Amazon Prime Takes U.S. Rights to Documentary ‘Cuba: The Revolution and the World’

By Tim Dams

LOS ANGELES (Variety.com) – Amazon Prime has picked up U.S. rights to two-part documentary “Cuba: The Revolution and the World,” produced by the U.K.’s Brook Lapping and France’s Temps Noir.

The U.S. deal is one of a swathe of global sales for the BBC and Arte France-commissioned history of Cuba’s revolution, which is being repped by Arte Distribution.

National Geographic U.S. has also picked up the doc for Nat Geo Mundo, its Spanish Language channel in the U.S.

Other territories include: TV HK in Hong Kong; Fox Latin America, covering all Latin America; HRT in Croatia; DR in Denmark; Planete Plus in Poland; RTP in Portugal; VRT in Flemish Belgium; and Sky Arte in Italy.

These deals add to pre-sales with SVT in Sweden, CBC/Société Radio Canada, and NRK in Norway, along with the original partners Arte in France and the BBC in the U.K. The sales come after the film’s transmission on Arte in France.

The BBC will broadcast the series later this year as “Cuba: Castro vs the World” in two episodes entitled “The Armed Struggle” and “The Charm Offensive.”

“Cuba: The Revolution and the World” takes views from every side — including the Cubans, Russians and Americans — to reveal how Fidel Castro and his compatriots contributed to changing the world.

Norma Percy, executive producer at Brook Lapping, said: “It’s a fantastic story of how, for 30 years, Fidel Castro used arms and money from the Soviet Union to send Cuban forces across continents to change the world. A Soviet official who dealt with Castro put it: ‘Little Cuba. 110,000 square kms and it acted almost like a super power.’”

Percy added: “We got all those at the heart of the story — presidents, prime ministers, spies, revolutionaries — to take us behind closed doors to show us how Castro came up with new ways to undermine his powerful neighbor.”

Factual producer Brook Lapping’s portfolio of international series includes: “Inside Europe: 10 Years of Turmoil,” “Inside Obama’s White House,” “Iran and The West,” “Putin, Russia and The West” and “The Iraq War.”

“Cuba: The Revolution and the World” is executive produced by Percy for Brook Lapping at Zinc Media, executive produced by Serge Gordey, Martin Laurent and Tancrède Ramonet for Temps Noir and directed by Delphine Jaudeau and Mick Gold.  The series is distributed internationally by Arte Distribution.