A Portrait of sales company M-Appeal

“Since founding the company in 2008 its development has been very stable, we’ve kept on growing but always held true to our identity as a medium-sized and independent boutique operation,” says managing director Maren Kroymann about her Berlin-based sales company M-Appeal. “One particular characteristic of M-Appeal is that we love working with films in all their complexities and are not ones to have a big catalogue where films can easily get lost” is how Maren describes the company’s positioning in the market.

Maren Kroymann, Magdalena Banasik, Quentin Bosschaert, Cinthya Calderón © M-Appeal

“We like to exploit every aspect of a film’s commercial potential in order to reach all the possible audiences: that’s also reflected in our festival work on a film which usually lasts for about two years with us being very pro-active and submitting to more than 300 festivals,” she explains. Maren and her colleagues also pay great attention to developing tailor-made press campaigns for the titles they represent as sales agent, pointing out that “when we have news about sales to tell the trade magazines, we use the opportunity of these stories to also then draw the journalists’ attention into writing about the film’s content and filmmaker’s style as well as its particular social impact.”

Since Maren and her team want to achieve the best possible performance for each film they are handling, the company now restricts itself to launching only between 6-8 new titles per year and focusing the line-up mainly on general audience arthouse titles for cinema release with the potential to be sold to many territories worldwide. At the same time, the company has built up a reputation with its special interest niche dedicated to LGBTQ titles that can often have cross-over potential. “We often work with specialised distributors for these films, but not always as there are occasions when other players in the market acquire them as was the case with the SEX–LOVE–DREAMS trilogy released in the theaters by Alamode in Germany and Pyramide in France,” Maren recalls.

“Another niche we began developing around six years ago is focused on arthouse films with erotic content that champion female empowerment and present the female perspective on desire.”Dutch director Muriel d’Ansembourg’s debut feature TRULY NAKED, which had its world premiere in the Berlinale’s Perspectives competition last February, is a “perfect example” of this particular niche and gave the sales team ample opportunities to also address the subject matter in the press work and when pitching to buyers.

“From the outset, our line-up has been very international and that’s also reflected in the multi-lingual and multi-national composition of our team,” Maren says.

While M-Appeal has worked in the past representing films by such German filmmakers as the late Rosa von Praunheim (NEW YORK MEMORIES and ROSA’S WORLD, among others) and Leonie Krippendorff (COCOON), the company’s search for interesting titles knows no borders. “We have strong ties to some European territories like Norway where we picked up the SEX–LOVE–DREAMS trilogy and sold it to more than 60 territories, as well as to The Netherlands, most recently with TRULY NAKED,” Maren explains. At the same time, Latin American cinema has acquired ever greater prominence in the line-up in recent years: this year’s Berlinale, for example, saw the company representing the Mexican film IN THE GARDEN WE DREAMED in the Panorama and Brazil’s GUGU’S WORLD which won the Crystal Bear in the Generation Kplus competition section.

And work by Asian filmmakers also appear in M-Appeal roster, including Chinese director Huo Meng’s Silver Bear winner LIVING THE LAND and Japanese Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s award-winning EVIL DOES NOT EXIST and WHEEL OF FORTUNE AND FANTASY as well as his back catalogue. “A key point from the outset was that I wanted to develop long-term relationships with filmmakers and producers because it’s quite a big investment starting a collaboration,” Maren suggests.

“I’m always looking to work with people where we see that we can have a good chemistry and enjoy working together,” she concludes. “And we see these relationships as being a real partnership with the producer and director based on transparency and mutual trust to achieve the best possible results.”

Martin Blaney