News

Mikko Pöllä and Roope Lehtinen, seasoned Finnish showrunners and co-founders of Fire Monkey, are bringing to market a handful of premium dramas in post and development.

Headlining their production slate under REinvent’s sales banner is the thriller “Enemy of the People,” from “Man in Room 301” helmer Mikko Kuparinen, currently in post.

Co-created by Lehtinen and Timo Varpio (“Easy Living”), the eight-part TV show boasts a stellar cast, including Kreeta Salminen, Mikko Nousiainen (“Peacemaker”), Tobias Zilliacus (“Beartown”), and Johannes Holopainen (“All the Sins”).

Co-penned by Varpio and Fire Monkey’s in-house writer Laura Suhonen, the thriller explores investigative reporting in an era of trolls and fake news. After writing a critical piece about the local town’s soccer star and biggest celebrity, involved in a dubious business scheme, reporter Katja Salonen finds herself drawn into a whirlpool of lies, deceit and abuse of power, in the middle of which...

Summerside sells The Liberation Of Skopje to First Brave/Jushi.

Italian sales company Summerside International has sold father-and-son directing team Rade and Danilo Serbedzija’s Second World War film The Liberation Of Skopje to China (First Brave/Jushi).

Set in 1941, when the Germans and their Bulgarian allies occupied the city of Skopje and took over local Jewish homes, the film depicts the suffering of the townspeople through the eyes of 11-year-old Zoran, whose father has joined the Yugoslavian partisan army to fight the occupiers and whose mother becomes involved with a German officer.

The Macedonia-Finland-Croatia co-production was Macedonia’s submission...

Sarajevo’s Avant Premieres section broadens scope and includes workshop on audience development and innovation

Launched two years ago, Sarajevo Film Festival’s Avant Premieres is a section that connects the festival’s film programme and industry section.

Presenting upcoming releases of local films, it includes public screenings of potenital box office hits, and industry screenings of trailers for new films for distributors and exhibitors.

This year, the section will introduce the Audience Development & Innovation Lab (Aug 18-19) for regional exhibitors, organized in collaboration with Europa Cinemas.

The workshop will focus on programming, marketing, audience development and social media, and will be led by Duncan Carson, marketing, communications and events manager at the UK-based Independent Cinema Office (Ico).

The goal is to strengthen the network of regional cinemas and to provide a platform where they can share strengths, weaknesses and examples of best practices.

Public screenings

The public screenings of Avant Premieres include three new films, and a...

Ivan Ostrochovský’s boxer drama Goat (Koza) has been named Best Film at the 20th Vilnius International Film Festival.

The film, which had its world premiere in the Berlinale’s Panorama section in February, won the ¨New Europe - New Names¨ competition at the festival, which ran from March 19 to April 2.

The film, about a former Olympic boxer who goes on a punishing ‘tour’ to raise some fast cash, also took home the Cicae Art Cinema Award.

Goat (Koza), which won the works in progress prize at last year’s Karlovy Vary, is handled internationally by fledgling sales company Pluto Film.

The ¨New Europe - New Names¨ jury, which included Chilean director Cristián Jiménez, Israeli actress Hadas Yaron, and Romanian actor Vlad Ivanov, gave its award for Best Director to Ukraine’s Myroslav Slaboshpytskiy for The Tribe and its acting honours to Hungary’s Márton Kristóf (Afterlife) and Bulgaria’s Margita Gosheva (The Lesson).

Meanwhile, the Baltic...

Chicago – In our latest action/war drama edition of HollywoodChicago.com Hookup: Film, we have 25 admit-two run-of-engagement movie passes up for grabs to the new film “5 Days of War” with Val Kilmer, Andy Garcia and Rupert Friend!

The film opens in Chicago on Sept. 2, 2011. “5 Days of War,” which is based on actual events, also stars Heather Graham, Dean Cain, Emmanuelle Chriqui, Richard Coyle, Mikko Nousiainen, Antje Traue, Rade Serbedzija, Mikheil Gomiashvili, Johnathon Schaech and Anna Walton from director Renny Harlin and writer Mikko Alanne based on the screenplay by David Battle.

To win your free run-of-engagement movie pass for “5 Days of War,” just answer our question in this Web-based submission form. That’s it! These movie passes are valid during the film’s theatrical run at Landmark Century Centre Cinema in Chicago. Directions to enter this HollywoodChicago.com Hookup and win can be found beneath the graphic below.

The movie...