Low Lies the Land Finds Buyers in Four Territories Before DOC NYC
Four distributors have picked up Low Lies the Land, an Italian documentary about wine-growing families, ahead of its U.S. premiere at the DOC NYC documentary festival on 13 November, Variety reported.
A distributor is the company that books a film into cinemas and sells it to television and streaming services in a particular country or region, known in the trade as a territory. Madman Entertainment has taken the film for Australia and New Zealand. Cherry Pickers has the Benelux countries of Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg. Filmin has Spain, and Against Gravity has Poland.
Dogwoof, the British company behind the sales, is handling the film's release in the United Kingdom through its theatrical arm, the part of a company that puts films into cinemas. The deals were struck before the film reaches American audiences.
The film is directed by Emanuele Gerosa, an Italian filmmaker. It follows winegrowing families in Piemonte, the Piedmont region of northwest Italy. They face climate change, shrinking harvests and a growing exodus of younger family members who leave the land. Gerosa's team filmed over four years, so the story has time to move with its subjects.
The documentary had its world premiere at the Toronto Film Festival. Sigrid Dyekjær, Harry Vaughn and Fleur Engels produced it, with Real Lava and Imagine5 as production companies. Laura DeVere and Chris Albert are executive producers.
Festivals like Toronto and DOC NYC are where many films first meet the people who buy them. A premiere can lead to sales that carry a film to cinemas and living rooms in countries far from where it was shot. For a documentary about a small community in Piedmont, that route now runs through Australia, the Benelux countries, Spain and Poland, as well as the United Kingdom.
