Off the Fence Boards 'Let Us Be' Ahead of Rio Premiere
Off the Fence, the company that co-produced the Oscar-winning documentary My Octopus Teacher, has boarded Viviane D'Avilla's documentary Let Us Be, Variety reported on 25 September.
The film follows intersex people in India, Brazil and the United States. Intersex describes people born with sex characteristics that do not fit typical male or female categories.
Its subjects include Carolina Iara, one of the first intersex people to hold a parliamentary position in Latin America, and Indian community leader Aanandh Rajappan. Rio's catalogue describes the film as an account of the human rights fight against non-consensual surgeries performed on intersex children, according to Festival do Rio.
Let Us Be is D'Avilla's first feature as a director. She started research in 2017. That is eight years of work. She had earlier explored intersex experience in the short documentary GOPI.
The feature world premiered at Raindance in Britain. Its next stop is Latin America. It will have its Latin American premiere at the Rio Film Festival, where the official catalogue lists it under the Portuguese title Me Deixa Ser.
The 28th Festival do Rio runs from 1 to 11 October, Festival do Rio announced on 23 September. Its Première Brasil section will screen more than 100 Brazilian films across Rio de Janeiro. Almost 1,500 features and shorts were submitted for selection.
The producers are Mariana Marinho and Marco Abujamra of Dona Rosa Films and Iz Web of Social Construct. Hida Viloria and Zak Kilberg of Social Construct are executive producers. The film was made with public funds managed by Ancine, Brazil's national film agency, with additional support from FSA and BRDE.
Off the Fence will open sales at Mipcom in October. The market, organised in Cannes, is where distributors buy rights to films and series, territory by territory. Loren Baxter, the company's vice-president for acquisitions and co-productions, is handling the title.
What makes this stand out is the path from research to market. A short film led to a debut feature. A British festival launch now leads to a home-region premiere in Rio. Sales start next month.
