Pelada, the little soccer documentary that could, went from a movie no one had heard of to a movie almost no one had heard of, but one that was getting excellent reviews by almost all who saw it and is loved in the soccer community.
On IndieWire, co-director and producer Ryan White discusses how he and his team accomplished the feat.
One piece of advice: Pick the right festival.
SXSW is the perfect type of festival for films that don’t really have that profile yet – it felt like audiences were out to find films they had not heard any buzz about. Jim Dobson did our publicity and we got a lot of great coverage through him. Peter Debruge from Variety happened upon a screening and wrote ‘Pelada’ a great review, and that was our first review in in a big publication – it got us a lot of phone calls.”
There is plenty more good advice in the interview. You know, in case you have a sports doc sitting around gathering dust.