TVF International Sends Titles Across MENA

The factual distributor TVF International has inked a raft of deals with broadcasters across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), including one that sees a package of titles headed to BBC Arabic.

The pan-MENA news network picked up a package that includes Attitude Pictures’ award-winning mental health series In My Mind; the Furnace production for BBC You, Me and Eugenics, which examines the dark origins and legacy of eugenics; and Clover Films’ ITV commission Prisons Uncovered, a one-off special investigating why violence in U.K. prisons is at a record high.

Al Jazeera licensed a package of 35 hours for the Documentary Channel. Included in the package were New Species, a ZDF/ARTE/Globo co-production charting the discoveries of an extraordinary scientific expedition to the heart of the Amazon, and the Channel News Asia commissions Algorithms: How They Rule Our World, a two-parter unraveling the invisible role played by computer algorithms in shaping human lives, and Coming Clean About Green, a three-part series which tests the innovative solutions being devised to combat climate change around the world.

For the Discovery Family feed in MENA, the pay-TV broadcaster licensed seasons one and two of Raw Recruits, a Burning Bright production for Channel 5 following the journeys of Europe’s youngest army cadets as they are trained to be soldiers in the British Army. Discovery also picked up the CW-commissioned, pop-science magazine series Did I Mention Invention? and Choice TV’s The Healthy Food Guide, a myth-busting food series taking a holistic approach to healthy eating.

The pan-MENA channel Alhurra licensed two one-off current affairs films from Channel News Asia’s investigative Undercover Asia strand, as well as the history documentary Partition, a one-off that traces the roots of today’s India-Pakistan conflict back to its origin in Britain’s partition of India in 1947.

Finally, the satellite provider OSN acquired Apollo’s New Moon, a one-off documentary using state-of-the-art, upgraded archive footage to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the historic Apollo 11 lunar landing and to explore the scientific legacy of this remarkable expedition.

TVF’s MENA senior sales executive, Oliver Clayton, who brokered the deals, commented: “MENA has been one of our fastest-growing territories for a number of years now and it is great to continue this trajectory with our long-standing partners in the region whose appetite for specialist factual is going from strength to strength.”