London-based factual specialist Dogwoof has taken North American sales on Viral: My 2020 a feature/series project that tells the story of eight YouTubers from across the world as they face the most defining year of their lives.
Now in production, it follows YouTubers including U.S.-based Nathaniel Drew (1.2 million subscribers) throughout 2020, beginning on New Year’s Day. Like the rest of the world, they find their plans for the year heavily disrupted by the pandemic, rising unrest around the world and a spiky U.S. election, with the film chronicling their resilience and creativity in the face of such unprecedented times.
Israeli director duo Sagi Bornstein and Udi Nir are helming. Their last film Golda Meir – Prime Minister is nominated at Israel’s Ophir Awards this year and they previously made #uploading_holocaust which was comprised of 100% user-generated material.
This is their third cooperation with Christian Beetz at production house Gebrueder Beetz Filmproduktion, which is co-repping international sales with Dogwoof. Georg Tschurtschenthaler is executive producing the project. Anna Godas, CEO of Dogwoof, negotiated the deal with Christian Beetz.
“This is the story of how young people experienced 2020, told their own way. It is intimate, dynamic, and so engaging I knew we had to come on board the second I came across it. 2020 will be a year to re-member and who best to tell it than our younger generation,” said Godas.
Using unfiltered and authentic user-generated content, we join our protagonists on a rollercoaster ride through one of the most defining years in our lifetime – the year 2020. Without losing hope, the film holds up a mirror to society, to a generation, and to everyone of us so we might make sense of this un-folding global story,” added Beetz.
The project is supported by the German Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg and the New Fund for Cine-ma and Television in Israel (NFCT).