Nestled in a former gallery space in south London, UK production outfit Grain Media has been quietly building its roster of feature documentaries with purpose, and is adding a number of scripted projects to its development slate.
Grain Media’s latest feature is The Walk, which premiered at Doc NYC, and is directed by Oscar-nominated Honeyland filmmaker Tamara Kotevska. It follows the journey of a 3.5m puppet that walked from the Syrian border to the UK, to represents millions of migrant and displaced children, escorted by a group of puppeteers who themselves are refugees.
Grain Media founder Orlando von Einsiedel produces alongside his Grain colleague Harri Grace, with David Lan and Tracey Seaward.
“We try to tell small stories, that ultimately speak to much bigger issues,” says von Einsiedel of the company’s approach.
Further Grain credits include executive producing Jeanie Finlay’s 2019 Tribeca premiere Seahorse: The Dad Who Gave Birth; Netflix and Archewell Productions series Heart Of Invictus; and Brian Knappenberger’s Netflix doc Scouts Honour.
Projects in the pipeline include a follow-up to Grain’s 2020 collaboration with National Geographic on a series of short films about Nobel Peace prize laureates, this time looking at recipients of the Nobel Prize of Physiology or Medicine.
Grain is in production on Cycling For Love, which von Einsiedel is directing, inspired by Per J Andersson’s book The Amazing Story Of The Man Who Cycled From India To Europe For Love, with Sweden’s Kalabati Pictures also producing.
Plus, Grain is executive producing The Mother Of All Fights, directed by Oscar- nominated Brazilian filmmakers Juliano Ribeiro Salgado and Ivi Roberg, that follows Brazil’s social change through the figure of indigenous activist-turned-politician Sonia Guajajara.
London-born von Einsiedel spent 10 years as a professional snowboarder, making videos as a way of picking up sponsorship from clothing brands. This led to a commission for a 13-part series on the Extreme Sports channel, which in turn led to the formation of Grain Media in 2006, initially as a joint venture with Jon Drever, who has now stepped back from the company. The team comprises of 14 full-time staff, including creative director Anna Murphy and in-house development producer Alice Martineau.
Grain typically has 10-15 projects in development at any one time. The company is known for its feature docs, but has whet its appetite with scripted with short Into Dust in 2021, directed by von Einsiedel and produced by Grain’s Harri Grace alongside Abhijeet Chhabra, Andrea Cornwell and Khalid Waseem, about the global water crisis, set in Karachi, Pakistan. Now, it is bulking out its scripted development slate, optioning books and looking to long-form newspaper articles for inspiration.
“We have a certain amount [of projects] where the aim is to use the film for social good,” says von Einsiedel of Grain’s strategy. “And we have others, mostly in the series space, that do the job of paying for the team and the business.”
Grain is further funded by taking on select branded content opportunities and working with foundations and individual benefactors who offer equity investment in projects whose beliefs chime with the social messages of Grain’s films.
Documentary features are having a particularly difficult time in the theatrical space, showing limited signs of a post-pandemic recovery. The UK’s Documentary Film Council published an open letter stating that the sector “faces an existential threat” and chances of distribution and exhibition for many are “non-existent”. With the streamers and broadcasters also presenting more caution in commissioning and acquisition, opportunities to give projects a lifespan are limited.
von Einsiedel says around 60% of Grain’s feature docs have a limited life in theatres. The company has benefitted from getting in with Netflix early. “We’re in a privileged position with Netflix – we made a [2014] film called Virunga which is one of the first documentaries they picked up, and then we made a short film called The White Helmets which won Netflix their very first Oscar, so we had an amazing bond with them as a company from the beginning.”
But, he admits, “there has been a shrinking in the documentary space in the last 12 months in terms of the number of films that’s being commissioned, but also related to that the type of programmes being commissioned. That’s tough, we’ve definitely felt it financially and we’ve seen a lot of our peers struggling.”
A change of focus is helping the company to adapt to the circumstances. “We’re putting much more money into development to get projects to a certain stage before we take them to the networks.”
Grain is hoping to expand its development team with new hires in 2024.
And while financing and distributing docs is an uphill struggle,von Einsiedel remains positive, as the reward can be immense. “I strongly believe filmmaking is a very cost-effective mechanism of driving social change,” he notes, “if you can get it right.”
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