In our December interview for the Distributor of the Month column, we returned to Italy to chat with Wanted Cinema CEO Anastasia Plazzotta. During our conversation, we discussed the socio-political engagement which sets Wanted apart, the successful campaigns surrounding Dreams [+lire aussi :
critique
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interview : Dag Johan Haugerud
fiche film] and No Other Land [+lire aussi :
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interview : Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham
fiche film], and the most recent market trends.

Cineuropa: How did your company come about and how has your mission evolved?
Anastasia Plazzotta: Wanted was founded in 2014 with an idealist objective which I’m still proud of today: bringing cinema which is capable of raising awareness, dismantling prejudices and highlighting uncomfortable realities, to Italy. The name implies it’s curated, but also borderline, because we want to be political, in the broadest sense of the term, through our films. We even drew up a manifesto to keep us on track: we’d like audiences to see Wanted as a brand of cinema which entertains but which always leaves food for thought too.

What titles have you worked on this year?
It’s been a special year. I’ve just got back from a Europa Distribution convention where we reflected upon what it means to be distributors: we’re treasure hunters, gamblers and dreamers because we have to dream about changing things a little bit, and with cinema, you can! This year, 2025, began with an Oscar going to No Other Land and, not long before that, the Tiger Award going to Fiume o morte! [+lire aussi :
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interview : Igor Bezinović
fiche film], both of which are “long runners”: slow growers with a long shelf life. No Other Land, which started out with 20–30 copies, earned over a million at the box office, becoming the most watched documentary. It aired on 15 November in its original language with subtitles, attracting upwards of 780,000 viewers. With RAI Play we’ll reach over a million. The impact was huge, from an ethical, political and social perspective. And then there was the Golden Bear which went to Dreams, which we’d bought way ahead of it being announced in Berlin. We made a last-minute acquisition in Venice and ended up bagging the Volpi Cup with La grazia [+lire aussi :
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fiche film]. Now we have Siamo attori in cinemas and we’re getting ready to distribute Winter in Sokcho [+lire aussi :
critique
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interview : Koya Kamura
fiche film].

How many titles do you handle each year?
Around 20–22, generally one fiction film and one documentary a month.

What about exploitation?
We follow the usual path: cinema, SVOD, TVOD and TV. We work a lot with MUBI, MyMovies and RAI, and less with Sky than we have in the past. Tapping into platforms’ interests is always more complicated.

How is the team organised?
There are 13–14 of us, staff and consultants combined, and we’ve always worked remotely. Marketing takes place in Milan, our commercial arm is in Rome and the management team is in Padua. Then there’s localisation, dubbing, and the team at our venue, Wanted Club. Almost all of us are women and very young women too: me and another colleague are the “old” ones.

Which audience groups are you looking to grow?
We’re constantly studying our audience, which has really changed. We want to take more risks, offer up films which don’t seem to have audiences, but which might find them in new forms. We’re targeting younger audiences, helped by having an equally young team who influence our tastes and our line-ups. We often keep films’ original titles: global audiences recognise them from festivals and ecosystems like Letterboxd.

Can you tell us about one of your recent successful film campaigns?
No Other Land is the strongest example. We spent a whole year laying the foundations for it: events, festivals, social media, focused hashtags, involvement from journalists, actors and associations... When we released the film in January, we already had lots of events lined up, and the political situation made the film even more urgent. We canvassed public opinion, involved ambassadors, created gadgets, took part in events, organised a screening at the Senate and a big event in Milan. And then there was the event with 28,000 students attending remotely from over 100 cinemas by way of Unisona: it was so powerful. Last but not least, the film was broadcast on RAI after screening in cinemas for a year, and then it spent time spent on MUBI. We’re also proud of the Norwegian trilogy Sex, Love, Dreams: three films in three months, with a shared graphic identity and good results in cinemas, on MUBI and soon on TV.

What about festivals and markets, how much do they matter?
A lot, especially Berlin and Cannes, which is where roughly 60% of our line-up comes from. Festivals help to launch films, but only if they get people’s attention. Major awards move the general public, whereas the smaller ones are more important to us than to viewers. In Italian festivals, it’s all about press coverage: not even awards will bring viewers in without column space.

What’s your relationship like with cinema operators, in a sector that’s also unstable politically speaking?
It’s a vital relationship, but an excessive number of titles makes everything harder. Distributors with links to cinema circuits have easier access; independent ones, like us, have to win over individual cinemas one by one. The real difficulty is the lack of planning: we find out on the Monday how many cinemas we’ll have access to on the Thursday, which makes it impossible to invest locally. Cinemas need more autonomy and more predictable programming.

I really hope Cineville finds its way to Italy: a monthly cinema card which is working really well in the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany and Austria. It’s a really powerful tool for getting young people back in cinemas: they take more chances and end up discovering arthouse films which they wouldn’t have chosen if they were just buying single tickets. I see it with my daughter in the Netherlands: she goes to the cinema non-stop and discovers extraordinary titles.