The Coming War will tell the unreported story of the new “Cold War” between the US and China.

Crusading journalist John Pilger’s new feature doc The Coming War has raised close to $110,000 (£72,000) on crowdfunding platform Indiegogo. This represents a record for a UK documentary on Indiegogo.

The campaign for Pilger’s doc was launched on December 10 and closed on January 18, by which time it had raised 120% of its £60,000 goal.

The Coming War will tell the unreported story of the new “Cold War” between the US and China.

Solution to shrinking finance

Miranda Fleming, head of film UK at Indiegogo, highlighted to Screen the increasing importance of crowdfunding to independent filmmakers in Europe.

“They (independent filmmakers) need finance, not just subsidised finance. There needs to be a solution to the shrinking finance of indie film,” she said.

“In America, they picked up on crowdfunding very quickly because they don’t have subsidised sectors in film.”

Now, Fleming believes, European filmmakers are also embracing crowdfunding.

Valuable data

Indiegogo was involved in raising the finance for BAFTA-nominated land Kajaki. The True Story, released in the UK and screened in Berlin last week.

“A lot of people had said ‘no’ to them (the Kajaki producers),” Fleming recalled. “They needed £40,000-£50,000 to write the screenplay and get them from that point to prep.

“Not only did crowdfunding give them that development money. It gave them 500 incredibly valuable email addresses.”

Vimeo pact

The company recently announced a partnership with online platform Vimeo. Through this partnership, Vimeo committed to “an ongoing creator fund” for selected Indiegogo-funded film campaigns in return for exclusive distribution on Video On Demand.

Indiegogo charges producers 4% of what they raise. It also offers a “flexible funding” option, for which it charges 9% on the funds raised.

Felming added: “If you, say, crowd fund for £100,000 and you get £80,000, you can still take the £80,000 but the interest rate from Indiegogo goes up.”

Indiegogo also recently helped the producers of Iron Sky: The Coming Race raise $568,269 with their slogan “join the war against Adolf Hitler and his dinosaur army!”

The producers offered extra perks including allowing investors to pay extra money to “get eaten by a dinosaur” on screen.

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