Redundancies, Netflix Global Successes, and Development News: Making a Production Updates From Grain Media

In October 2023, as part of the series Making a Production, Documentary profiled the London-based production company Grain Media. As a small independent production company focused exclusively on documentary, they were managing to succeed, with difficulty, in a very challenging climate for documentary. At the end of 2024, the company’s Netflix documentaries The Lost Children and Buy Now: The Shopping Conspiracy achieved global prominence. At the same time, the company had to make its first redundancies, letting go of a handful of its long-serving staff. 

Documentary caught up with Grain’s founder and head Orlando von Einsiedel to discuss the ups and downs of the last year, and how they reflect what is going on in the global documentary industry. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. 

DOCUMENTARY: Can you give me an update about what it’s been like for you at Grain since last we spoke? 

ORLANDO VON EINSIEDEL: Where we left off, Carol, we were in the middle of a very difficult period for the documentary community, for the industry, and for us as a company. We weathered that for a long, long time, and then there just came a point six months ago where there were a number of projects that were about to happen, and suddenly they just didn’t. We had to have a very serious look at a restructure of the company and tragically, there were a few redundancies that came with that. So a lot of people in the community have been going through this, but it eventually caught up with us too.

D: You were around 14 at the time. What kind of size are you now? 

OVE: We made six redundancies. We were forced to make significant changes.

D: At the same time as this was happening, you had a couple Netflix releases which were very well received, which I’m sure has been good for the soul, if nothing else.

OVE: The weird thing about last year is we had this massive low where we had to do this restructure. And then we had this enormous high towards the end of the year where we released three films within six weeks. And all of them were hits. We had the The Lost Children, Buy Now! The Shopping Conspiracy, and an ITV film called I Cut Off His Penis: The Truth Behind the Headlines— very, very sober story about domestic violence hidden behind a tabloidy title. It was fantastic for a number of reasons. It was a reminder that there is a global appetite for the kinds of documentaries that we make and the kind of the stories and subject matter that we’re interested in. Buy Now and The Lost Children were in the Netflix Global Top Ten movie list for many weeks. The Lost Children was in the number 2 global spot and Buy Now was in the number 6 spot against all of Netflix’s Christmas and action movies. So that was fantastic. 

It was also vindication, in some ways, that we’d learned a lot over the last few years about how to continue to sell the kind of films that we make, and how to reposition the way we pitch those films in this new industry landscape we are all facing. I think we’ve taken on a lot of learning in terms of what the streamers and frankly, all the networks are after, and how we still get the kind of socially driven films that we want to make sold to them.

D: You told me when I wrote the feature that Buy Now was pitched as a thriller for people that wouldn’t normally come to environmental issues, calling it “chocolate covered broccoli.” Is that what you mean by the new approach to pitching?

OVE: Exactly. Buy Now was really a film about the climate crisis and the role of brands in mass environmental degradation—big, big, big, very serious, issues. But we pitched it as a conspiracy thriller. And I think that’s also what drew in a big audience. With Buy Now, we saw interesting conversations taking place on social media in spaces like TikTok with a young demographic. Here were three, four minute reviews of the film that alone had millions and millions of views. The film really worked for a slightly less traditional documentary audience, which was very much the aim, but it was great to see that actually happen. 

D: Let’s talk about the developments with Grace Labs.

OVE: Yes, the other really positive thing that happened in this strange year is the expansion of Grace Labs. Just to remind you, Grace Labs was set up as a hub to develop climate crisis focused stories and create the time and space to develop and nurture ideas into really fantastic, creative propositions that we could then take to networks to try and get a commission. It’s so hard to get those types of films made, because you say, “Oh, it’s a climate change story,” to a network exec and the reaction is: “Boring” and their eyes glaze over. Because we’ve had such success with projects such as From Devil’s Breath (2021), a project we did with Leonardo DiCaprio, and Buy Now, and taking into account the difficult documentary landscape of getting any social issue focused film made, we decided to expand what we’re doing at Grace to cover any issue which is urgent and relevant to a global audience. And so we’re hiring a new focused team to develop these types of films. Chloe Leland, who is the creative director of Grace, will now expand her role to become creative director across Grain too. 

D: Is it still the same benefactor—has he put in more money?

OVE: A few different engaged individuals who believe in the power of film as a tool for social change collectively contribute to a fund, which will cover a number of new development team positions.

D: And how does that fund help you to overcome barriers to the difficulties going on in the documentary industry at the moment?

OVE: If we didn’t have this fund, there is a very limited amount of time that Grain’s development team can spend on particular ideas, especially social impact focused projects that are not normally obviously commercial. We have to turn them around fairly quickly, and if they don’t get traction, we need to move on and find another idea that’s more likely to get funding and therefore get made. This fund allows us to spend much more time on ideas that we believe are urgent and important, and to shape those into creative propositions that are sellable, but still retain their social purpose and potential to drive social change. So it’s finding an idea and adapting it in a way that a major broadcaster or a streamer would be able to commission it

D: It’s great you’ve got this ITV film. Do you see any shoots of green with the UK broadcasters at all?

OVE: It’s tough. I really, really want our domestic broadcasters to be strong. I think we need that for a healthy industry ecosystem. But it’s really difficult. Their budgets are always very challenging. They have enormous ambitions for their films and what they want you as a production company to deliver, but with very tight budgets. We find it very difficult, especially with the kind of expansive film ideas that we have. And the way we like to make our films is relatively slowly in comparison to a Channel 4 Dispatches, for instance. We take our time, as documentarians like to do.

D: When we spoke 18 months ago, you thought that your evolving bread and butter work would be series. Is that still the plan?

OVE: I’d still like to be doing more series. I’d love us to find a returnable series concept that has social purpose baked into its very core. But series are hard to win. Normally I’d say maybe we have a series once a year, once every other year. I’d love us to be doing more of them, but they have become ever tougher to get commissioned.

D: Taking a wider perspective, how do you think the documentary industry is doing?  In a terribly difficult climate, you’ve managed some successes. Do you think the climate is improving? 

OVE: You know what, I don’t. For the last two years, there’s been this big hope that this is a blip and it’s going to change. And I don’t see it like that anymore. This is sadly the new reality. And we’ve got to find a way to live within the current ecosystem, and that requires us to be continually adapting, to always be seeking new funding routes, to try and be as creatively resourceful as possible to get the films we believe in made. 

I think there are exciting things happening in the documentary space, such as new distribution platforms like Jolt. We haven’t worked with Jolt yet, but it’s been really great to see three or four films on the documentary Oscar shortlist this year distributed by Jolt, which as I understand it, is a turbo charged filmmaker and data-driven distribution approach. That’s completely new and really exciting. I hope that opens up new pathways to getting films made and more importantly, seen. But until we’ve done this type of distribution ourselves, it’s difficult to know how viable long term that is from a financial perspective.  

Carol Nahra is a documentary journalist and lecturer. She teaches documentary and digital journalism at Syracuse University London, Royal Holloway, and the London College of Communications. She also works as a programmer and producer and is the lead trainer for the Grierson DocLab New Entrants scheme.