Earlier this month, we reported that a screener copy of In the Hands of Dante had leaked online from an unknown source.
The unreleased Julian Schnabel film, featuring a star cast, is officially set to premiere at the Venice Film Festival next month. However, pirates got early access.
The same was true for other independent films, including The Best Thing About Christmas, Agon, American Cryptids, Life Is, and Extreme Family, all of which leaked early. What stood out is that several titles had an Italian connection.
The source of the leaks was initially unclear, but new information shared with TorrentFreak shows that many, if not all the leaked films, were already publicly available on video-sharing platform Vimeo long before they appeared on pirate sites.
Post-production Studio Uploads on Vimeo
Multiple versions of In the Hand of Dante, using the shorthand “ITHOD,” were uploaded to the Vimeo channel of Augustus Color Srl. This is the name of a prominent Italian company specializing in color grading and digital post-production.
The upload dates range from June to October 2024, confirming the films were exposed for the better part of a year before they appeared on pirate sites. The most recent ‘edit’ on Vimeo is identical in length compared to the copy that leaked on pirate sites and also comes with a screener watermark.
This wasn’t the only film posted to the account. Augustus Color has over 1,000 videos on their Vimeo account which has been in use for more than seven years. The account uses the logo of the studio and also posted the official promotional reel, various edits, and several additional films.
After some digging, we also found the leaked Agon film on the same Vimeo account. Again, this copy was posted on the video sharing platform long before it appeared on pirate sites, suggesting this is where the leaks originated. The same account also shared many other films that were not posted to pirate sites.
Before publishing, we reached out to Augustus Color, requesting a comment on our findings, but the company did not respond. The company may have been under the impression that these uploads were not publicly accessible, as the official showreel is private.
There’s More, Much More
Not all recently leaked movies could be traced back to this Vimeo account. It’s a much broader issue. For example, The Best Thing About Christmas screener was also publicly available, posted on Vimeo by the official account weeks before it leaked.
A screenshot from the leak, shown below, notes that it’s a director’s cut. The same cut was also posted on Vimeo.
When we reached out to the filmmakers, they informed us that the screener was not meant to be publicly accessible. They believed that it had been shared privately with specific people. That is clearly not the case here.
Similar uploads are common elsewhere on the video platform. A copy of Extreme Family was published in early July by an account linked to a Vietnamese film organization, before it appeared on pirate sites.
Similarly, a copy of the film American Cryptids was uploaded to Vimeo by a Florida-based industry insider in early August. Soon after, a ‘leak’ appeared on pirate sites, days in advance of the official theatrical premiere on Friday, August 15.
The person who shared the American Cryptids film on Vimeo did not respond to our request for comment, but the upload is now password protected. This suggests that it wasn’t meant to be publicly accessible either.
The more we dig on Vimeo, the more films we find. These include dozens of unreleased films, but also several films that were posted on Vimeo longer ago, before their official releases. These are linked to the accounts of industry insiders, ranging from small production outfits to videographers’ personal accounts.
Without additional comments from the players involved, we don’t know if these public uploads were the result of a misunderstanding about Vimeo’s privacy settings or if there is more to it than that. Whatever the reason, it’s a bombshell and a wake-up call all the same.
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Note: we privately tested the privacy setting on Vimeo videos and that appears to work as intended.
From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.
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