Rise and Shine World Sales, the Berlin company that sells documentaries to broadcasters, platforms and distributors worldwide, is now selling directly to viewers. Its streaming service, Rise and Shine Channel, launched on Saturday 14 November, run with the company’s German distribution arm, Rise and Shine Cinema. A subscription costs €3 ($3.30) a month or €30 ($33) a year, and viewers who sign up before 30 November get a 30-day free trial, according to the company’s statement, reported by Business Doc Europe, and the service’s own page.
The idea is a short list rather than a vast library. Subscribers get a rotating selection of about 10 documentaries, which the service says will be refreshed with two new titles a month; the founders speak of “one or two”. A separate shop sells or rents other films from the catalogue to viewers who do not subscribe.
Key facts
- Service: Rise and Shine Channel, launched 14 November 2026, documentaries only
- Owners: Rise and Shine World Sales with its German distribution arm, Rise and Shine Cinema; founders Anja Dziersk and Stefan Kloos
- Price: €3 ($3.30) a month or €30 ($33) a year, plus buy and rent options; free 30-day trial for sign-ups before 30 November
- Reach: offered worldwide, though some titles are geo-blocked in some territories because of existing licences
- Catalogue: 12 titles on the subscription page at launch, all from the company’s sales catalogue
What is on it
When FilmBunch checked the service on Saturday afternoon, the subscription page listed 12 documentaries, slightly more than the “around 10” the founders describe. They include Beatrice Minger and Christoph Schaub’s E.1027 – Eileen Gray and the House by the Sea, Magnus Gertten’s Nelly & Nadine, Arthur Franck’s The Helsinki Effect, Christian Frei’s Blame, Susanne Regina Meures’s Raving Iran, Andreas Koefoed and Jørgen Leth’s Music for Black Pigeons and Pamela Hogan’s The Day Iceland Stood Still. The other five are Girl Gang, The Mies van der Rohes, A Sister’s Tale, La Singla and Hi, AI. The Day Iceland Stood Still and E.1027 are also on sale or for rent in the shop.
According to the company, several of the launch titles were previously available to stream only in some territories, or not at all. Films are offered in their original language with English subtitles, with German-language or German-subtitled versions alongside. The service runs on Vimeo OTT, the white-label platform formerly called VHX, according to the site’s code.
Why a small catalogue
Dziersk and Kloos present the short list as a cure for time lost to browsing. They pose the obvious objection themselves (“Why do you only have around 10 films on your streaming platform? Other platforms offer many more films”) and answer that viewers spend too long scrolling “endless catalogues”. The price was kept low, they said, so that “everybody can use” the channel. Because some titles will be blocked in some countries, they intend always to carry more than 10 films, and they plan to add curator introductions and background material over time.
The market it enters
The launch falls during the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA), which opened on 12 November and runs its Docs for Sale market alongside the festival. It also comes two days after the European Audiovisual Observatory published its study of the documentary market. The study found that only 47% of documentaries produced get a commercial cinema release, meaning at least 1,000 admissions, and that 62% of European documentary admissions come from the film’s home country. On Netflix, Amazon, Disney+ and HBO Max, in the nine EU markets it measured, European titles took 40% of documentary viewing time in 2024–2025.
Our reading
For a documentary sales company, a direct service is a way to earn from library titles in territories where they never sold, without disturbing the deals it does make; the geo-blocking is the sign that existing buyers come first. A low price and a short list keep the cost of the experiment small. Whether it becomes real revenue depends on subscriber numbers, which the company has not disclosed, and on whether two new films a month are enough to stop subscribers cancelling.
Sources
- Business Doc Europe, Berlin-based Rise and Shine launches SVOD channel, 14 November 2026 (company statement and founders' quotes)
- Rise and Shine Channel, launch page and catalogue, read 14 November 2026 (FilmBunch check of the live service)
- Rise and Shine World Sales, company site
- European Audiovisual Observatory documentary report, as reported by FilmBunch, 12 November 2026