SUNNY SIDE OF THE DOC

Interview with Yves Jeanneau - founder of the Sunny Side of the Doc, director, producer

What’s new, this year at Sunny Side of the Doc ?

First and foremost, it’s our 15th anniversary and that’s already someting !
The idea at the origin of Sunny Side was to create a place dedicated to encounters to
talk exclusively of the documentary, something that did not exist at the time. When we
had this idea, the documentary was living through a crisis and this is why it seemed
important to do something in this domain. Looking back, I think we can be fairly proud of what we did. Today, more than 300 channel managers will travel to Marseille, along with 1500 producers, and not the least ! We succeeded in creating a forum where real
debates take place like, for example, this year, on the docudrama phenomenon, the
explosion of the investigation documentary or even on all the major feature film makers
who are turning to the documentary. We succeeded in creating this rendezvous which is
on everybody’s agenda. Today when people do documentaries, they come to Marseille
just like Cannes for filmmakers.

And this place of encounters is even more justified nowadays with a view to the large
number of producers who complain about the problems of raising funds to develop their
projects which probably explains why international co-productions have taken so much
importance.
Let’s face it, we are today faced with a reality that is very difficult economically speaking but the documentary is still a genre that circulates ?? much more easily than fiction and that allows for the development of international co-productions. These must therefore be encouraged as much as possible and this is what we’re trying to do here at Sunny Side.

This is the place where we will get to know each other, understand the financing
systems which vary from country to country and find partners with whom we’ll be able to make our films. It strikes me more and more to see the number of projects that were
initiated at Sunny Side. And this, notably thanks to the efforts we all make to better
communicate on and support development projects.

A little bit like what your organized in New York this last January?

Absolutely, in fact we brought together over two days, “a huis clos” or behind closed
doors, 39 channel managers, some forty producers and financing system managers and
American distributors along with 12 French channel managers and 33 producers. It was
fabulous the way these 100 people traded projects and discovered one and other. Not
only there were these discussions but also, an incredible number of projects were set up
thanks to theses encounters. The projects had been carefully selected initially at a rate of two per channel, based on their international potential.