kino lorber is strongly committed to docs, though not visible in anthony's article despite back to back oscar noms in '23 and '24 (4 daughters, soundtrack to coup d'etat) and inexplicable near misses for noms in '25 with Put Your Soul on you Hand and Walk (especially), and Riefenstahl--though both up for other awards...new oscar shortlist title acquisition announcement coming this week...Doc features, many international, continue as a bright spot for us and our filmmakers in '26...check them out on our Kino Film Collection site...(take a look Anthony ;-) RL
Hi Richard, thanks for reading, and your comments. I am personally a huge fan of Kino Lorber's docs, and championed all of the films you mentioned here, as you know! It would be great to know if films like the Liza Minnelli doc and "Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat" for instance, over-performed or did well for you on digital? Since they only made about $220,000 in theaters, it's hard to see that as particularly good--unless, of course, you're seeing those mid numbers driving digital sales in a significant way. Since digital sales numbers aren't available, inquiring minds want to know!
This quote from Karol Martesko is encouraging: “I for one have not been more bullish on the state of play since the late 80s ... We are now on the cusp of many special innovations to further expedite the trend towards storytellers controlling their IP and more parts of their journey.”
It is interesting to me that there are no publicly funded/PBS titles I recognize on this list (am I missing something?). I’m curious if you go back 25 years if that would be the case over that entire period, or maybe it is just the last 4-5 years when the rights required for public television have become less compatible with windowing theatrical and transactional.
In my opinion, public media (pre-rescission) through production funding has definitely locked down some of the best documentaries, which I think you can measure by festival premieres. That makes sense to me. It is hard to produce good docs when you don’t have a fixed production schedule.
The best docs will be the ones where the biggest source of funding wasn’t charging or paying interest on their investment.
I suspect this is why A24 couldn’t make financial sense of a documentary production unit—unless they wanted to make Netflix Originals-style documentaries with fixed production schedules.
But locking down the current public media rights/holdbacks deprives the full doc ecosystem of the best docs. Maybe Neon and A24 would have been putting more docs in theaters if they had teams acquiring the best docs at festivals without having to deal with the immense friction of having to align with the public media entities, and the relationship they built with the doc world and the skills they developed marketing the best docs, and the doc audiences they discovered in theaters would then have gotten leveraged into more theatrical success for docs.
If CPB returns to funding long form docs (and for all the docs still in production with public media) maybe they could experiment with creating less friction between the theatrical and free TV window (and wait a little longer for the YouTube window, and start sharing revenue from it), and then we can have some A/B testing on whether total theatrical doc grosses is a bigger number when the top 10 includes the best publicly funded docs from the festivals, and maybe we will also see A24 and Neon distributing more (acquired if not produced) docs, and Oscars for publicly funded docs, and higher TV ratings for the theatrically released public media docs, and more views in YouTube, but just not during the premiere window.
There is often a theatrical window for PBS and ITVS docs. A few years ago, Neon, in fact, took out theatrical rights for AILEY, which was an American Masters doc, so there are examples of this. Why they haven't broken through theatrically is another question.
I think if you talk to agents and distributors, they agree that there is a lot of friction aligning rights for an acquisition of a film with public media production funding, especially in the last 5 years.
Looks like AILEY is a 2021 film. Curious if it had public media production funding, or if it was acquired by American Masters.
Also, it’s a biopic. It probably had a set production schedule. It’s the docs that start following story without knowing where the story will end which A24 can’t rationalize producing, and which public money ends up funding, and which are often the best films, which can’t maximize their value to the doc ecosystem.
Just looked it up—Ailey was an ITVS co-production with American Masters with a broadcast date in 2022.
According to the Wayback Machine, it appears it was contracted in Dec 2020, just a month before the SXSW premiere and getting the Neon deal.
That’s not Open Call. This likely was not a situation where a producer signed a production funding agreement with a public media entity before they knew they had a great film, and when they discovered it was great (because of their festival exhibition) they also discovered the friction of aligning with the public media entities would limit their options.
Looks like Ailey was probably able to align theatrical and public media simultaneously.
kino lorber is strongly committed to docs, though not visible in anthony's article despite back to back oscar noms in '23 and '24 (4 daughters, soundtrack to coup d'etat) and inexplicable near misses for noms in '25 with Put Your Soul on you Hand and Walk (especially), and Riefenstahl--though both up for other awards...new oscar shortlist title acquisition announcement coming this week...Doc features, many international, continue as a bright spot for us and our filmmakers in '26...check them out on our Kino Film Collection site...(take a look Anthony ;-) RL
Hi Richard, thanks for reading, and your comments. I am personally a huge fan of Kino Lorber's docs, and championed all of the films you mentioned here, as you know! It would be great to know if films like the Liza Minnelli doc and "Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat" for instance, over-performed or did well for you on digital? Since they only made about $220,000 in theaters, it's hard to see that as particularly good--unless, of course, you're seeing those mid numbers driving digital sales in a significant way. Since digital sales numbers aren't available, inquiring minds want to know!
This quote from Karol Martesko is encouraging: “I for one have not been more bullish on the state of play since the late 80s ... We are now on the cusp of many special innovations to further expedite the trend towards storytellers controlling their IP and more parts of their journey.”
Trump and his allies are corrupted.
I will call my senators and will call my representatives.
I will call my senators and will call my representatives. I belong to ACLU.
I will call my senators and representatives.
Trump and his allies are corrupted. The work you do special!!
Trump and his allies are corrupted.
Trump and his allies are corrupted.
Trump his allies are corrupted!!
Trump and his allies are corrupted.!!
Thanks for the boost in optimism. Now back to work I go!
It is interesting to me that there are no publicly funded/PBS titles I recognize on this list (am I missing something?). I’m curious if you go back 25 years if that would be the case over that entire period, or maybe it is just the last 4-5 years when the rights required for public television have become less compatible with windowing theatrical and transactional.
In my opinion, public media (pre-rescission) through production funding has definitely locked down some of the best documentaries, which I think you can measure by festival premieres. That makes sense to me. It is hard to produce good docs when you don’t have a fixed production schedule.
The best docs will be the ones where the biggest source of funding wasn’t charging or paying interest on their investment.
I suspect this is why A24 couldn’t make financial sense of a documentary production unit—unless they wanted to make Netflix Originals-style documentaries with fixed production schedules.
But locking down the current public media rights/holdbacks deprives the full doc ecosystem of the best docs. Maybe Neon and A24 would have been putting more docs in theaters if they had teams acquiring the best docs at festivals without having to deal with the immense friction of having to align with the public media entities, and the relationship they built with the doc world and the skills they developed marketing the best docs, and the doc audiences they discovered in theaters would then have gotten leveraged into more theatrical success for docs.
If CPB returns to funding long form docs (and for all the docs still in production with public media) maybe they could experiment with creating less friction between the theatrical and free TV window (and wait a little longer for the YouTube window, and start sharing revenue from it), and then we can have some A/B testing on whether total theatrical doc grosses is a bigger number when the top 10 includes the best publicly funded docs from the festivals, and maybe we will also see A24 and Neon distributing more (acquired if not produced) docs, and Oscars for publicly funded docs, and higher TV ratings for the theatrically released public media docs, and more views in YouTube, but just not during the premiere window.
There is often a theatrical window for PBS and ITVS docs. A few years ago, Neon, in fact, took out theatrical rights for AILEY, which was an American Masters doc, so there are examples of this. Why they haven't broken through theatrically is another question.
I think if you talk to agents and distributors, they agree that there is a lot of friction aligning rights for an acquisition of a film with public media production funding, especially in the last 5 years.
Looks like AILEY is a 2021 film. Curious if it had public media production funding, or if it was acquired by American Masters.
Also, it’s a biopic. It probably had a set production schedule. It’s the docs that start following story without knowing where the story will end which A24 can’t rationalize producing, and which public money ends up funding, and which are often the best films, which can’t maximize their value to the doc ecosystem.
Just looked it up—Ailey was an ITVS co-production with American Masters with a broadcast date in 2022.
According to the Wayback Machine, it appears it was contracted in Dec 2020, just a month before the SXSW premiere and getting the Neon deal.
That’s not Open Call. This likely was not a situation where a producer signed a production funding agreement with a public media entity before they knew they had a great film, and when they discovered it was great (because of their festival exhibition) they also discovered the friction of aligning with the public media entities would limit their options.
Looks like Ailey was probably able to align theatrical and public media simultaneously.