Australian, Euro and US partners lead demand for premium titles to mark 80th anniversary
London/Hampshire, Tuesday 11th March 2025
Indie distributor Woodcut International has closed a string of license deals for three new Second World War documentary titles, as broadcasters worldwide seek premium content to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the end of the Second World War.
SBS Australia has acquired an 18-hour package of Second World War-themed content.
The package is headlined by the Woodcut Original series Surviving WW2 (3 x 60 mins) produced by Woodcut Media. Each episode focuses on the personal stories of courage and resilience behind the headlines of history. While experts provide context and offer insights into the cataclysmic conflict, it is gripping first-hand narratives from the civilians and military veterans that lived through its horrors that form the heart of the new three-part series.
Also included in this package deal are two new documentaries from Prague-based producer Picasso Film. Auschwitz: Countdown to Liberation (1 x 84 mins) is a harrowing account of the events leading up to the liberation of the Polish concentration camp in January 1945, told through the testimonies of survivors, local residents, liberators and even the perpetrators of one of history’s darkest chapters. Auschwitz is also central to Mengele Unveiled (3 x 60 mins), which analyses the life of the SS officer and physician and the atrocities he committed in the name of medical research. Featuring new documents and unseen testimonies, the three-part series also examines Mengele’s long life as a fugitive and the incredible circumstances that allowed the most-wanted Nazi criminal in the world to die a free man on a beach in Brazil.
Surviving WW2, Auschwitz: Countdown to Liberation and Mengele Unveiled have also been picked up by BBC Studios for BBC Select, the company’s ad-free streaming documentary service available in the US and Canada, while Smithsonian Channel Canada has taken Surviving WW2.
Finally, deals have been closed for Auschwitz: Countdown to Liberation with Viasat World, as well as Multicanal Iberia for Canal Historia (Spain), and M6 (France).
Koulla Anastasi, Managing Director of Woodcut International said: “Eighty years feels a long time ago and yet most of us are still connected through family or community to those who lived, served and put their lives on the line during the Second World War. These three titles not only bear witness to a generation’s courage and sacrifice, but also seem timely in a world that is once again gripped by political and ideological division. Against this backdrop, it’s encouraging that so many prestigious broadcasters have committed to these exceptional documentaries about people and events that we must never forget.”
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About Woodcut International:
Established in September 2020, UK-based Woodcut International is the distribution arm of Woodcut Media, a leading producer of a broad range of factual programming that includes true crime, specialist factual, premium factual and factual entertainment. Woodcut International focuses on the global sales of select Woodcut Media series and specials, including new productions and library titles A Royal Guide To…, (K)nox: The Rob Knox Story, Forgotten War Stories, The Killer Within, the Idris Elba-led docs (Cut From a Different Cloth, Mandela, My Dad and Me) and Fukushima: Nature in the Danger Zone.
Woodcut International also represents unscripted content from 3rd party UK and international producers.