PASSION DISTRIBUTION INCREASES DOCUMENTARY SLATE WITH AMOS PICTURES
Passion Distribution is building on its relationship with AMOS Pictures, the critically acclaimed documentary company founded by five-time BAFTA-winning director Dan Reed. Passion is distributing AMOS Pictures’ most recent documentaries including TERROR IN PARIS w/t (1 x 60’), FRONTLINE FIGHTING: THE BRITS BATTLING ISIS (1 x 60’) and TAKEN w/t (1 X 60’) and will be bringing the titles to MIPCOM as part of its growing documentary slate.
In January it will be a year since the Charlie Hebdo attack in Paris shocked the world, TERROR IN PARIS w/t is the definitive documentary of the siege, in the style of Dan Reed’s three previous BAFTA-nominated, Emmy-nominated and BAFTA-winning documentaries including TERROR IN MUMBAI, which took audiences deep inside high-profile urban terrorist sieges. Produced for HBO the documentary features exclusive access to hostages, survivors, police, paramilitaries and detectives, and exclusive, unseen footage and UGC from the three days of the attacks. Driven by powerful interviews, original journalism and cinematic storytelling techniques this is a gripping, dazzlingly-executed journey into world of France’s 9-11, which lasted 54 hours, left 17 dead and gave the world a new rallying cry: Je Suis Charlie!
FRONTLINE FIGHTING: THE BRITS BATTLING ISIS, which Passion will be distributing as FRONTLINE FIGHTING: BATTLING ISIS, has been produced for Channel 4 and is the inside story of three untrained volunteers with no family connections to the Middle east who heed the call to take up arms with Kurdish fighters to reclaim Rojava from the Islamic State. Unprecedented access to these ordinary fighters intimately explores their motivations and visceral experiences on the frontlines. The pairing of double BAFTA winner editor Mark Towns and five-time BAFTA winner Executive Producer Dan Reed, turns kinetic, unique combat footage into unforgettable scenes with a cinematic feel and skilfully draws the characters of the foreign volunteers from the UK, Germany and USA as they venture deeper into the heart of the ground war against Islamic State.
Passion will be looking to pre-sell at MIPCOM - TAKEN (W/T), currently in production for Channel 4. With unprecedented access to this team of ex-special forces operatives, TAKEN lays bare the realities of a growing problem. As more people find relationships abroad, children are being illegally taken overseas when things break down. It’s nearly impossible to get them back. To stand a chance, the team use extreme tactics - surveillance, informants and creative extraction methods. They also have to stay within the law, enforcing orders where the authorities fail to, battling to return the child to the rightful parent.
ESCORTS (1 X 60’) aired on Channel 4 in May as HIGH CLASS CALL GIRLS with a peak audience of 1.5 million, is an explicit no-holds-barred documentary that explores the modern face of high-class prostitution. In the last three years the sex industry has been transformed as location-based smartphone and web apps have given sex workers more independence and control of their business than ever before. Now a client can log in with his location in any city, see a list of the prostitutes within, say, a kilometre: photos, services offered, fees and client reviews. Sales of the documentary include Discovery Networks (Denmark and Finland), Medialaan (Belgium) and TVN (Poland).
FROM RUSSIA WITH CASH (1 x 60’) investigates that with increasing evidence London’s property boom is being partly fuelled by overseas buyers laundering money. Experts say that London is the playground of choice for oligarchs and political figures who want to park suspect money and that the city is fast becoming the money laundering capital of the world. The UK authorities as well as monitoring organisations like Global Witness and Transparency International have evidence that large amounts of this money is being stashed in London property. FROM RUSSIA WITH CASH uses innovative secret filming and undercover reporters posing as an unscrupulous Russian government minister and his mistress, to investigate how estate agents react to his plan to use millions of pounds of stolen money to purchase high end property in the capital’s most upmarket boroughs.
