News

The CineLink Work in Progress section at Sarajevo Film Festival, which showcases feature film projects from Southeast Europe, the Middle East and North Africa, has selected eight fiction and three documentary projects.

Among the subjects of the projects are a teen threesome in North Macedonia that leads to a troublesome pregnancy, a shipwreck hiding a sacred amulet on the Atlantic coast of the Sahara, a crumbling blue bus in 1950s Turkey, and mysterious aunt in rural Serbia.

The projects will be presented to international film funders, sales agents, distributors, broadcasters and festival programmers with the aim of helping them be completed and boost their distribution chances.

The films “explore the complexities of human nature and the fragility of social consensus, and the tensions between collective expectations and personal anxieties,” the festival said. “What unites these films is a shared sensitivity to the nuances of human relationships, between generations, individuals, and communities.

Kosara Mitic’s teenage drama 17 is among the 11 features participating in the work-in-progress strand of CineLink Industry Days (August 16-21), the industry platform of Sarajevo Film Festival.

Macedonian director Mitic’s debut feature will follow a 17-year-old girl who gets pregnant after a threesome with her classmates; and her attempts to hide the pregnancy become more difficult during a graduation excursion.

Scroll down for the full list of titles

The film is produced by Tomi Salkovski for North Macedonia’s Black Cat Production, in co-production with Serbia’s Art&Popcorn and Slovenia’s December.

The Sarajevo selection includes eight fiction features,...

The 59th International Karlovy Vary Film Festival passed by in a blur this week after playing host to a stream of largely uncontroversial guests compared to previous years. With appearances by Festival President’s Award winners Vicky Krieps, Dakota Johnson and Peter Sarsgaard, plus a special cameo from Michael Douglas, it was left to Crystal Globe for Outstanding Artistic Contribution winner Stellan Skarsgård to generate headlines, which he did rather spectacularly by describing venerated Swedish auteur Ingmar Bergman as “manipulative” and “the only person I know who cried when Hitler died”.

The lineup of this year’s Crystal Globe Competition was similarly strong, a fact reflected in the sharing out of the awards; all the word-of-mouth titles seemed to win something, which isn’t always the case. That said, the winner was something of a surprise at a festival where the strongest films featured female leads (Broken Voices; Don’t Call Me Mama...

Kviff Eastern Promises, the Karlovy Vary Film Festival’s industry section and film market, announced its winners Tuesday. Ștefan Bîtu-Tudoran’s “Battalion Records” won the Eurimages Co-production Development Award worth 20,000 Euros, with the Eurimages Special Co-production Development Award for a Ukrainian project going to Yelizaveta Smith’s “In Vacuo.”

“Battalion Records” is Bîtu-Tudoran’s feature debut and follows a group of young artists who hijack Romania’s oldest music studio to stage a cultural revolution, taking the staff hostage to film a musical manifesto against Romania’s cultural decay. The jury called the film a “bold debut that confronts the decay of culture,” saying they were pleased to award the project “because sometimes, to make people listen, you must turn things upside down – and this absurdist heist comedy does so with rebellious energy.”

“In Vacuo” trails a young archaeologist who returns to her hometown to sell her missing father’s apartment,...

Production is underway in Kosovo on Hatixhe And Shaban, the new feature from Exile filmmaker Visar Morina.

The feature will shoot for 40 days in Kosovan capital Pristina and the village of Sllakofc. Astrit Kabashi and Flonja Kodheli lead the cast, alongside Alban Ukaj, Tristan Halilaj and Refet Abazi.

Morina wrote the film with Doruntina Basha. It follows a couple living in a village with their three daughters, who must move to the capital looking for work when a family member steals their 12 cows.

The film is produced by Morina’s company Vicky Bane that he runs with Pia Hellenthal, with Sophie Ahrens,...

Karlovy Vary has revealed winners for its market and industry sections: Works in Progress, Works in Development – Feature Launch & Intensive Queer, Works in Development – Kviff Talents, and First Cut+ Works in Progress.

The 2024 Kviff Eastern Promises winners comprise:

Works in Progress

Jury:

Gabor Greiner, COO, Films Boutique sales company

Kyle Greenberg, Head of Marketing and Distribution, Utopia Distribution

Başak Emre, film producer and festival director, Festival on Wheels

In this year’s showcase, a total of twelve feature and documentary projects from countries in Central and Eastern Europe, the Balkans, the former Soviet Union, the Middle East and North Africa were presented.

“The 2024 Kviff Works in Progress Jury is proud to present three awards out of this year’s programme. Each project transcended language and borders to present stories deserving and demanding of a global stage. Each film, unique in its own format and subjects, delves not only into the shifting cultural and political landscape,...

A fresh, new talent in North Macedonia cinema, Dina Duma is currently in go kick-flip mode with her sophomore feature. FilmNewEurope report that production began this past month (in Skopje) on Skateboarding Is Not for Girls — and will wrap in a couple of weeks from now. The North Macedonia, Belgium, Slovenia and Croatia coproduction was selected for the 2022 Session of the 44th Cannes Residence. Her debut, Sisterhood, was selected to represent her country in 2021. Efqar Abaz, Jefrina Jashari, Simonida Selimović and Ganimet Abdula star. Producers include Macedonian’s Sisters and Brother Mitevski’s Labina Mitevska, Terminal 3’s Vanja Sremac, Vertigo’s Danijel Hočevar, Entre Chien et Loup’s Sébastien Delloye.…...

In her sophomore feature, contemporary fairytale “Rift in the Ice,” Serbian director Maja Miloš revisits the underbelly of Serbian society and explores women’s integrity and sexuality in the harsh reality of contemporary Serbia. The film is a co-production between Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, Italy, Netherlands and Montenegro, and features in the works-in-progress section of Cinelink, the Sarajevo Film Festival’s industry program. It is hoping to woo partners and funds for completion.

Miloš explains that “Rift in the Ice” is a Cinderella story set in Serbia in the period following the Balkans War, and posits the idea that when a young woman embraces her sexuality she becomes a kind of princess. “It is also a hero’s journey going from the lowest ranks of society to the highest.“

The ice in the title refers to the background of the protagonist, an ice skater. “I wanted her to be in sports...

The Karlovy Vary International Film Festival’s Eastern Promises industry strand has unveiled the winners of it’s project showcases, which took place at the fest from July 2-4.

This year’s edition presented 27 film projects that were screened across the festival’s three established programs: Works in Progress, Works in Development – Feature Launch, and First Cut+, competing for awards with a total value of 115,000 Eur.

In the Works in Progress sidebar, the post-production development prize went to filmmaker Klára Tasovská for her feature I Am Not Everything I Want to Be. The pic is produced by Lukáš Kokeš. The award consists of post-production services in Upp and Soundsquare.

Discussing the pic, the jury, featuring Esra Demirkiran, Festival Coordinator, Trt Sinema, Petr Tichý, CEO and Chairman of the Board of Directors, Barrandov Studio, Oscar Alonso, Festival Manager, Latido Films, Nadia Ben Rachid, Film Editor, and Agustina Chiarino, Producer, Bocacha Films,...

Assel Aushakimova’s dark comedy about journalism in Kazakhstan “Bikechess” has won the Karlovy Vary Film Festival’s Works in Progress award, which runs as part of the festival’s industry section, Eastern Promises. The section is focused on feature film projects from Central and Eastern Europe, the Balkans, the former Soviet Union, the Middle East and North Africa.

The Kazakh film follows Dina, who works as a journalist for the national television station. The stories she is asked to report on are becoming increasingly absurd and full of praise for the government. Her love life is limited to a few secret meetings with her married camera­man. Dina looks after her young sis­ter, a lesbian activist, who regularly finds herself in trouble with the au­thorities.

The jury said: “Pointing out through comedic eyes the absurdity to which the state can go to hide deeper issues, the jury...

Yemeni film “The Burdened,” directed by Amr Gamal, won the Works in Progress Post-Production Development Award in Eastern Promises, the industry section of the Karlovy Vary Intl. Film Festival on Tuesday.

The story, written by Gamal and Mazen Refaat, centers on Ahmed, Isra’a and their three children in Aden, Yemen in 2019. Both parents lose their jobs and suffer from the economic crisis. The movie starts with Isra’a finding out about her pregnancy at a time when they cannot cover the expenses of a new child, leading them to make difficult decisions in order to survive.

The jury said it was “impressed by the director’s brave approach to tackling this sensitive subject against all odds.”

The Yemen-Sudan coproduction is produced by Mohsen Alkhalifi, Gamal, Amjad Abu Alala and Mohammed Alomda.

The Works in Progress Karlovy Vary Iff Award went to “Endless Summer Syndrome,” directed by Kaveh Daneshmand, an...

Graham Foy’s Canada-us title ‘The Maiden’ takes First Cut+ prize.

Kaveh Daneshmand’s Turkey-France co-production Endless Summer Syndrome is among the winners from Karlovy Vary International Film Festival’s Eastern Promises industry section, which held its awards this evening (July 5).

The film received the Karlovy Vary Iff Works in Progress award. It is currently in post-production ahead of a planned January 2023 launch, and will be the feature debut for Iranian filmmaker Daneshmand, who is based in the Czech Republic.

Scroll down for the full list of winners

Endless Summer Syndrome is a drama about a woman who receives an anonymous phone call,...

Karlovy Vary Intl. Film Festival’s industry section, Eastern Promises, has unveiled its lineup of 35 film projects, which will be showcased during the Works in Progress, Works in Development – Feature Launch, First Cut+ Works in Progress and Odesa International Film Festival Works in Progress presentations. The most promising projects will receive awards totaling Euros 125,000.

The showcasing of projects to industry professionals will take place in Karlovy Vary during Kviff Industry Days. On July 4, are Works in Progress and Works in Development – Feature Launch; on July 5, First Cut+ Works in Progress and Oiff WiP Selection.

For Works in Progress, 10 fiction and documentary feature films in the late stage of production or post-production from the countries of Central and Eastern Europe, the Balkans, the former Soviet Union, the Middle East, and North Africa have been selected. The prize will be decided by jury members Dennis Ruh (European Film Market), Óscar Alonzo (Latido Films...

European Film Promotion, an agency that promotes European filmmaking worldwide, has launched its flagship program, Producers on the Move, as a virtual series of events, replacing the physical events that usually take place at the canceled Cannes Film Festival.

The 20 up-and-coming producers from 20 European countries selected by Efp for the 21st edition of the program met digitally for the first time on Monday, where they were greeted by Efp president Markéta Santrochová.

Santrochová said that although the program had shifted to a virtual version, the essentials remained: “Connecting talented producers from across Europe, facilitating exchange and cooperation, and strengthening their industry networks.”

She added: “This has been Efp’s goal ever since the program was created in 2000, and it has become even more crucial now that the film landscape has changed, and co-operation, support and a sense of solidarity among film professionals are more important than ever before.”

On Tuesday,...

‘Pigeon’s Milk’ won the top €100,000 prize.

Pigeon’s Milk, a Russia-Moldovia co-production directed by debut Moldovan filmmaker Eugen Maryan, won the Works in Progress award of the Eastern Promises industry section of the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival this year.

The award is worth €100,000 in post-production services, including a cash prize of €10,000 from Germany’s Barrandov Studios.

“The film tells the story of a 16 year- old boy who lives in the unique location of Transnistria,” explained the film’s co-producer Anna Shalashina of Russia’s Rock Films. “The area claimed its independence from Moldova in 1992 but it’s not...

God Exists, Her Name is Petrunija

Macedonia’s Teona Strugar Mitevska fifth feature is the intriguingly titled God Exists, Her Name is Petrunija. Produced by Labina Mitevska through Sisters and Brother Mitesvski Production, and co-produced by Entre Chien et Loup, Vertigo Productions and Spiritus Movens, Mitevska employs her I Am From Titov Veles Belgium cinematographer Virginie Saint-Martin. Newcomer Zorica Nusheva makes her debut as Petrunija. Mitesvka’s 2004 debut How I Killed a Saint went to Rotterdam and her 2007 title I Am From Titov Veles won a Special Jury Prize at the Sarajevo Film Festival and was programmed in Berlin’s 2008 Panorama Program.…...

Trieste event welcomed 350 industry professionals this year.

Women producers were the big winners at the seventh edition of Trieste’s When East Meets West (Wemw) co-production forum, which was attended by more than 350 industry professional from over 30 countries.

The Wemw jury awarded the Cnc Development Award to Italian producer Erica Barbiani for her pitch of Hungarian director Peter Kerekes’ new documentary Wishing On A Star.

Two free accreditations to Cannes’ Producers Network went to Cecilia Frugiuele for Bosnian filmmaker Una Gunjak’s debut feature Alfa and to Georgia’s Tekla Machavariani for Marine Gulbiani’s documentary Before Father Is Back, about two Muslim girls waiting for their fathers to come home from abroad.

The Turkish producer-director team of Anna Maria Aslanoglu and Nazli Elif Durlu went home with the Flow Postproduction Award for Durlu’s feature debut Zuhal.

Film London’s Helena Mackenzie and Mia Co-Production Market’s Alexia De Vito were in Trieste to present the Trl...

Festival’s industry strand crowns work-in-progress winners from Macedonia and Ukraine.

The Grand Prix of FilmFestival Cottbus (8-13 November) went to Russia for the fourth time in the last six years, with filmmaker Ivan I. Tverdovsky taking the top award for his second feature Zoology after also winning top honours for his debut Corrections Class in 2014.

The other previous winners from Russia had been Angelina Nikonova in 2011 with Twilight Portrait and Alexander Veledinsky in 2013 with The Geographer Who Drank His Globe Away.

Moreover, Tverdovsky is the third film-maker to win Cottbus’s top prize twice in the festival’s 26-year history following Slovakia’s Martin Sulik (1993: Everything I Like and 1995: The Garden) and Serbia’s Oleg Novkovic (2006: Tomorrow Morning and 2010: White White World).

The international jury, which included veteran Israeli producer Marek Rosenbaum and Serbian actress-director Mirjana Karanovic, described Zoology as ¨an original and emotional story about loneliness, love, hope and...

Projects from Italy, Ireland, Hungary and Poland were the winners at this year’s edition of the When East Meets West (Wemw) co-production market.

The market featured 22 international projects, comprising 12 fiction feature films and 10 documentaries from 29 countries.

Carlo Zoratti’s La Vita Nuova, a mix between documentary and fiction about a group of people re-enacting their dreams as a form of spiritual healing, received the Wemw Development Award at an awards ceremony in Trieste’s Palazzo del Governo on Tuesday evening (Jan 20).

The €1.4m production by Zoratti’s own Udine-based production outfit Alpis has Germany’s DETAiLFILM onboard as a co-producer again after they worked together on Zoratti’s previous film, the feature documentary debut The Special Need.

A documentary was also the winner of the new Egg Digital Cinema Award which was given to Dublin-based Jeremiah Cullinane of Planet Korda Pictures for his production of Lithuanian-born writer director Olga Cernovaite’s Butterfly City.

This creative...

10 European actors to be celebrated by Efp in Berlin.

The UK’s Maisie Williams and Denmark’s Joachim Fjelstrup are among ten European acting talents to watch who have been selected for the line-up of European Film Promotion’s (Efp) Shooting Stars showcase at the 65th Berlinale (Feb 5-15).

An international jury of film professionals comprising Slovenian producer Danijel Hocevar, Polish director Malgorzata Szumowska, Swedish actress Eva Röse, UK film journalist Damon Wise, and French casting director Nathalie Cheron made its selection of six actresses and four actors from 23 nominations submitted by Efp member organisations.

The line-up for the 18th edition of Shooting Stars - with their nominated films - is as follows:

- Denmark: Joachim Fjelstrup (Itsi Bitsi)

- Finland: Emmi Parviainen (The Princess Of Egypt)

- Germany: Jannis Niewöhner (Sapphire Blue)

- Iceland: Hera Hilmer (Life In A Fishbowl)

- Ireland: Moe Dunford (Patrick’s Day)

- Lithuania: Aistė Diržiūtė (The Summer Of Sangaile)

- Spain:...

A coalition of film professionals from the EU’s new Member States is likely to be one of the results of the Audiovisual Summit in Warsaw this week.

Tentatively called New Europe Coalition (NEC), the initiative aims to raise the profile of the new Member States and their audiovisual industries within political institutions on national and European level, with public broadcasters and in the European film industry at large.

“We are completely dissipated and the visibility of our countries is not what it used to be - or should be - so there is a need to work together,” said Hrvoje Hribar, CEO of the Croatian Audiovisual Centre, at the end of the two-day event.

In addition, Polish producer-director Dariusz Jablonski (Apple Film) announced that a follow-up meeting to take the next step and launch NEC would be held during next February’s Berlinale at the offices of Scripteast.

Recommendations

A series of recommendations were drawn from the...

I had planned to see Circles (Serbia, directed by Srdan Golubovic) because my visits over the past 2 years to Romania, Poland, Lithuania and Bosnia and Herzegovina (Sarajevo) have increased my interest in Central and Eastern Europe where the people are looking up (vs. in Western Europe where they are looking down). Now it has been submitted for the Academy Award Nomination for Best Foreign Language Film and so I reprint my interview here which I did during Sundance earlier this year.

Sarajevo itself is especially remarkable as the only place in Europe where there has been a war since I was born. From 1991 to 1999 Serbia was involved in the Yugoslav Wars - the war in Slovenia, the war in Croatia, the war in Bosnia and the war in Kosovo. During this period, Slobodan Milošević was the authoritarian leader of Serbia, which was in turn part of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. This was was a war between people who spoke a common language but were split along religious lines, the Serbs being Eastern Orthodox and the Bosnians, Kosovians and Croations being Muslim.

The country known as Yugoslavia had been unified from 1918 to 1991-- first under a king as The Kingdom of Yugoslavia until 1941 and then as the Social Republic of Yugoslavia. Even as the Social Republic of Yugoslavia, it was a country more liberal then the other communist countries. It was a socialist republic open to west; its people could travel, the people had good jobs, it was more an example of socialism than of communism. Its geographical location was also at a true crossroad between east and west, formerly Ottomon and Muslim and at the same time very Eastern Orthodox and Catholic.

When the Ussr collapsed, Sarajevo, situated in the break-off nation Bosnia and Herzogovina was surrounded by Christian Serbs who bombarded the cities of the nation which they saw more as Muslim than as Christian in order to annex the land.

My dear Berlin friend, Geno Lechner from Berlin asked me to see it because she is in it. She plays the German wife of the protagonist. And my good friend Mickey Cottrell, of Inclusive PR is the publicist for Circles from the time it was in Sundance 2013's World Dramatic Competition and has also asked me to revise and repost what I wrote in Sundance.

So here it is:

Circles ripples out as a stone dropped in a placid lake, concentrically creating moral complexities for a group of people as their story strands emerge from one fateful moment.

Marco, a Serbian soldier on leave from the Serbo-Croatian War in 1993, returns to his Bosnian hometown. When three fellow soldiers accost Haris, a Muslim kiosk vendor, Marco intervenes, and it costs him his life.

Twelve years later, the war is over but the wounds remain open. Marco's father is rebuilding a church when the son of one of Marco's killers appears looking for work. Meanwhile, in Belgrade, Marco's friend Nabobs, a renowned surgeon, debates whether or not to operate on another of Marco's killers. And in Germany, Haris, now married with a family (Geno Lechner and her two daughters) strives to repay his debt to Marco's widow who arrives at his door seeking refuge.

John Nein, Sundance Senior Programmer says, "Srdan Golubovic's third feature employs a multifaceted, yet simple, structure that contemplates revenge, redemption, and reconciliation. Aware of how easily hatred and violence can create life-shattering ripples, he looks at the consequences of moral courage and asks whether a heroic act can generate ripples of another kind."

Circles was financed with funds from Serbia, Germany, France, Croatia, and Slovenia. Its international sales agent is Memento. Circles also screened in the Berlin Film Festival's Forum.

It is very important for the film’s director, Srdan Golubovic, that Circles receive wide distribution. It is based upon the true story of Srdjan Aleksic, a Serbian soldier who saved the life of his neighbor. When Golubovic read the story some years ago, he was against the war but on the sidelines watching, occasionally demonstrating against it, but not a part of it. He chose not to remake the story of the man then but to make it contemporary in order to close the book of his own private feelings about the war.

The man is universal in that he is saving a man, not "an enemy". The escaped man moved into a German world, which at the time looked very much like his own world, sparse, unattractively Soviet in style. However, he found his fortune there and created a life. The actor, Aleksandar Bercek, says that when he met the real Srdjan Aleksic, he said to him, "Now I am walking; it could have been different. I could have been lying down." You will see in a Google search that the memory of Srdjan is very much alive today. The real man's grave is visited yearly by the survivor he saved and by all the former Yugoslavians in the area of Serbia, Bosnia, Herzogovina, Croatia and Slovenia. He has received a posthumous medal of honor and has streets named after him in several cities.

This is one of the rare films which unites everybody; it is about forgiveness and reconciliation. And as such it deserves very wide distribution. And as a work of heroic art, it deserves to be seen by many people. We hope you will visit Memento during Berlin and place your orders. For those of you who are not distributors going to market to acquire films, we hope you will have a chance to see this film in your local theaters or homes.

Srdan Golubovic’s earlier film from 2007, The Trap, garnered great acclaim and was Serbia’s submission for an Academy Award nomination.

When director Srdan Golubovic and producer Jelena Mitrovic and I spoke during Sundance, they spoke of what a great surprise Sundance was to them. They found the people very warm. The audiences were totally open, very curious and emotionally connected. It is very rare for Srdan to find an audience that is not afraid to ask questions and eager to talk about the film. And, unlike at most film festivals, at Sundance, they saw the programmers every day and were always able to speak to them. As there were not too many films in competition — 12 in World Cinema section as opposed to 16 last year — the attention they received from the Sundance personnel and volunteers was very special.

Read the praise received by The Hollywood Reporter

Further information:

Serbian with English subtitles, 2012, 112 minutes, color, Serbia/Germany/France/Croatia/Slovenia, World Dramatic Competiton at Sundance, Forum at the Berlinale

Cast and Credits

Director: Srdan Golubovic

Screenwriters: Srdjan Koljevic, Melina Pota Koljevic

Producers: Jelena Mitrovic, Alexander Ris, Emilie Georges, Boris T. Matic, Danijel Hocevar

Cinematographer: Alexsander Ilic

Production Designer: Goran Joksimovic

Composer: Mario Schneider

Sound Designer: Julij Zornik

Costume Designer: Ljiljana Petrovic

Principal Cast: Aleksandar Bercek, Leon Lucev, Nebojsa Glogovac, Hristina Popovic, Geno Lechner, Nikola Rakocevic, Vuk Kostic...

Fifth Pristina Film Festival comprises 49 films; adds Lgbt strand.

The fifth Pristina International Film Festival (Sept 20-27) will host 49 features, mid-length and documentary films, incuding Abdellatif Kechiche’s Cannes winner Blue is the Warmest Colour,Asghar Farhadi’s The Past and Danis Tanovic’s An Episode in the Life of an Iron Picker.

The festival’s main competition includes titles from Russia, Poland, Georgia, Norway and Latvia, while the Middle Length Competition includes films from Germany, Austria, Tunisia, France, Czech Republic and Ukraine.

In the festival’s ‘Honey and Blood’ programme, the competition for the best film from the Balkans, films come from Albania, Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, Macedonia and Greece.

Among the competition titles are Nana Ekvtimishvili and Simon Gross’ Sarajevo winner In Bloom and Srdan Golubovic’s Circles.

Tanovic’s Berlin winner, An Episode in the Life of an Iron Picker, is among the Honey and Blood competition while there are special screenings for Palme d’Or winner...

KARLOVY VARY, Czech Republic -- Organizers of the 39th Karlovy Vary International Film Festival have pulled Beneath Her Window from its program after they learned it was screened in an international competition last year. The film, produced by Danijel Hocevar, tells of a thirty-something dance teacher sinking into a midlife crisis competed in the international section of its home festival in Slovenian capital Lubljana in November. Showing a film in competition again would be in breach of rules established by the International Federation of Film Producers Associations (FIAPF).