Hot Picks: Daft Punk Unchained

Rock docs are enjoying a renaissance at the moment, with feature-length films about Amy Winehouse (Amy) and Kurt Cobain (Montage Of Heck) breaking box-office records.

Now it’s the turn of French electronic music duo Daft Punk, with an 84-minute documentary directed by renowned French documentary film-maker Hervé Martin Delpierre.

Tho doc, co-authored with French journalist Marina Rozenman, is the first film about the secretive DJs, who are never seen without their trademark helmets.

Daft Punk Unchained features new and archive interviews with the duo themselves – Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo – rare performance footage and conversations with their friends and collaborators.

Interviews with artists including Pharrell Williams and Nile Rodgers, film director Michel Gondry and DJ Pete Tong take place in LA, New York, Tokyo and Paris.

The soundtrack of the documentary, created specially for the film, was composed by Joseph Trapanese, who collaborated with Daft Punk on the score for Hollywood movie Tron: Legacy.

The film was produced by BBC Worldwide France for pay-TV channel Canal+ and is executive produced by BBCW France chief Jean-Louis Blot.

It aired on Canal+ in June and BBCW is now taking it to Mipcom in the hope of securing more international sales.

The doc leads its factual line-up, which also includes 4 x 50-minute specialist factual doc Forces Of Nature, three-part natural history series Sky World and factual entertainment shows The Big Catch and Special Forces: Ultimate Hell Week.

Special Forces veteran Jason Fall and The Big Catch presenter Ben Fogle will be attending Mipcom to promote the distributors’ fact-ent shows, alongside new Top Gear presenter Chris Evans.

Evans will be holding discussions with international broadcasters keen to hear about the BBC’s plans to reboot Top Gear, one of the commercial division’s most profitable global formats.