A Portrait of Sales Company Pluto Film

“From the outset, Pluto Film has had a focus on high-quality fiction by emerging directors,” say managing directors Daniela and Benjamin Cölle of the Berlin-based world sales and festival distribution company which will be celebrating its 10th anniversary during the 2025 Berlinale.

The company’s founders Torsten Frehse and Heino Deckert had launched the company at Berlin’s EFM in 2015 with such debut features as Ivan Ostrochovský’s KOZA and Gerd Schneider’s THE CULPABLE in its initial sales line-up.

A year later, Daniela joined the Pluto Film team after having previously focused on working in the areas of distribution and festivals in Slovakia, and was subsequently offered the opportunity by the two founders to take over the company with husband Benjamin in 2022.

Benjamin, meanwhile, has a background in the field of production having worked for such com­panies as Flying Moon Filmproduktion and Indi Film as creative producer, he began lecturing from 2015 at the production and directing department of Film University Babelsberg KONRAD WOLF with a particular interest in innovative distribution models and audience design. “In addition to films by emerging talents, we are also interested in handling cross-over titles because we are aware that the theatrical market for arthouse films is becoming increasingly challenging,” says Daniela who handles acquisitions at Pluto Film.

The boutique company only takes on between 8-10 new films each year, some acquisitions the result of existing working relationships with producers and directors, and others picked up after a festival has unveiled its line-up.

Moreover, there are also chances that projects with interesting sales potential might be discovered through Daniela’s additional work as a script advisor and Benjamin’s activities in audience design. However, new acquisitions are decided as a team, together with sales manager Daniel Vadocky and festival manager Rebecca Hartung.

Recent festival and sales successes have included Soleen Yusef’s WINNERS, which opened the Berlinale’s Generation Kplus last year, and Xiaoxuan Jiang’s TO KILL A MONGOLIAN HORSE, premiering in the Venice Days last September.

Since taking over the reins at Pluto Film, the couple aim to have at least one children’s film per year in their line-up, beginning with Serbian debutant filmmaker Rasko Miljkovic’s THE WITCH HUNTERS in 2018, and they are also exploring the possibility of having more titles in their roster with genre potential. Moreover, last year saw them expand into feature documentaries for the first time with Mathijs Poppe’s THE JACKET, which celebrated its international premiere at IDFA in November.

Explaining Pluto Film’s particular way of working, Benjamin says: “We want to bring auteurs to the international market, follow their careers right from the point when they were initially emerging talents, help them to establish themselves and ideally keep working together into the future.”

A good case in point is Mehmet Akif Büyükatalay’s second feature HYSTERIA which will be premiering in this year’s Panorama at the Berlinale. “We had already worked with the director on his previous film ORAY which won the Best First Feature Award when it premiered at the Berlinale 2019,” Daniela recalls. “We came onboard his new project at an early stage and were really involved in the whole process, giving advice about the screenplay and postproduction, and have now been positioning it in the market using Benjamin’s practice of audience designing.”

“I call this approach creative distribution,” Benjamin says. “It’s not just one phase that comes after the film has been completed, but ideally starts at the development phase: When we take on a film, we start the collaboration with the directors and producers during a series of Audience Design workshops and create an online archive that contains a pool of materials, which the film’s distri­butors can then access and make use of after they’ve acquired the film.”

“In essence, we see ourselves as intermediaries between producers and distributors facilitating a flow of information and collaboration throughout the whole film value chain,” he concludes.

Martin Blaney