Exclusive: Sundance Distribution Report
10 films from the 2024 Sundance US Competition describe their paths to distribution.
SUPPORT DOC VOICES
If you enjoy the weekly dispatches of Doc Voices and the Pure Nonfiction podcast, please support us with a paid subscription. We have an Early Adopter Annual Subscription of just $50 that will give you access to exclusive content and our archives.
With Doc Voices, we are undertaking reporting projects that tap multiple viewpoints to better understand the documentary landscape.
Last month, we put our focus on the Cannes Film Festival. Now we’re taking a deeper dive into the state of the marketplace through the kaleidoscope of Sundance. We reached out to directors, producers, funders and sales agents to hear their distribution stories from this year’s festival.
For decades, Sundance has been a bellwether for the state of the film industry, as insiders watch how titles are acquired for distribution. Some of that activity gets announced during the festival in January. But much of the deal-making takes longer. Now that four months have passed, we’re reviewing what this year’s sales activity might reveal.
In this report, we focus on the 10 titles selected for the Sundance US Competition. Those titles include the Grand Jury Prize winner Porcelain War, about Ukrainian artists during wartime, and the Directing Prize winner Sugarcane, about an investigation into missing children at an Indigenous school in British Columbia.
Of the 10 films in competition, five have secured distribution with streamers. Those deals occurred across a spectrum before, during, and after the festival. The other five without deals yet announced are in varying stages to find their path.
For several years before the pandemic, there was a streak of record-breaking deals for documentaries such as Icarus, Knock Down the House, Boys State, and Summer of Soul. That was largely driven by new streamers entering the marketplace with a mandate to outspend their competitors in order to raise attention. The spending spree came to a noticeable halt in 2023 as streamers changed strategies. At the same time, theatrical distributors were also pulling back in the face of diminished audiences. "None of the main indie distributors (Sony Pictures Classics, Neon, Magnolia, IFC Films) have acquired any documentaries this year," said sales agent Ana Vincente at Dogwoof, who represented Every Little Thing at Sundance. When it comes to SVOD buyers, she told Doc Voices, “it feels like you are not talking to a person who decides on content. You are talking to a human who reads data from an algorithm."
Union, a film about labor organizing at an Amazon fulfillment center, won a Sundance Special Jury Award. It’s among the titles still figuring out the road to distribution while continuing to play the festival circuit. “My own favorite films that I see at festivals are not getting distribution,” said Brett Story, who directed Union with Stephen Maing. “I can't find relevant, beautiful, intelligent films as a viewer and audience member. This tells me that something is seriously wrong with the documentary economy.“
Zooming out beyond Sundance, two industry experts Brian Newman and Ted Hope recently laid out incisive perspectives on broader changes in the streaming and theatrical markets.
So what can Sundance activity tell us this year? Over the past two weeks, we invited insiders to share their views.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Doc Voices to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.