Viaplay Group Acquires Crisis in Cocaine Valley Documentary

Viaplay Group has picked up the documentary Crisis in Cocaine Valley, which explores the effect Covid-19 has had on the titular region in the Peruvian Andes.

Produced by Germany’s Maximus Film, Crisis in Cocaine Valley travels deep into the rainforest where one of the largest production sites of cocaine in the world resides. Local laboratories once produced several tons of the drug each month, but Covid has threatened the region’s cocaine production with extinction.

Crisis in Cocaine Valley features exclusive access to numerous key players in the region and tracks down abandoned and active cocaine pools and drug labs to uncover the pandemic’s impact on the drug trade. The film reveals how parts of Cocaine Valley have collapsed and with it, the local economy.

Viaplay Group has acquired Crisis in Cocaine Valley for its Viaplay streaming service in the Nordic and Baltic countries, the Netherlands and Poland. The doc is co-financed by Quintus Studios and Maximus Film. It was a featured title in the Quintus Content Club co-financing initiative in March.

Anouk van Dijk, managing director at Quintus Studios, said: “We’re really excited to see a title that was in our Content Club lineup in March this year will be delivered in multiple territories this summer. Crisis in Cocaine Valley is a truly international story, and it’s great that this is being picked up by an international player like Viaplay.”

Joachim Förster, the documentary’s producer at Maximus Film said: “We are really proud of the access to so many key players in cocaine production, and we are equally proud of the result. Our director on location, JC Sawatzky, did a great job. It was a ride to hell in many ways, and it was more than worth it. These are the stories that need to be told and the ones we want to tell.”