a distributor or sales agent before the project ends its production. Relationships are built on trust, like everything else. They usually keep 30% of sales.
– The international markets (IDFA (Holland), Sundance (USA), MipTV and MipDoc (France), San Sebastian (Spain), Berlinale (Germany), etc.) are the place where documentary producers, distributors and buyers are concentrated and most of the pre-purchases are made. Regular presence in these markets and the formalization of relationships of trust are the keys to being able to opt for pre-selling a documentary or obtaining a distribution contract.
In short: we must strengthen our international presence because Europe is our best ally in telling the stories that move us. European funds and shared financing are the only guarantors of a certain independence and an industrial approach to the battered documentary format.