Sam Joyce, senior acquisitions manager at UK distributor TVF International, offers his take on last week’s Sunny Side of the Doc conference in La Rochelle, with the event looking set to inherit some of the now defunct MipTV’s business.

Enthusiasm, optimism and oysters were the order of the day inside Espace Encan during this year’s Sunny Side of the Doc, though it is tough to pinpoint whether these positive feelings were due to the titular sunshine, the promise of an upcoming drinks events, or the fact that event organisers mercifully kept the shutters closed to the outside’s 30+ degree heatwave.

Nevertheless, there was a wonderful sense of brisk business being done. Some attendees remarked that they felt the event seemed a little lighter on foot traffic this year, but it was difficult to notice when those that were there were busy touting ambitious projects at the top-end of the market.

For TVF International, the market was a launching pad for our summer slate, featuring more than 80 new hours of high-end programming across our key verticals of history, science, wildlife, arts, world affairs and factual entertainment. This includes a number of titles that came out of previous years’ Sunny Sides, like France TV’s Ulysses: From Myth to Science. Hitting the market with three execs – the most we’ve ever sent – and holding almost 100 meetings across two and a half days, it was without a doubt our busiest trip to La Rochelle yet.

After several years of upheaval in the marketplace, it was clear that canny producers have now learned to ride the waves of uncertainty and navigate a challenging global market. Here are four key takeaways:

Sunny Side is now a one-stop shop
With no MipTV to serve as a tentpole market in the first-half of the year, could Sunny Side be picking up the slack? Once thought of as a relaxed and more specialist symposium, this year acquisitions teams were thronging the aisles with busy on-foot buyers joining the commissioners and producers that have traditionally been the lifeblood of the market.

The market managed to retain its laidback charm, but with debut appearances from the acquisition teams at major broadcasters like the UK’s Channel 4, it is clear the market has begun to shift in a more commercial direction. We are yet to see representatives from the global streamers in La Rochelle, but perhaps they will have an eye on the oysters in 2026?

Coproduction is now the new normal
Beyond some producers in a few lucky territories that are managing to maintain strong sources of soft-funding, almost every major project is now tapping money from multiple territories to keep production values high. And it’s not just the usual Gallic and Germanic suspects that are leading the charge, but also broadcasters from Southern and Eastern European territories, as well as Lat Am and Asia, that are increasingly keen to jump on board foreign projects at early stages.

While the annual TV market calendar seems to be attempting to fragment into hyper-local markets that bring together buyers and sellers of ever more specific regions, the need for collaboration on big international coproductions at the top-end of the market ensures the Sunny Sides, Mipcoms and WCSFPs of the world will remain a vital stop on distributors’ and producers’ annual circuits.

Another year on, public broadcasters are still under threat
Last year it was the French producers who could rightfully be heard expressing concern about funding for public-servicing broadcasters. This year, it was the turn of our American colleagues to lament Donald Trump’s attempts to throw PBS’s funding into jeopardy. And with coproduction now a virtual requirement for high-end productions, this filters through to leave a swathe of international projects facing question marks in their finance plans. Fingers crossed that Congress makes the right call in protecting the invaluable work of PBS (and NPR) from such significant cutbacks, and that the international community can step up to the plate to keep major productions on track.

Everyone (still) wants to talk about AI
As in the wider world, the big question on everyone’s lips was how AI will shake up the industry in years to come, with broadcasters still uncertain of their position and IP holders playing a defensive game against data-crawlers on ever-shifting terrain.

In distribution, the immediate impacts have been felt in re-versioning, with AI technology reducing translation costs and introducing innovative new ways to ensure high-end hosted programming can travel. For a company such as TVF, which draws a significant amount of its catalogue from territories in Europe, Asia and Lat Am, the chance to reduce barriers to entry for non-English-language programming is already proving a real benefit. But this Sunny Side felt like the market where producers had truly got their game-plans together to build generative AI into the heart of their projects.

Whether bringing archive photographs to animated – and colourful – life, or conjuring long-dead celebrities’ voices to narrate their own written testimonies, it seems the key strategy for now is to keep at least one foot firmly planted in the evidence. But while the chance to create scale on shrinking budgets is inarguable, it remains to be seen how high-paying pubcasters and news channels respond to the “creative” liberties taken by these tools in documentaries, especially when outputting visuals which depart ever further from the real.