Europe Images ramps up Lagardere deals

M5Europe Images International, the factual distribution arm of French media conglomerate Lagardere, has ramped up the amount of content it distributes from parent company-owned producers.

This follows the launch of Lagardere Entertainment, a subsidiary of Lagardere Active, in February to house the group’s production and distribution businesses.

Catherine Alvaresse, senior VP, sales and co-productions, told TBIvision it is now working even more closely with a range of factual production companies including Of Shark and Men producers Angel Productions and Leo Vision, producers of Beyond The Horizon.

“When Lagardere created Lagardere Entertainment, more of the production companies are coming to us. It means they can have all the forces together so in non-fiction, we are the specialists,” she added.

M5Europe Images had a successful Mip TV market, closing deals for many of its documentaries. It sold 1x52mins The Last of the White Giraffes to TVE (Spain) and Rai (Italy) and expects to close deals with Discovery HD and Animal Planet soon.

It was also preselling 90min France 2 docudrama Body In Love for the first time after inking a deal with Transparence Productions and expects to close German, Japanese and Italian deals shortly.