{"id":227873,"date":"2025-12-11T18:51:09","date_gmt":"2025-12-11T18:51:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/227873\/"},"modified":"2025-12-11T18:51:09","modified_gmt":"2025-12-11T18:51:09","slug":"dogwoof-acquires-2026-sundance-competition-doc-sentient","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/227873\/","title":{"rendered":"Dogwoof Acquires 2026 Sundance Competition Doc \u2018Sentient\u2019\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tEXCLUSIVE:<\/strong>\u00a0Documentary sales, distribution, and production outfit Dogwoof<\/a> has acquired world sales rights to Sentient, directed by Tony Jones, which will debut in the World Cinema Documentary Competition at the 2026 Sundance<\/a> Film Festival.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThe film\u2019s synopsis reads: Sentient takes viewers inside the secret world of high-security laboratories, where researchers experiment on animals while grappling with the profound psychological toll of their work. Monkeys, among the most prized subjects, are caught in a \u201ccare-kill complex\u201d, loved and studied, yet ultimately harmed.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe film was granted unprecedented access to one of the largest animal laboratories in the U.S., the University of Washington in Seattle, revealing both the scale of animal testing and the human cost behind it. Amid this, the story of Dr Lisa Jones Engel unfolds: a decorated primatologist who, after decades working with chimps and monkeys, realised the profound harm of her life\u2019s work. Sentient exposes the hidden realities of animal testing and is a deeply human and complex journey that forces us to question: what cost is too high for scientific progress?<\/p>\n

\n\tDogwoof will handle worldwide sales, including North America, presenting the film to buyers at Sundance. The deal was brokered directly by Dogwoof\u2019s Chief Content Officer, Oli Harbottle, with the filmmaking team at In-Films, the Aussie doc outfit led by Ivan O\u2019Mahoney. O\u2019Mahoney served as a producer on this project. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cEvery now and then, a film comes along which has the potential to create fundamental change in our attitude towards animals,\u201d Harbottle said in a statement. \u201cSentient is a brilliantly nuanced look at the very hot-button issue of animal testing, a debate which is very much back in the spotlight in countries across the world, and it\u2019s sure to cause a splash when launched to international audiences.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tSentient is an In Films production. Production funding came from Screen Australia, Growing Kindness, and Mind the Gap Finance.<\/p>\n

\n\tJones directs from a screenplay he co-wrote with Rachel Grierson-Johns. Jones is one of Australia\u2019s most respected journalists. He hosted the nationally broadcast ABC programs Lateline and Q&A for over two decades.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThe executive producer is Sarah Ferguson. Grierson-Johns edited the doc, with additional editing by Orly Danon, sound design by Nigel Christensen, music composition by Helena Czajka, cinematography by Andy Taylor, Aaron Smith, and Vanessa Carr, and graphics by Kingdom of Ludd.<\/p>\n

\n\tO\u2019Mahoney added, \u201cThis stellar film by Tony Jones has been a long time in the making. To see it go to Sundance with Dogwoof in our corner is just about the best outcome we could have hoped for. Here\u2019s to challenging preconceived notions, opening minds, and making a valuable contribution to the discourse in a complex and crucially important issue.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"EXCLUSIVE:\u00a0Documentary sales, distribution, and production outfit Dogwoof has acquired world sales rights to Sentient, directed by Tony Jones,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":227874,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[263],"tags":[122212,18,117,19,17,327,16998,16999],"class_list":{"0":"post-227873","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-dogwoof","9":"tag-eire","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-ie","12":"tag-ireland","13":"tag-movies","14":"tag-sundance","15":"tag-sundance-film-festival"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115702443753958755","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227873","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=227873"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227873\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/227874"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=227873"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=227873"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=227873"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}