Visual licensing company IMAGO is ramping up efforts to grow its business outside DACH territories — Germany, Austria and Switzerland — by offering a bespoke service for international producers, a research service and production-specific contracts for content use.
Berlin-headquartered IMAGO represents and licenses editorial and creative imagery, archival material, and editorial and stock footage, with a strong focus on serving documentary and film productions.
“With more than 800 million assets in our database, IMAGO offers an immense scope of visual content,” explains Amadeja Plankl, IMAGO’s director of international partnerships for editorial and creative content. “Our photo collections span breaking news, sports and historical events to the cultural and entertainment landscape — from premieres, red carpets and festivals to award seasons and fashion events.
“But in recent years, IMAGO has expanded well beyond its roots in photography. We have built, and continue to build, an extensive video collection that is increasingly finding its way into television, broadcast, documentary and film productions worldwide”
As the autumn festival season gathers pace, IMAGO is focused on building and creating dedicated editorial packages for red carpet, premiere and festival content — photo calls, arrivals, screenings and award moments to boost award season runners and riders and give the projects a boost.
Working with IMAGO gives prospective producers a distinct edge to get their own projects onto upcoming shortlists. IMAGO is present at festivals including the San Sebastian International Film Festival as well as the Berlin, Cannes and Toronto film festivals.
Licensing is built for production workflows: rights-managed and royalty-free options, with flexible terms including all media, worldwide, in perpetuity — the industry standard for documentary use. IMAGO’s client roster spans TV and film producers, broadcasters, content creators and brands, as well as publishers, online publications and agencies, and major international media houses across print and digital. As broadcast and TV continue to grow, many producers value and trust the team’s expertise in sourcing the right content.
“In the film and TV sector, we work closely with archive producers as they work across production companies but also with heads of production within the production companies themselves,” explains Emlyn Phillips, IMAGO regional director, who has worked across the industry for 18 years.
For first-time clients, IMAGO is offering 10% off the first package for documentaries and films.
“We’ll work with such clients to understand their project, and our picture research team can then source and propose relevant content. We often don’t charge for this service, as long as it is for a live project,” he says.
Phillips and the team are aware of the long timescales that happen with these sorts of projects. “We like to be involved at the outset of a project, to discuss what content we can provide and how we can help,” Phillips explains. “In the past, that’s been primarily photography, but our video offering is coming on leaps and bounds, especially on the entertainment side.”
Recent documentaries using IMAGO-licensed images include Ben Proudfoot’s The Eyes Of Ghana, about the life and work of Ghanaian filmmaker Chris Hesse, and Yemi Bamiro’s Black Is Beautiful — The Kwame Brathwaite Story, both selected for the documentary competition of the 2025 BFI London Film Festival
The latter is a celebration of Black history, art and culture and Brathwaite’s rise to prominence against the backdrop of the second Harlem Renaissance and the Civil Rights Movement. The film went on to win the FOCAL International Award for best use of footage in an arts and cultural production in 2026, at the awards that recognise archival footage’s contribution to the creative and cultural industries.
IMAGO also licensed images and footage for the BBC’s US country music travelogue Rob Brydon’s Honky Tonk Road Trip, and Rebel Royals: An Unlikely Love Story, the 2025 Netflix documentary directed by Rebecca Chaiklin, which followed Princess Märtha Louise of Norway and her partner, Hollywood spiritual guide Shaman Durek Verrett.
Sports documentaries include Prime Video’s Take Us Home: Leeds United and One For All: The Jesse Lingard Story, produced by Neo Studios for Channel 4 and streaming on Apple TV.
“We want filmmakers, archive producers and heads of production to get to know our content, along with how we can help them to use it within their productions, and we are prepared to tailor our licensing rates and rights depending on the size and budget of the project,” Phillips says. “We know that clients come back to us as a result of this.”
For producers attending film festivals throughout the year, IMAGO’s picture desk and research team are on hand to help source editorial, archival and stock content to support festival coverage and future productions.
Contact: Emlyn Phillips, emlyn.phillips@imago-images.de
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