Real Lava wins two awards at the Sundance Film Festival with "The Territory"

Launched in December 2021 by Newen Studios and the Danish producer Sigrid Dyekjaer, Real Lava already meets great success with its first production “The Territory”.

The first documentary film of the recently created production house receives 2 awards for “The Territory” at the Sundance Film Festival: World Cinema Documentary Audience Award & Special Jury Award for Documentary Craft.

1730 feature documentaries had been submitted at Sundance this year.

National Geographic Documentary Films have also just announced that they have purchased the rights to the “The Territory”.

“The Territory” provides an immersive on-the-ground look at the tireless fight of the Indigenous Uru-eu-wau-wau people against the encroaching deforestation brought by illegal settlers and an association of non-native farmers in the Brazilian Amazon. With awe-inspiring cinematography showcasing the titular landscape, and richly textured sound design, the film takes audiences deep into the Uru-eu-wau-wau community, and provides unprecedented access to the settlers illegitimately clearing land and a network of desperate farmers advocating for access to colonize the protected rainforest. Partially shot by the Uru-eu-wauwau people, the film uses verité-style footage, captured over three years, as the activists risk their lives to set up their own news media team in the hopes of exposing the truth.

Based in Copenhagen (Denmark), the new company Real Lava is a premium international documentary production house, owned by the European production group, Newen Studios, and the Oscar nominated, Emmy and Peabody Winner, Sigrid Dyekjaer. Real Lava produces ambitious documentary films and series for a large international audience with a cinematic execution and high artistic value.

Produced by Sigrid Dyekjaer, Darren Aronofsky, Will N.Miller, Lizzie Gillett and Gabriel Uchida, “The Territory” (83 minutes) is directed by Alex Pritz.

For Sigrid Dyekjaer, the film’s main producer and head of Real Lava : “One could not imagine a better start for Real Lava. We have not only secured the film a global distribution but also made it possible to carry out a comprehensive impact campaign, where we focus on the enormous challenges and consequences that deforestation in the Amazon entails, not least for the climate.”

Philippe Levasseur, Newen Studios’ Head of International adds: “We couldn’t imagine a brighter start for Real Lava. This documentary matches all we are aiming at: very high-end execution, impactful topic, combination of very experienced and more junior talents, and now two super prestigious awards. Sigrid has developed an impressive slate of projects so be ready for more Real Lava documentaries soon in the same range. This is just the beginning!”