A portrait of sales company Media Luna

“I don’t have a job, I have a lifestyle” is how Ida Martins describes running her Media Luna brand which will be celebrating its 35th anniversary of operations next year. “Being a sales agent is not a nine to five job,” she explains. “You find that many of the people you have in your circle of friends also tend to be in the film business, so it’s not surprising to have people call you at 10 o’clock in the evening about a film!”

“What is fascinating about this work is that you are dealing with people from different cultural backgrounds and not concentrating only on certain parts of the world,” says Brazilian-born Martins who started her working life as a copywriter for Walt Disney comics and also worked for several years creating advertising campaigns before setting up Media Luna in 1991.

“It’s clear that my eclectic background was the ideal environment for moving into the business of world sales,” she notes. “And it has also helped that I can speak five languages and come from a family of different nationalities.”

“When I started the company, Media Luna was the first independent world sales outfit to have been founded by a non-German-born female in a world that at the time was predominantly dominated by men,” Martin recalls. “I have always searched for new and innovative solutions for everything and developed 'tailor-made' sales strategies.”

“Until now, we have considered ourselves a boutique company and have not wanted to take on too many titles each year. The focus was on arthouse titles from directors with a strong message, independent of their country of origin. And what has always been important for me is the film itself!”, she explains.

Over the years, Martins has been interested in working with the new generation of directors such as Jurijs Saule, Benjamin Martins, Dirk Rosenloecher and Anatol Schuster, as well as introducing different cinematographic styles. She also regards herself as being something of a pioneer in the world sales landscape since Media Luna was one of the first companies to represent LGBTQ titles for world sales.

These films now have their own dedicated strand – Rainbow Velvet Movies – in the catalogue, providing a home for such recent films as Lotta Schwerk’s NINJA MOTHERF*CKING DESTRUCTION, Molly Haddon’s THE LONGEST WEEKEND and Johannes Maria Schmit’s NEUBAU. Moreover, buyers specifically interested in German films will find a section devoted to films “made in Germany” such as Anatol Schuster’s award-winning feelgood drama CHAOS AND SILENCE and Jurijs Saule’s MARTIN READS THE QURAN.

“The times have been changing and are now very challenging,” Martins observes. “We have to be aware that, globally, there are new trends in the independent film industry. The market is a ‘dynamic body” and, as such, has been through major changes influenced by, among other things, the fall in prices being paid for the films and the main buyers focusing more on co-production instead of ‘only’ being buyers. Moreover, you see that audiences are preferring genre titles and series and that the space for arthouse films is shrinking.”

As a consequence, Media Luna has been adapting to these challenges and looking to also pick up genre titles for its sales line-up with a dedicated strand called Black Velvet Movies.

Recent acquisitions for this sub-label have included Ciáran Creagh’s crime drama SAMANTA NOBODY and Adrián Araujo’s horror drama ESTELA. At the same time, Martins’ winning combination of a pioneering spirit and market­ing savvy resulted in Media Luna becoming one of the first independent sales companies to estab­lish its own screening platform on its website - and this was already up and running some three years before the pandemic began in 2020.

“This means that all those buyers who receive an authorised log-in can then watch our films as I want to ensure that there is easy access to our product,” she says. “What’s more, we were one of the first to create an online delivery platform which is much easier and saves a lot of costs for the buyers, and we also have a pitching room that has all our movies, and we use for daily online meetings.”

Martin Blaney