Toronto – Leading Toronto-based digital distribution company Syndicado has inked digital distribution deals with two European companies that sees the company acquire the digital distribution rights to over 70 hours of independent documentary and feature film content for the US and multiple territories.
The agreement with Danish sales and distribution business LevelK will see Syndicado represent a catalogue of over 20 arthouse and indie films including several Official TIFF Selections and eco documentary ‘The Last Ocean’ in the US. The deal also sees Syndicado acquire the digital rights for UK, Australasia and South Africa on many of the titles.
Danish movie ‘Sex, Drugs & Taxation’ (original title ‘Spies og Glistrup’) deals with the spectacular historical friendship between two of the most notorious and provocative figures of modern Danish history: the radical right-wing lawyer-turned-politician, Mogens Glistrup, and the ‘travel king’, millionaire, womanizer and public provocateur, Simon Spies. Through the story of their lives and friendship, we are told the so far untold tale about how these two infamous Danish icons became what they did and how they used each other as support as well as opponents in their respective life missions.
‘Lost in Africa’ (‘Kidnappet’) follows Simon, 11, an adopted boy and soccer fan who travels back to his native Kenya with his Danish mother Susanne (Connie Nielsen). Soon after arriving, Simon loses his beloved soccer ball. When he tries to find it, he gets lost in the biggest city-slum in Africa. Dressed in trendy shoes and fancy clothes he clearly stands out, but after he gets mugged he looks like any other African boy.
Cloudboy is about a Twelve-year-old city boy Niilas who has been living with his father for as long as he can remember and barely knows his Swedish mother. This summer, Niilas has to travel to Lapland – much against his will – where his mother and her new family live amongst the Sami, an indigenous reindeer-herding people. Niilas experiences the most adventurous summer of his life.
‘Hunting Flies’ (‘Fluefangeren’) is a Norwegian drama about the rise and fall of dictatorship. Set in a classroom, over the course of one intense day we meet Ghani, an idealistic teacher who loses his job on the first day of school. So he makes one final attempt to get it back by locking his students inside the classroom forcing them to resolve a generation long conflict between their villages.
In the Blood presents A Summer in Copenhagen: parties, sex, drugs. Simon (23) goes to medical school with his best friend Knud (23). Together with their friends Søren and Esben the boys party, drink and chase girls and wake up the next day only to do the whole thing all over again. But it is also a time of change between the friends and when everyone, except Simon, decides it’s time to sell their shared apartment, it creates a growing tension within the group. ‘In the Blood’’s original title is ‘I Blodet’.
Moscow, 1986, the heat of Perestroika. Borya is an average clumsy teenager who is miraculously admitted to the legendary Bolshoi Ballet School. The boy is convinced that he will become a ballet dancer like his father, Mikhail Baryshnikov. But is this father real or imaginary? Original title: ‘Moi Papa Baryshnikov’.
Syndicado has also agreed a digital distribution deal for the US, UK and Canada with Russian production company Look Film for a varied slate of over 54 hours of content. The deal features 20 scripted feature and documentary films and unscripted history and reality series including movie The Soul of a Spy (‘Dusha Shpiona’) starring Liam Cunningham (‘Game of Thrones’, ‘Clash of the Titans’) and Malcolm McDowell (‘A Clockwork Orange’).
Military parade meets sporting spectacle in Tank Biathlon (8 x 60’) which premiered on Russia’s biggest linear channel Russia 1 and features competing tanks battling it out in a spectacular series of military challenges and manoeuvres. The slate also features several WWII documentary films, studying key events in the conflict from the Russian perspective including ‘1944: The Battle for Crimea’, ‘Prague; May 1945’ and ‘Liberation’.
Syndicado is a film and television digital distribution company founded in 2009 and headquartered in Toronto with an office in Las Vegas. The company’s focus is on global digital distribution to major Internet and cable VOD major outlets such as Amazon, iTunes, Google, Vudu, Shudder, Popcornflix, cable VOD in the US and Canada and several other leading VOD platforms.
“We’re thrilled to bring a range of high end programming to English language markets around the world. From LevelK’s top festival and arthouse features to the bizarre Russian tank reality show and historical docs from LookFilm, we continue to provide our VOD partners with content across genres and for more curated offerings” said Greg Rubidge, President of Syndicado.
Syndicado recently announced sales of over 40 hours of both scripted and unscripted content to Screen Media Ventures’ Popcornflix service. The business also recently launched Syndicado Film Sales, a dedicated film sales business based in Europe.
