HBO nabs Sundance doc duo

The Oslo Diaries comes from Mor Loushy and Daniel Sivan

US pay TV network HBO has acquired documentaries The Sentence and The Oslo Diaries, which had their world premieres at the Sundance Film Festival last week.

In The Sentence, first-time filmmaker Rudy Valdez examines the consequences of mandatory minimum sentencing, drawing from hundreds of hours of footage to examine the aftermath of his sister’s incarceration for conspiracy charges related to crimes committed by her deceased ex-boyfriend.

Valdez said: “This film has been more than 10 years in the making and we wanted to make sure we found the right home, especially given the intimate nature of the story.”

Cinetic handled the sale of the doc, which won Sundance’s Audience Award for US Documentary on Saturday. The Sentence was produced by Park Pictures’ Sam Bisbee and Jackie Kelman Bisbee and exec produced by Wendy Neu, Lance Acord and Theodora Dunlap.

Mor Loushy and Daniel Sivan’s The Oslo Diaries, meanwhile, tells the story of a group of Israelis and Palestinians that secretly gathered in Oslo in 1992 for a series of meetings that came to be known as the Oslo Accords. It features previously unseen archival footage and exclusive interviews with key players, including former Israeli president Shimon Peres.

In a joint statement, Loushy and Sivan said: “We’re full of hope that this film will lead to the crucial dialogue we are missing so much these days, when it seems both sides have given up on a peaceful solution.”

HBO will debut the doc later this year to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the Oslo Accords. The Oslo Diaries was produced by Hilla Medalia and Ina Fichman and exec produced by Guy Lavie, Koby Gal-Raday, Danna Stern, Dagmar Mielke, Barbara Dobkin and Jean Tsien. Josh Braun and Ben Braun from Submarine Entertainment represented the filmmakers for the deal.

HBO took US TV and streaming rights for both documentaries for undisclosed sums.

The two acquisitions come after the network paid a reported US$7m to acquire Jennifer Fox’s Lauren Dern-starring drama The Tale in one of the biggest and buzziest deals of Sundance 2018.

The film, which marks the narrative debut for documentarian Fox, sees Dern’s character reflecting on the sexual abuse she suffered at the hands of her running coach when she was 13, and co-stars Elizabeth Debicki, Common and Jason Ritter.

The acquisitions mark a busy market for the US network. As previously reported by C21, HBO headed into the festival with seven titles already in the bag, including docs on Robin Williams, Martin Luther King Jr and Jane Fonda.

Competitor Netflix, by comparison, had a quieter market. Though the streaming service had two commissioned non-fiction titles – Seeing Allred and Wild Wild Country – and a trio of narrative movies premiering at Sundance, it did not acquire any titles during the festival. In 2017, it acquired nearly a dozen, including paying US$12.5m for Mudbound and US$5m for Icarus.