Hollywood Suite acquires No Roses on a Sailor’s Grave documentary
Canadian broadcaster Hollywood Suite acquired the award-winning documentary No Roses on a Sailor’s Grave, production company Go Button Media announced on Monday (Aug. 23).
CBC & Radio-Canada Distribution, meanwhile, took the worldwide rights, excluding Canada, for the documentary (pictured). The CBC will soon announce the film’s launch into the global market.
The documentary tells the story of a lost World War II ship, and how a young archeologist and the last survivor of the wreck work together to recover the ship from forgotten history, more than 70 years later.
The ship, LCH185, was part of the first wave on Sword Beach on D-Day. It helped protect the landing beaches from German attack for two weeks, until it was struck by an acoustic mine. LCH185 sank, taking all but a few surviving crew members with it. Patrick Thomas, a veteran telegraphist in the British Royal Navy who was on that ship, has lived with the memory ever since then.
John Henry Phillips, a 25-year-old British archaeologist, promised Thomas that he will find the lost, wrecked ship and see that a memorial is built for its missing crew. The documentary film follows this work.
“With only a small number of World War II veterans still among us, it is critical we help tell and record these stories before they move on from living memory,” said Daniel Oron of Go Button Media, and the director and executive producer of the film, in a news release.
Sharon Stevens, vice president of programming at Hollywood Suite, added that the film mixes history and personal testimony, and that with time running out to hear WWII stories first hand, opportunities to see a film like this are becoming rarer.
No Roses on a Sailor’s Grave was an official selection at several film festivals, and won Best Feature Documentary at the Sweden Film Awards, Best Narrative at the Amsterdam World International Film Festival, Best Director: Documentary at the Berlin Indie Film Festival and Angeles Documentaries Festival, as well as Best Feature Documentary at the Rome Independent Prisma Awards and Angeles Documentaries Festival.
The feature documentary is scheduled for a worldwide TV premiere on Nov. 11 at 9 p.m. ET.
Read the full article on Realscreen.
