This year’s edition of Sundance Film Festival wrapped up yesterday, but many of the titles in the program have plenty of screenings to come: three more women-directed and co-directed titles have secured distribution. Nanfu Wang and Jialing Zhang’s “One Child Nation,” Alma Har’el’s “Honey Boy,” and Julia Reichert and Steven Bognar’s “American Factory” found homes.
An exploration of the untold history behind China’s controversial one-child policy, “One Child Nation” scored the fest’s Grand Jury Prize U.S. documentary award. Amazon Studios snagged worldwide rights to the doc “excluding U.S. TV, and TV rights in Germany, France, Switzerland, Austria, U.K., Netherlands, and Scandinavia (excluding Finland),” Deadline reports.
“During the production, we faced the challenge of showing a complete picture of the one-child policy but not turning the film into a survey. The scale of the story is massive,” Wang told us. “It’s a national policy that affected millions of families and had lasting consequences for generations of people. Every Chinese person’s life is, to some extent, affected by the policy and has a story to tell. We had to be very selective in terms of choosing who to film and which characters to include in the final film.” She continued, “During post-production, the challenge was to balance and transition from my personal story of myself and my family to other people’s stories. There was a lot of trial and error in the editing process to achieve a seamless transition from my village to the entire country, from my family to millions of other families.”
“Hooligan Sparrow” and “I Am Another You” are among Wang’s previous credits.
Amazon also nabbed rights to “Honey Boy,” according to The Hollywood Reporter. The studio landed worldwide rights to the Shia LeBeouf-starrer that’s inspired by the actor’s own life. The “Evan Stevens” alum plays an ex-rodeo clown and father to a former child star in the pic, which won A U.S. Dramatic Special Jury Award for Vision and Craft.
“Honey Boy” marks Har’el’s narrative debut. Her documentary credits include “LoveTrue” and “Bombay Beach.”
Among Amazon’s other Sundance acquisitions is Nisha Ganatra’s “Late Night,” a comedy about a late-night host who hires her first female writer. Emma Thompson and Mindy Kaling star, and the latter penned the screenplay.
A look inside what happened when a Chinese billionaire opened a factory in a shuttered General Motors plant in Dayton, Ohio in 2014, “American Factory” got scooped up by Netflix. The streamer acquired worldwide rights to the doc, THR confirms.
“American Factory” won The Directing Award: U.S. Documentary at the fest. Reichert and Bognar’s 2009 collaboration “The Last Truck: Closing of a GM Plant” received an Oscar nomination.
Netflix previously nabbed rights to “Knock Down the House,” another festival winner. Directed by Rachel Lears, the doc follows four-working class women as they run for Congress. Rising political star Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez features prominently in the film.
