Top German arthouse distributor Neue Vision takes on streamers with its own platform

Leading German arthouse distributor Neue Visionen has today (October 15) launched its own streaming service, Neue Visionen Plus (NVP).

NVP launches with French comedy The Marching Band by Emmanuel Courcol as its first new title.

Mascha Schilinski’s German Oscar entry Sound Of Falling and Lea Todorov’s social drama Maria Montessori will be among the next exclusive titles to be added to the service.

NVP is majority owned by Neue Visionen with Piffl Medien taking a 10% shareholding.

NVP, which is only available to subscribers living in Germany, has also inherited the 500 arthouse, crossover and documentary titles which had made up the catalogue of the previous Good Movies VoD channel as well as its 20,000 subscribers. They will pay a monthly subscription of €4 to access the new service.

Neue Visionen will continue working with the independent arthouse distributors which had been its partners at Good Movies to include their future titles on the new platform, and NVP will also be open to third-party rightsholders .

“The motivation for launching our own streaming service came as part of our strategy to continue building Neue Visionen up as a brand,” said Neue Vision co-managing director Torsten Frehse. “It is our response to changes in the market where social media platforms no longer have the significance they once had. So, we have been looking for ways to establish more direct communication with the audiences of our films and a streaming service is one of these possibilities.”

The streamer won’t just restrict itself to offering a curated programme of films to its subscribers, but will also offer additional film related content.

“Neue Visionen Plus will be the first arthouse streamer to combine its film programme with infotainment,” Neue Vision co-managing director Sylvia Müller said.

For example, the magazine programme Im Reich der Bilder hosted by the film critic/filmmaker Rüdiger Suchsland will be aimed at those interested in the history of cinema and the latest developments in the world of film. It will discuss subjects as diverse as the cinema of Werner Herzog, director Mascha Schilinski’s own interpretation of her film Sound Of Falling, and future scenarios for the cinema.

In addition, Nikolas Friedrich and Tobias Reißmann will present a monthly film review programme called Kinokompass to introduce new cinema releases, and the bestselling children’s author Kai Lüftner is behind the first eight episodes of a family entertainment series SKIP that has also been produced exclusively for the streamer by Neue Visionen’s own in-house production facility Zentral Studios am Potsdamer Platz.

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