MSNBC has launched MSNBC Films to produce and showcase documentaries on television and support festival runs and theatrical releases.

The initiative will kick off with Kurt Kuenne's Dear Zachary: A Letter To A Son About His Father, in which Kuenne sets out to commemorate his murdered friend and learns that the woman who killed him was pregnant with his child.

The film will premiere on MSNBC following a theatrical release that is under negotiation and expected to be announced in the coming weeks.

Josh Braun of New York-based hybrid sales and production company Submarine Entertainment represents the film and negotiated and structured the partnership with MSNBC.

'MSNBC Films is another way for NBC News to partner with great independent film-makers who bring different takes on the world,' MSNBC's vice president of long-form programming Michael Rubin said. 'We're doing cartwheels over Dear Zachary.'

'I'm honoured and thrilled to be working with MSNBC in presenting this film to the world,' Kuenne said. 'Their intelligent, socially conscious viewership is exactly the audience for whom I made this film - the kind of people I hope will speak out for change if they are as outraged as I am by the events they see depicted in the film.'

Documentaries previously handled by Submarine include Polanski: Wanted And Desired, Man On Wire, My Kid Could Paint That and Supersize Me.

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