News

The Worst Person In The World producer Andrea Berentsen Ottmar and Carla Fotea of Romania’s microFILM are among 18 independent producers selected for the 34th edition of Ace Producers’ annual workshop programme.

The producers will attend three workshops throughout 2024 and 2025, developing the projects with which they applied. At the conclusion of the programme they will join the Ace Network.

Scroll down for the list of selected producers

Ottmar, producer at Norway’s Eye Eye Pictures, is participating with Stefan Faldbakken’s Slave. Ottmar is currently in production on Worst Person director Joachim Trier’s Sentimental Value, and produced Cannes 2024 title Armand.

Forastera. the first feature by Spanish director Lucía Aleñar Iglesias, whose short film of the same name premiered at Cannes Critics’ Week in 2020, will start shooting in April in Mallorca.

Lastor Media, Vilaüt Films, La Perifèrica are producing with Sweden’s Fox in the Snow Films.

Lluís Omar and Zoe Stein will star with Swedish actor Nonni Ardal in the film about a woman whose vacation is dramatically disrupted by the violent death of her grandmother, an act to which she is the only witness.

Filming will take place entirely on location in Mallorca.

Producers Tono Folguera of Lastor Media and Dot of Vilaüt Films,...

Once upon a time, there was the Swedish queen of crime Camilla Läckberg, steadily delivering international best-selling adult/children’s books, cook books and song lyrics.

Some of her books have turned into series –“The Fjällbacka Murders” – or soon will be – “The Golden Age,’ optioned by Legendary Entertainment.

One day she met Swedish star actor Alexander Karim while shooting the Swedish show “Stars in the Castle” (“Stjärnorna på slotet”).

“We started talking TV, movies, creative ideas and immediately hit it off!” Läckberg tells Variety, in a zoom interview ahead of Göteborg’s Nordic Film Market. There, her executive produced thriller “The Dog,” starring Alexander Karim and helmed by his brother Baker Karim (“Malcolm”), is having its market world premiere.

The Karim brothers and Läckberg are, moreover, now ‘partners in crime’ in Bad Flamingo Studios (Bfs), a Stockholm-based film and TV production outfit founded to “break the film industry’s norms and barriers.

Project based on novel about Russia infiltrating Swedish politics.

Sweden’s Jens Jonsson will direct The Doctrine, a political thriller series adapted from Magnus Montelius’ novel Eight Months.

Jonsson has credits including series Young Wallander and Blinded, and films Easy Money III and Sundance award-winner The King Of Ping Pong.

The novel, published in 2019, presented a then-far-fetched idea that Sweden would join NATO; given world events, the premise is now eerily contemporary.

Erik Magnusson of Anagram Sweden produces.

Backers are TV4/Cmore, Anagram, Film i Väst, Aurora Studios and Beside Productions. With investment from Finnish Impact Film Fund and support from Nordic Film&tv Fund.

Participant is teaming up with leading French sales agent MK2 Films and Endeavor Content to represent worldwide distribution rights on “Costa Brava, Lebanon,” the anticipated feature debut of Lebanese filmmaker Mounia Akl.

“Costa Brava, Lebanon” will be headlined by Lebanese star and filmmaker Nadine Labaki (“Capernaum”), alongside Palestinian actor Saleh Bakri (“The Band’s Visit”). The pair will play a couple who decide to leave the toxic pollution of their home city of Beirut, hoping to build a utopian existence in a pristine home in the mountains. This dream life is shattered when a landfill is built right outside its fence, bringing the garbage and corruption they hoped to leave behind to its door. As the trash rises, so do the tensions in their perfect home.

Akl, an alumni of Cannes’ Cinefondation, previously directed the critically-acclaimed short film “Submarine” in 2015. The student short was nominated for a BAFTA and played at Toronto and SXSW,...

The production has recently signed Nadine Labaki and Saleh Bakri to lead roles.

Paris-based mk2 films have boarded sales on Lebanese director Mounia Akl’s dark comedy Costa Brava Lebanon about a family whose seemingly idyllic lifestyle in the mountains is threatened by the construction of a landfill site on their doorstep.

The company is launching sales at the AFM.

The production has recently signed Lebanese filmmaker and actress Nadine Labaki to co-star opposite Palestinian actor Saleh Bakri, who is best known internationally for his performances in The Band’s Visit and Wajib.

The pair play a couple who remove...

Georges Schoucair’s Beirut-based Abbout Productions has teamed up at the Efm with 4 European producers on “Costa Brava Lebanon,” a first feature set amid Lebanon’s never-ending garbage crisis to be directed by Mounia Akl who studied film at Columbia University.

Abbout has finalized its coproduction pacts on this pic with France’s Cinéma Defacto; Denmark’s Snowglobe Films; Norway’s Barentsfilm; and French-Swedish producer Olivier Guerpillon.

Set in a near future in which Lebanon is drowning in garbage, “Costa Brava” is about a family that leads an idyllic isolated life in their house in the mountains to which they’ve fled to lead a sterile and utopian exile. When the government finally finds a solution the world comes crashing in in the form of a garbage landfill to be built at their doorstep. The tensions this causes among family members makes them realize that “the rot was not just outside their home,...

Seven films selected for scheme, which awards projects a $24,000 development fund.

Nordisk Film & TV Fond has confirmed the seven genre film projects selected for its popular Nordic Genre Boost scheme.

Scroll down for a full list of projects

Selections include the second feature from When Animals Dream (pictured) director Jonas Arnby of Denmark; the third feature from Finnish director Ulrika Bengts (The Disciple) and the directorial debut feature of Swedish producer Olivier Guerpillon, whose producing credits include Sound of Noise.

A total of 61 projects applied for the third and final round of Nordic Genre Boost development support.

Each project receives a $24,000 (NOK200,00) development grant, and access to two residential workshops: one held in collaboration with Night Visions International Festival in Helsinki (April 5-9), and a second during New Nordic Films’ Co-Production and Finance Market in Haugesund (Aug 22-25).

Guest tutors at the workshops include Jinga Films’ Julian Richards, Xyz Films’ Todd Brown, Lindsay Peters...