Scorpion TV social media doc puts out a call for Your Attention Please

Your Attention Please looks at attempts to change our relationship with tech

A documentary examining the growing backlash against social media and the fight to reclaim human connection from the attention economy is being brought to Mipcom by UK factual distributor Scorpion TV.

Directed by Sara Robin and written and edited by Jack LeMay, Your Attention Please examines the real-world consequences of social media, particularly its impact on children and young people.

Featuring Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen and the families and campaigners fighting for greater online safety, it also explores practical attempts to change our relationship with technology.

Haugen’s revelations about the company are also at the centre of Aaron Sorkin’s new feature film The Social Reckoning.

“Your Attention Please couldn’t be arriving at a more relevant moment,” said David Cornwall, managing director of Scorpion TV.

“The debate has moved beyond whether social media is affecting our lives to what we are actually going to do about it. What I particularly like about the film is that it doesn’t simply diagnose the problem – it follows people who are trying to change things.”

It comes after Scorpion TV recently sold factual titles Under Cover to Arte in France; The Silence in My Heart to UR in Sweden; Return of the Big Cats to NTV in Japan; Big Cats of the Serengeti to Discovery India; Just Hands to AMI in Canada; and Atomic Rocketeer and Oppenheimer to AMC in Spain and Portugal.

9/11: The Lost Tapes, meanwhile, has been acquired by RTVE in Spain and ORF in Austria, while NHK in Japan has acquired Cutting the Curve, SBS in Australia has taken Shenzhou 13, SVT in Sweden has acquired A President, Europe & War, Poland’s TVN has taken My Five Year Plan and PTS in Taiwan has acquired Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone.

US platform Helix has acquired a six-title package comprising The University, Europe’s Mining Renaissance, Siyaya Africa, In Your Face, The Musical Animal and The Brain Fitness Program.

New titles on the Scorpion TV factual slate in Cannes include Bite! Sting! Cure!, produced by Toronto’s Red Trillium Films; Skin of Glass, from Brazilian filmmaker Denise Zmekhol; Norman Mailer: How to Come Alive; and Hot Blues in a Cold War.