A portrait of sales company Rise and Shine

“The great thing about documentaries is that they fill your head and heart, you’re always learning something new about life and the world around us,” says Anja Dziersk, who co-founded the Berlin-based sales company Rise and Shine World Sales with her partner Stefan Kloos. Both hailing from the world of journalism, the couple had initially met in the 1990s whilst working in Hamburg at a production company making youth and music TV programmes.

In 2002, they established their own production company Kloos & Co Medien, which has been involved in producing several award-winning creative documentaries such as HI AI, A SYMPHONY OF NOISE, INTO THE ICE and the Academy Award-nominated LAST MEN IN ALEPPO, and then followed this six years later with the creation of Rise and Shine World Sales and setting up a theatrical arm, Rise and Shine Cinema, for the German market in 2015.

“We’ve been able to position ourselves as a company that is very dedicated to their films. We are a small and strong team: with the two of us and our sales manager Diana Karklin, who has been with us now for more than 14 years, we handle a slate of around 15 titles each year,” he continues. “We’re always wanting to keep offering something new so that each film helps the overall mix.”

“In fact, we’re quite proud that we have been able to position ourselves as one of the top ten sales agents among the boutique distributors.”

“We mostly come onboard the documentaries we then represent at the rough cut stage close to where we can develop a festival strategy,” Anja says.

“But as we are attending a lot of project markets, we get to see projects at a very early stage and then closely follow the progress of certain projects.”

“At the same time, there are some filmmakers we know well and have a constant exchange about their new projects,” Stefan adds.

Rise and Shine has thus regularly worked, for example, with such filmmakers as Susanne Regina Meures (GIRL GANG, RAVING IRAN) and Eliza Kubarska (THE LAST EXPEDITION, THE WALL OF SHADOWS).

“The films in our catalogue don’t just deliver facts and news; they tell stories that are real and relevant,” Stefan suggests. This year has seen a number of Rise and Shine’s titles being invited to prestigious documentary festivals and then translating this success into sales deals with distributors around the globe.

Swiss co-directors Beatrice Minger and Christoph Schaub’s E.1027 - EILEEN GRAY AND THE HOUSE BY THE SEA about the world of the Irish architect and designer sold to seven territories for theatrical release incl. USA, UK, Germany, France and Canada after premiering at CPH:DOX, while FOREST, the latest work by Lidia Duda, the grande dame of Polish documentary filmmaking, won the main award at its world premiere at the Thessaloniki Documentary Festival.

Askold Kurov and Anonymous1’s portrait of the heroic work of independent media in today’s Russia, OF CARAVAN AND THE DOGS, screened at CPH:DOX and Munich’s DOK.fest in May before winning the main prize of Golden Horn at the International Documentary Competition in Krakow at the beginning of June.

Meanwhile, Klaus Stern’s WATCHING YOU: THE WORLD OF PALANTIR AND ALEX KARP was the opening film at this year’s DOK.fest in Munich, while another title in the company’s line-up, SUBJECT: FILMMAKING by the veteran German director Edgar Reitz, was presented as part of the Berlinale Special showcase this February.

At the same time, Anja and Stefan aren’t under any illusions about the challenges confronting them in the current market landscape, although they are always open to exploring new opportunities for finding distribution outlets for their films.

“We’re used to facing the fact that it’s a lot of work selling our films to broadcasters, local distributors or platforms,” Anja says. But, as Stefan points out, the choice of name for their company pretty much sums up their approach to their work. “Films can have such a hard time to find the light of day, so if we can help a film to rise and then shine, then that basically reflects what a sales agent can do,” he concludes.

Martin Blaney