^{Bruno Felix and Femke Wolting}

These are busy times for Amsterdam/Los Angeles-based Submarine, the multi-platform production house founded by Bruno Felix and Femke Wolting in 2000.

The interactive component of its Somali piracy documentary Last Hijack won an Emmy Award for best online production in April 2015. On the feature film front it is the main producer on Peter Greenaway’s Eisenstein in Guanajuato, which competed in Berlinale competition, as well as Eddy Terstall’s low budget Meet Me in Venice, about a Dutch woman who re-bonds with her long-absent Italian father during a musical journey on the Orient Express, due out in July.

The company also has a slew of other film, TV and transmedia works on the boil including the intriguing non-fiction project Bistro In Vitro, about how current levels of meat consumption are unsustainable (the project feature launch of a lab-grown meat restaurant in Amsterdam in May 2015).

“We have a huge amount of projects in the pipeline, I hardly know where to start,” says Felix, speaking by phone from the company’s Amsterdam offices in the city’s funky Lab 111 complex, an independent film hub located in a former medical anatomy laboratory, which is also home to Fu Works and the Binger.

The company works across all formats including traditional linear documentaries, feature films and animation as well as innovative digital story-telling productions, most of which are executed by the company’s subsidiary Submarine Channel. “I love television, I love film and I love games and I don’t see why I should limit myself to one format like a theatrically released film, especially when television is a way to reach a big audience,” says Felix about the company’s multi-platform approach. “I want to tell stories to make an impact. I’m not necessarily interested in the art for the art. If I can touch someone for a little moment with a film or a TV project or animated series that makes me happy.”

Another key aspect of Submarine, says Felix, is its international focus. “Because I run the company with Femke, who is based in Los Angeles, we try to be truly international in everything that we do, both in terms of the content and style as well as the financing,” he explains.

This can be seen in the financing of Wolting and Tommy Pallota’s award-winning project Last Hijack, exploring the Somali piracy issue through eyes of a pirate and a hijacked captain. The project consisted of a hybrid film combining animation, documentary and dramatised live action as well as an online production called Last Hijack Interactive. The latter was one of the most elaborate co-productions for an interactive work to date, involving German production company Razor Films and broadcaster ZDF as well as Dutch broadcaster IKON. Co-producers on the film comprised Ireland’s Still Films, Belgium’s Savage Film as well as Razor Film, ZDF and IKON.

The film screened at a number festivals as well as on TV screens across Europe and is also available on digital platforms such as i-Tunes and Netflix while the interactive component was showcased on the websites of Dutch newspaper NCR Handelsblad and Germany’s ZDF, and Submarine’s own SubmarineChannel.com

After Cannes Felix will be in Annecy with a number of new projects including feature-length animation Vincent, based on Barbara Stok’s graphic novel about Vincent van Gogh. The €2.5m project is a co-production with Belgian Walking the Dog.