An email from Caroline Libresco made my heart beat.
Dear Fredrik and Margarete,
On behalf of John Cooper, Director of the Sundance Film Festival, it’s our great pleasure to invite BIG BOYS GONE BANANAS!* to play in our World Cinema Documentary Competition at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival. Our programming team is very excited to present the North American premiere of this excellent film.
One email can sometimes change a lot of things. This one was then followed by a flood of emails from film festivals, sales agents, distributors, journalists – and of course friends wishing us all the best.
When you work with film you want to reach out. To be on the best possible platform for the launch of your film. In the United States and beyond, the Sundance film festival is a door opener. People with influence talk about your film. The buzz travels.
When my previous film BANANAS!* opened at the Los Angeles Film Festival in 2009, we were instantly attacked with aggresive legal letters and a well-constructed media campaign. Guess what it feels like to be able to return to the US now, with a new film to be launched at the largest independent cinema festival in the States. It's a big, big win for us – and more importantly, a big win for documentary filmmaking, for our right to tell the stories that need to be told.
With Sundance, we will have a forum to discuss how freedom of speech, now more than ever, is a matter of how much money you have. How investigative journalism is losing out. And how the PR industry is taking over the agenda of most media.
But Sundance is of course more than that. I am also looking forward to hang out with my collegues, watch great films. Sip beers in a funny ski resort. Someone said there are more real people in Las Vegas than at the Sundance Film Festival. I really hope so. Let's enjoy every minute!
