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HBO Europe, which operates across Eastern Europe and in the Netherlands, had a strong year with original documentaries.

The European arm of the Time Warner premium TV unit had two documentaries in the New Directors section of the San Sebastian Film Festival in 2014: Romanian filmmaker Alexander Nanau's Toto and His Sisters and Hungarian director Marcell Gero's Cain's Children. Toto won awards at various festivals, including for best international doc in Zurich, for best doc in Warsaw and the ecumenical jury prize at Dok Leipzig. Other docs in which HBO Europe had a hand also won some honors and caused buzz.

Plus, the Sundance Film Festival late in the year announced that Chuck Norris vs Communism would get its world premiere in the World Cinema Documentary Competition, marking the first time an HBO Europe co-production has been selected for the festival.

Read more HBO Europe Launching Romanian Crime Drama 'Umbre' HBO Europe is reaping the benefits of its documentary work in recent years, which has been part of its push into original fare, including drama, such as Burning Bush, which is mirroring the U.S. parent company's strategy. Executive vp of original programming and production Antony Root started at his post in 2011. HBO Europe had done local docs for local people, but he decided to focus on fare with appeal beyond a single market. In 2012, he hired Hanka Kastelicova as executive producer, documentaries, and she has focused on taking doc output to the next level.

"Our strategy is linked to the idea of establishing something truly distinctive," Root told The Hollywood Reporter. "Documentaries, like original fiction, help with our branding, since HBO is a subscription service. There is a very deep commitment in the company to continue to grow the original portion of programming."

He added: "When originals work, they connect you much more deeply to your audience. On the fiction side, originals can quite clearly outperform the top end of American programming. We approach documentaries with the same vigor. I see them really as closely related. We are about filmmaking." "Like in fiction, we always wanted to do distinctive pictures by strong filmmakers," Root added about the documentary strategy. "We look for strong narratives and emotional subjects rather than the traditional European journalistic reportage, because we ideally want a documentary to work in all 15 territories of HBO Europe or even more widely in the international community."

Kastelicova told THR: "We work very closely with the filmmaker throughout the process, including [where possible] in the development stage. Filmmakers tend to have a view just for local audiences. We are encouraging them to tell the story in an international visual language to appeal to a broader audience. I believe films must travel.... We really want to encourage directors to use film language, not just words." That also makes HBO Europe's docs distinct from those of European public broadcasters, she argued.

Read more HBO Europe Presses Ahead With Original Drama Content

Root said that is key as his team measures the success of the docs not only via viewership, but also by their ability to cause debate and play well at film festivals, as well as garner press and social media buzz. The goal of focusing on a wider audience is helped by the fact that HBO Europe finances many of its docs with such European partners as Arte and Germany's ZDF, even though in some cases it funds them all on its own. While social issues and arts have often been the focus, the company is also open to doing sports and various other topics. "Some are lighter, others are darker," said Root. "We are looking for a mix. And our goal is to have 12 a year, so we can do a premiere every month in our documentary slot on Thursday that we have across all our 15 territories." Looking back at 2014, Kastelicova told THR: "Over the last year, we have had many successes. We want to be seen as leading producer of documentaries in the region." That is beginning to be the case.

Among HBO Europe's recent docs, which have screened at film festivals, have been:

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HBO Europe Scores With Documentaries