Samuel L. Jackson’s four part documentary series ‘Enslaved: The Lost History Of The Transatlantic Slave Trade’ is spreading World-wide to 130 territories. Fremantle is the company who sold the distribution rights. BBC Two picked up the UK distribution rights last month.
Fremantle has sold the distribution rights of CBC/Epix documentary series to HISTOIRE TV (in France), HISTORY (Germany), Movistar+ and RTVE (Spain), HBO Portugal (Portugal), BBC Earth (Poland), Discovery Film and Spektrum (Eastern Europe), Cosmote (Greece), BBC Persian (MENA), National Geographic (Latin America), M-Net (Africa, South Africa) and Cable & Wireless (Caribbean). The deals follows BBC Two’s own deal.
Enslaved tells the story of millions of enslaved Africans who were ripped from their homes and shipped against their will to the Americas by Western European slave traders. During the shown 400 years, over 12 million people were sold into slavery and taken onto slave ships, which saw them were packed tightly, kept in inhumane conditions. Over the course of these 4 centuries, over 2 million slaves died due to sickness on en-route or at sea during transportation.
With new diving technology, which uses advanced 3D mapping and ground penetrating radar, sunken slave ships have been found and examined on three continents, revealing new facts about the transatlantic slave trade. Deep sea divers will explore dive sites in the UK, Caribbean and Florida to try and discover the ships that sank during the slave trade, while in Ghana, England and the Americas, experts learn about the stories linked to these locations. Underwater artifacts, dramatic reconstruction, reportage and scientific investigation will be used to uncover the personal lives and stories of the enslaved people and their European captors, and examine the politics, economics and ideology that helped create and sustain the transatlantic slave trade.
Each episode of the show will take a different look at the transatlantic slave trade and it will be led by Hollywood legend and human rights activist Samuel L. Jackson, writer and broadcaster Afua Hirsch and investigative journalist Simcha Jacobovici.