Kino Lorber Acquires North American Rights to Mark Cousins’ ‘The Story of Documentary Film’ (EXCLUSIVE)
Kino Lorber has acquired North American distribution rights to Mark Cousins’ 16-volume documentary series 'The Story of Documentary Film,' which explores over a century of global nonfiction cinema. The series has also been sold to international distributors including I Wonder, Filmin, and Madman, with Dogwoof handling world sales. It premiered at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival and was featured at Berlinale and Cannes Classics ahead of its North American release.
- ▪Kino Lorber acquired North American rights to Mark Cousins’ 'The Story of Documentary Film.'
- ▪The documentary series had its world premiere at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival and screened at Berlinale and Cannes Classics.
- ▪International sales were made to I Wonder in Italy, Filmin in Spain and Portugal, and Madman in Australia/New Zealand.
- ▪Dogwoof is handling world sales for the 16-volume documentary series.
- ▪Kino Lorber plans to release the film on all platforms later this year.
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| Original publisher | Variety |
| Canonical URL | https://variety.com/2026/film/global/kino-lorber-mark-cousins-the-story-of-documentary-film-1236751389/ |
| Publication time | Sun, 17 May 2026 09:05:43 +0000 |
| Retrieval time | 2026-05-17T09:22:12.988Z |
| Last seen | 2026-05-17T09:22:12.988Z |
| Headline source | Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite) |
| Excerpt source | publisher body |
| Excerpt method | First ~120 words (~800 chars) of extracted publisher body, fair-use limited. |
| Summary | WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer) |
| Summary source text | contentText |
| Citation coverage | Summary is a WeSearch-generated derivative; primary citation is the original publisher URL. |
| Cluster | 7489i_QcyVJL |
| Cluster logic | Grouped by semantic title/content similarity across sources within a rolling window. Same-publisher template collisions are excluded from coverage comparison. |
| Ranking reason | Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking. |
| Publisher visit | Yes — open original |
| Substitutes article? | No — link-out required for full text |
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| Indexing | May the item be indexed (stored, ranked, made findable)? | Allowed |
| Snippet | May a short excerpt of the publisher's text be shown? | Allowed |
| AI summary | May WeSearch generate its own short summary of the article? | Limited |
| Retrieval / RAG | May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation? | Not asserted |
| Model training | May the content be used to train AI models? | Not asserted |
| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
Basis: Derived from the published RSS/Atom feed. Contact: [email protected]. Reviewed: 2026-07-24.
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Home Film Global May 17, 2026 2:05am PT Kino Lorber Acquires North American Rights to Mark Cousins’ ‘The Story of Documentary Film’ (EXCLUSIVE) By Leo Barraclough Plus Icon Leo Barraclough International Features Editor LeoBarraclough Latest Keir Starmer Watches ‘Eurovision’ as Rivals Invade Home in ‘SNL U.K.’: ‘Eurovision’ Is the ‘Only Show Left With Any Integrity’ 10 hours ago Action-Thriller ‘The Butler,’ Starring Jean Reno and Tom Hollander, Sells to Multiple Territories (EXCLUSIVE) 19 hours ago Augenschein Moves Up a Level With Filmmaker-Driven Movies With Stars Attached Like Anne Hathaway, Ethan Hawke, Kristen Stewart 21 hours ago See All Courtesy of Hopscotch Films Kino Lorber has acquired North American distribution rights to Mark Cousins’ “The Story of Documentary Film,” a…
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