Skip to main content

Acquisitions and Doc Distribution News

By IDA Editorial Staff


Some recent acquisitions are helping to get some great documentaries in front of more and more people.

Hanover House picked up North American rights to Marshall Curry's doc Racing Dreams, which follows the lives of three young racers as they compete in the World Karting Association's National Pavement Series. The film was named the best doc at the 2009 Tribeca Film Festival and will be released in theaters Friday, May 21.

HBO has acquired the U.S. TV rights to the documentary Teenage Paparazzo, directed by actor Adrian Grenier. The film chronicles the true story of a relationship between 14-year-old paparazzo Austin Visschedyk and Grenier. The doc will debut on HBO this fall.

Oscilloscope Laboratories has acquired North American distribution rights to Yael Hersonski's doc A Film Unfinished, which deconstructs a Nazi-produced film about the Warsaw Ghetto. The film premiered at Sundance this year and won the World Cinema Documentary Editing Award. The film will open in August in limited release and a national release will follow.

The Cinema Guild has acquired video/VOD release rights to Agnes Varda's Cinevardaphoto, which is actually a trio of short films. The release date has been set for August 31.

Additionally, DOC: The Documentary Channel, a specialty channel that airs documentary programming announced it has entered into an agreement with DIRECTV that doubles the number of subscribers who can view DOC to 25 million.