Hot Picks: Year Zero

Year Zero is a three-part global documentary series focusing on the moment of collective uncertainty that arose in early 2020 as a result of Covid-19, according to Jennifer Ebell, senior vice-president of sales, EMEA, at Endeavor Content. “It tells the story of 11 people from around the world as they navigate an unprecedented time when the world came to a grinding halt,” she says. “It begins to question what matters most.”

The subjects, she adds, are wildly different – including a trans sex worker, poacher-hunter, commando, speakeasy owner, mafioso’s friend, modern monk, revolutionary, futurist, film-maker, member of a migrant family and tribal elder.

“As the series progresses, these unique individuals share their emotional and deeply personal journeys to reveal the unexpected, yet humanising, connections between us all,” says Ebell. “We have all examined our lives a little more these past two years and have been given an unexpected reset; an opportunity to improve how we live and work.”

While the core of the narrative concerns how these disparate characters dealt with the challenges of the pandemic, each story was carefully selected because it would have been of interest irrespective of the Covid experience.

Year Zero was created by four film-makers and showrunners, who managed the process remotely: Zein Zubi, Pol Rodriguez, Billy Silva and Guille Isa. The individual stories, however, were shot by 10 different film-makers, each of whom spent 18 months filming in various locations, including Peru, Chile, Russia, Italy, Spain, Iran, Zambia, China, India and the US.

“The stories are beautifully interwoven,” says Ebell. “From the cavernous halls of a Buddhist monastery in China to the windswept plains of Oklahoma. That visual and cultural juxtaposition is dramatic but stripped back.”

Of particular interest to buyers, she adds, is the fact that Oscar-winning director Kathryn Bigelow (The Hurt Locker) oversaw the project as exec producer: “We were lucky to be involved from the beginning with our partners Seven8three and Smuggler Entertainment.”

Endeavor Content is handling worldwide sales on the series, with an expectation that the breadth of stories will widen the net of buyers. “The stories are diverse and multicultural; the verité filmmaking is powerful and enhanced by the grand and epic music composition,” says Ebell. “It’s a brutally honest piece that inspires hope and looks to the future. Hope is something the audience needs today more than ever.”

The subject and style “are geared to the global audience as everyone will see a bit of themselves in the stories, so streamers and public broadcasters alike should consider the series”, says Ebell.

Endeavor Content, recently acquired by South Korean powerhouse CJ ENM, views high-end factual content as a good space in which to operate, with an “extensive slate of programming and plenty more in development”, according to Ebell. Year Zero joins feature-length The End Of Medicine and three-parter The Rise And Fall Of Victoria’s Secret on Endeavor’s slate.