Show of the week: Wild Venice

“Wild Venice is not only the first wildlife and nature documentary on Venice, but also differs from common nature film productions through its very different way of seeing an extremely familiar and beautiful place from a new angle,” says ORF’s head of international content sales, Marion Camus-Oberdorfer.

The 52-minutes doc from director Klaus Steindl looks at the wildlife in the Italian water city, including its migrating birds and raptors, exotic lizards and insects in beautiful secret gardens, and deer and foxes in surrounding woodlands. It even reveals the aquatic life a relatively unknown local coral reef, the Northern Adriatic Sea’s Tegnùe.

Adding to the interest for doc buyers seeing experimental content, Wild Venice is shot in ultra high-def 4K.

“Especially for nature and wildlife films this technique creates totally new, overwhelming highlights for the viewers’ visual experience,” says Camus-Oberdorfer.

“The film not only shows the enormous diversity of the city’s wildlife, but adds a whole new dimension with its magnificent, atmospheric 4K photography against the stunning backdrop of a World Heritage city,” says Camus-Oberdorfer.

ORF Enterprises, the sales arm of Austrian pubcaster ORF, is aiming to “broaden” its range of clients, and the 4K medium allows it to target bespoke 4K platforms and cinemas.

Further to this, Camus-Oberdorfer says channels including RTV in Slovenia, CT in the Czech Republic, STV in Slovakia and Fokus TV in Poland have all expressed interest.

The show is in production and will deliver internationally at the beginning of 2015.

The show: Wild Venice
The producers: Epo Film in association with ORF, ORF Enterprise, Arte, NDR, bmu:kk
The distributor: ORF Enterprise
The broadcasters: ORF (Austria), Arte (France), NDR (Germany)
The concept: 4K-shot doc looking at the largely unknown wildlife ecosystem in Venice, Italy