WG FILM IN CANNES

Producers Kerstin Übelacker and Margarete Jangård. Photo: Emma Anckar

Producers Kerstin Übelacker and Margarete Jangård will be heading to Festival de Cannes, in France, between May 9-16th. While there, Kerstin will attend the Young Nordic Producers Club, a program from The Danish Film Institute and The National Film School of Denmark, meant to strengthen the Nordic Producer’s network and to support international co-production. 

If you’ll also be in town for the festival and want to meet up, email margarete@wgfilm.com or kerstin@wgfilm.com. If you are interested in our projects in development, you can find out more here.

"DEAD DONKEYS FEAR NO HYENAS" DVDS NOW AVAILABLE

The DVDs for Joakim Demmer’s Dead Donkeys Fear No Hyenas are now available and ready to be shipped anywhere in the world (with free shipping!). We’ve included 12 subtitle options (Amharic, Czech, English, French, German, Italian, Oromo, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish & Swedish), as well as French and German dubbed versions. We hope this will make the film more accessible to communities around the world.

Please keep in mind that the DVDs are meant for private use. To set up a screening, contact glynnis@wgfilm.com

Purchase your DVD here! And if you prefer to go digital, you can watch the film on Vimeo on Demand, below.

DEAD DONKEYS WINNER OF THE 2018 SIMA JURY PRIZE FOR TRANSPARENCY

We are very honored to share that Joakim Demmer’s “>Dead Donkeys Fear No Hyenas is the recipient of the International Social Impact Media Awards 2018 Jury Prize for Transparency!

From SIMA:
The annual SIMA Awards celebrate the best impact filmmaking from around the world that inspires activism, compassion and social transformation. 

SIMA’s jury of award-winning media industry leaders, impact producers, educators, film and human rights experts select winners for each award category and jury prize. Films are judged on their potential to ignite critical consciousness through concept, direction, storytelling, integrity and creativity, and their ability to inspire awareness, dialogues, actions, and best practices for progressive social change.

“SIMA2018 Winners allow us to witness the most crucial global challenges and opportunities of our time. With breathtaking authenticity they offer a fierce understanding of what it means to be human and participate in this global movement called humanity.” – Daniela Kon, SIMA Founder and Executive Director

Thank you to SIMA and the jury for recognizing our work, and a special thank you to all the brave people who shared their important stories with us for this film. We will keep doing our best to get those voices heard, far and wide.

See the full list of award recipients here.

BRING "DEAD DONKEYS FEAR NO HYENAS" TO A THEATRE NEAR YOU!

There is now an easy way to bring Dead Donkeys Fear No Hyenas to a cinema near you, in numerous countries around the world! We’ve partnered up with Demand Film to set up crowd-sourced cinema and special screenings in the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the UK and Ireland. 

For screening requests in the above countries, please contact Demand Film at david@demand.film and erica@demand.film, or fill out forms from the links above.

See how Demand’s crowd-sources screenings work, below:

1. DEMAND

Simply fill out our screening request form.
We will be in touch to confirm where and when.

2. YOUR PAGE

We will sort out the details and build you a customised screening page.
It will show the minimum number of tickets to be sold by the deadline for the screening to go ahead.

3. PROMOTE

Promote your screening to your friends, community and anyone that may be interested.
If enough seats sell by the deadline, your screening confirms and the tickets are sent out.
If there are not enough tickets sold, the screening cancels and no one is charged
– there is zero risk for you.

4. ENJOY

Have a great time watching the film on the big screen – how it was meant to be seen
– with all the people you invited. You’ve even made money on every ticket sold.

DEAD DONKEYS FEAR NO HYENAS - 2017 IN REVIEW

After a 7 year-long journey, WG Film was very proud to be able to share Joakim Demmer’s “>Dead Donkeys Fear No Hyenas in 2017. Now, as we come to the end of the year, we look back on the film’s travels and achievements so far.

Since our world premiere at CPH:DOX in March 2017, the film has met audiences in 25 countries and 60+ cities at festivals, cinemas, conferences and community screenings, plus many more places online and on TV. Director Joakim Demmer has traveled to screenings in cities from San Francisco to Warsaw to Beirut. Our German theatrical release brought the film to 38 cities across Germany. AfriDocs and BET Africa joined together to televise the film across Africa. Joakim, along with outreach producers Glynnis Ritter and Kerstin Übelacker, pitched the film’s outreach campaign at Good Pitch Copenhagen. With the help of more than 700 friends from around the world, WG Film had a successful crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter, which has helped us continue our work with the film to bring it to new people and places. We have also been honored with numerous awards, such as San Francisco Green Film Festival’s “Green Tenacity Award” and Life After Oil’s “Best International Documentary”. We were nominated for the prestigious European Film Academy Award for “Best Documentary” and Prix Europa’s “Best TV Documentary”.

Our work is certainly not done. One of our main goals with this film is to bring it to those communities affected by land grabbing, both in Ethiopia and other countries around the world. We hope for Dead Donkeys Fear No Hyenas to help facilitate critical conversations with local people and communities, politicians and decision makers, investors and NGOs. To help spread the film as far as possible, we now have the film translated into 9 different languages, including a French dubbed version and soon, an Amharic version. During 2018, we will be working hard towards bringing this film to the people who need it most and are eager to see what kind of change it can contribute to.

On behalf of WG Film and Joakim Demmer, we thank you for supporting us on this incredible journey. We look forward to seeing where 2018 brings the film and hope you will continue to join us along the way.

For now, have a look at some photos from the many screenings so far:

To follow us along in 2018, find us on Facebook and Twitter

DEAD DONKEYS FEAR HYENAS GOES FRANÇAIS!

Great news! With the very friendly support of the French actor Mehdi Nebbou and the aid and human rights organisation medico international, we have now able to make a French-dubbed version of Dead Donkeys Fear No Hyenas. With this version, we look forward to being able to more easily reach out to the French speaking parts of the world.

Statement from actor Mehdi Nebbou:

“Today millions of small farmers and indigenous people worldwide lose their land to foreign investors and large-scale farms. Thereby all these people are not only deprived of the possibility to feed their families, they also lose their cultural identity and heritage. As most of these people are voiceless, it is up to us, to let this happen or stop it.”

If you are interested in using the French-dubbed version for a screening of Dead Donkeys Fear No Hyenas, please contact glynnis@wgfilm.com.

For more than 45 years medico international has been promoting the human right to health. Together with their partners in Africa, Asia and Latin America they are striving to achieve living situations that allow the best possible level of health. In 1997 medico and other members of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

More info:
https://www.medico.de/en/
https://www.medico.de/fr/

WG FILM HEADING TO IDFA!

MEET US AT IDFA. CONTACT:
Margarete Jangård / margarete@wgfilm.com
Fredrik Gertten / fredrik@wgfilm.com
Kerstin Übelacker / kerstin@wgfilm.com

Breaking News: Ethiopian business mogul detained for corruption

In Joakim Demmer’s Dead Donkeys Fear No Hyenas, we meet Mohammed Hussein Al-Amoudi, an Ethiopian-born business mogul and one of the key investors in Saudi Star Agricultural Development PLC, a food company whose farm in the midst of a national park in Ethiopia’s Gambella region, has led to an explosion of violence and thousands of civilians fleeing over the border to South Sudan. 

This past weekend, Al-Amoudi, among others, was arrested in an anti-corruption crackdown by the Saudi Arabia government. You can read more about Al-Amoudi and his detainment here. 

Al-Amoudi is the richest man in Ethiopia and second richest in Saudi Arabia, but also one of the biggest foreign investors in Sweden, most notably associated with Midroc and Preem.

From director Joakim Demmer:

— We hope that Al Amoudi’s arrest also will put the focus on his actions in Gambella pictured in our film. Many critical questions – the involvement of Midroc Europe in the building of the farm and foremost – justice for the displaced local people. It is crucial that this moment is used to facilitate an important discussion around not only Al Amoudi and Saudi Star’s actions, but a broader discussion about what these kind of investments mean for indigenous people around the world. We urge you to join in on this conversation.

The detention of Al Amoudi might mean a stop of Saudi state funds to the Saudi Star farm, without which it hardly will be able to survive. 

Watch the film here.