London-based factual distributor TVF International has teamed up with Japanese production company Tokyovision for a coproduction about Japan’s animal kingdom, having recently sold series such as Arming the Arctic into the country.

Japan’s Wild Side (2×52′) is a blue-chip wildlife series that TVF’s senior acquisitions manager Sam Joyce, who has been managing the coproduction, described as potentially the company’s most ambitious copro yet.

TVF International and Tokyovision have previously collaborated on projects such as Ocean Wild (4×48′), which explored stunning underwater locations.

TVF International has already sold numerous titles to Japanese public broadcaster NHK, including Arming the Arctic (1×50′).

Produced by Wildcat Films and TVF International for RTL Germany, the doc explores rising geopolitical tensions in the Arctic and has also been picked up by YLE in Finland, NRK in Norway, RTVE in Spain, TVI in Portugal, ERR in Estonia and Arabic-language factual network Asharq Documentary.

NHK has also taken long-running series The Snake Master, produced by TV Burabha, which goes face-to-face with the rare and venomous snakes of Thailand.

Elsewhere in Japan, the distributor has licensed a package of world affairs documentaries to Japanese VoD platform Asia Docs.

The deal includes The Daughter Tree (1×80′), produced by Trinetra Productions for Arte, which follows a midwife and activist working in the Punjab region of India where thousands of pregnancies are aborted every year because of gender.

Also included is Lost & Found (1×86′), from Falls Family Films for NHK, which follows the extraordinary mission to reunite Japanese artefacts with their owners after they washed up on the coast of Canada a year after Japan was engulfed by a tsunami.

The VoD platform has also licensed two films produced by Mediacorp for CNA: From North Korea with Love (1×48′), which features exclusive access to a generation of influencers who have defected from North Korea, and Click to Ransom (1×48′), which goes inside a Japanese hospital in the midst of a ransomware attack.

The deals were brokered by Joyce, who oversees producer partnerships and coproductions in the region. Ayushi Singh, sales executive at TVF, now manages broadcaster relationships in the territory.