From naked mole rats to American and Russian presidents, this year’s assortment of MIPTV Picks has something for every discerning factual buyer. Once again, our call for entries brought in scores of projects from across the non-fiction spectrum, with a noticeable uptick in family-friendly formats and, on the other side of the coin, examinations of the environmental crisis created by our use of plastics, most likely spurred on by the troubling revelations in Blue Planet II. And for whatever reason, volcanoes seem to be hot this year, pardon the pun.
Congrats to our Best in Show (The Bit Player), and for the rest of our picks, selected by the Realscreen editorial staff, read on.
How the Other Kids Live
Partners: Firecracker Films for Channel 4;
distributed by Passion Distribution
Length: 3
x 60 minutes
Premiered: February
2019 (Channel 4)
Rights
available: Worldwide excluding UK
In the wake of several family-friendly factual programs racking up strong ratings in the UK (The Secret Life of 4 Year Olds and Old People’s Home for 4 Year Olds among them), this three-part series for Channel 4 also mines the innocence and unpredictability of children for moments that are both heart-tugging and eye-opening. The premise is a common unscripted trope: place people in an unfamiliar environment and see how they fare, and what they learn about themselves and others in the process. In this case the participants in the social experiment are young children, embarking on play dates with kids from other cultures and societal backgrounds. This trend of light and life-affirming fact ent is scoring with audiences and critics — The Guardian‘s Stuart Heritage raved, “It’s like taking a warm bath.”
Read more here.