PARIS– International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR), one of Europe’s top fests for indie movies, has signed a multi-year pact with Infostrada Creative Technology, a leading Dutch media company, to launch Tiger Release.
Tiger Release will give rights-holders of movies playing in Rotterdam’s official selection the opportunity to show their films on Infostrada’s global VoD platforms including iTunes, YouTube, Vimeo, Google Play and PlayStation Network in the territories of their choice.
With Tiger Release, IFFR aims to tackle the increasingly difficult challenges that independent filmmakers, producers and sales agents face to find international distribution and a wider audience for their movies. Pics that will likely benefit from Tiger Release are the ones that have not sold widely and are still available in key territories.
“IFFR is committed to supporting filmmakers and their films in the fast moving digital age. Our support for filmmakers does not start and end with the 12 days of the Festival, those 12 days represent a commitment to help find audiences for the creative and varied films selected for our programme in the months and years ahead, TR will be a huge addition to that philosophy,” said Rutger Wolfson, IFFR director, who added that the Tiger Release complements the Hubert Bals Fund and CineMart.
Janneke Staarink, IFFR’s managing director , said she expects Tiger Release to have a “hugely positive impact on what is one of the most important facets of today’s film industry: The distribution of independent film.”
Infostrada, which works with major U.S. film studios, will work directly with filmmakers to give them control over where and when the film is released with a guarantee of receiving 50% of VoD receipts.
On top of covering the encoding fees, Infostrada will also be able to host movies from the official selection on their servers from where they can be transferred to other film fests, or alternatively create DCP’s at a reduced rate.
