According to Variety, EBay founder Jeff Skoll's Participant Prods. is fully financing and producing docu, The World According to Sesame Street, from co-directors Linda Goldstein Knowlton and Linda Hawkins Costigan. Film, which will compete at Sundance and shop for a distrib, is about the complexities and challenges Sesame Workshop faces in producing international versions of the world's most watched television program.
Docu was filmed in Bangladesh, Kosovo and South Africa, where "Sesame Street" producers have tailored the program to local auds, introducing, for instance, an HIV-positive puppet in AIDS-ravaged South Africa.
Participant signed onto the project after they had begun shooting. Sesame Workshop did not put up any money.
Skoll founded Participant with an eye to financing and producing films that advance social causes. The first three features nabbing Participant money were this season's North Country, Syriana and Good Night, And Good Luck.
Participant also helped finance docu An Inconvenient Truth, featuring Al Gore, which will play at Sundance's Spectrum section. Earlier this year, Participant also teamed with ThinkFilm on docu Murderball.
George Clooney, Matt Damon, Jeffrey Wright, Chris Cooper, William Hurt, Tim Blake Nelson, Amanda Peet, Christopher Plummer, Alexander Siddig, Mazhar Munir
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