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A musical from Red Dog director Kriv Stenders, a feature about the choir of hard knocks directed by Jonathan Teplitzky and an untitled project from Joel and Nash Edgerton are three of 16 features that have received a share of $400,000 in development support from Screen Australia. Of these 16 projects, ten are new additions to the development slate, while the remaining six have been receiving ongoing assistance. Screen Australia.s head of development Martha Coleman said in a statement that the calibre of features was outstanding. .There.s a general acknowledgement from the marketplace that our filmmakers have raised the bar and I think the next wave of films in the coming years will be really interesting..

Synchronicity, which is written by Marissa Goodhill,. produced by Leesa Kahn and Catriona Hughes and has Kriv Stenders attached as director, is a musical set to the songs of Kylie Minogue. It follows 17-year-old Kylie...

Some of Australia’s biggest names in film-making have received funding for new projects in the latest round of Screen Australia’s single-project feature development.

The funding round for script development has supported 16 projects totalling $400,000, ten new projects and six which receive continued support.

Martha Coleman, Screen Australia’s head of development said: “The calibre of feature projects coming to the Development Department is outstanding. There’s a general acknowledgement from the marketplace that our film-makers have raised the bar and I think the next wave of films in the coming years will be really interesting.”

Film-makers include Julia Leigh, the Edgerton brothers, Abe Forsythe and Kriv Stenders.

Julia Leigh is to direct her second film, Disquiet following on from Sleeping Beauty, which won best direction in a feature film at the Australian Director’s Guild Awards on Friday night. The psychological horror will be adapted by Leigh from her book of the same name.

Screen Australia has announced an investment of $15m on 13 productions, including a German/Australian co-production directed by Cate Shortland and development for Bruce Beresford, Sarah Watt and Phillip Noyce projects.

In terms of films, Fred Schepisi’s The Eye of the Storm - which began production without financial support from Screen Australia – is one of the beneficiaries.

Shortland’s co-production Lore will be produced by Liz Watts, Karsten Stöter, Benny Drechsel, Paul Welsh and Gabriele Kranzelbinder and set in 1945 Germany.

The third feature to receive support is Kieran Darcy-Smith’s debut Say Nothing, written in conjuction with Felicity Price and produced by Angie Felder.

TV series The Slap, Cleo and Blood Brother, as well as series two of Spirited. also received financial support.

The agency estimates that these projects will generate production worth $72m.

The projects are:

The Eye Of The Storm

Paper Bark Films Eos Pty Ltd

Executive Producers Jonathan Shteinman,...

Before going into my Women Directors Tracking which I have vowed to continue until women reach a parity with men in the film business and Latino Directors groove, I want to thank Howard Feinstein for watching the most obscure films of Rotterdam to find the jewels! Scratching Below the Surface for Some Rotterdam Fest Gems - indieWIRE. Kudos! I wish I could have seen these!

Howard spotted this one: "A young woman named Rusudan Pirveli brought to the 'Bright Future' section Susa, another story of hard financial times. 'The Lost Generation' is represented here by the absent father of an adolescent boy, who, working for his mother, sells bootleg vodka in bottles. Sadly, he lives under the delusion that dad’s return would ease his and his mom’s hardship. Like Koguashvili, Pirveli eschews unnecessary authorial intervention: Both directors understand all too well that they are living amidst powerful,...

Wedged between Sundance and Berlin is the extremely important Rotterdam film festival. Rotterdam functions as Europe's first major film fest of the year, but it seconds as a premiere destination for filmmakers such as Andrei Zvyagintsev (The Return), Amat Escalante (Sangre) and Juraj Lehotsky (Blind Loves) who make the kind of films that need a "helping hand". This list is of obvious interest because we'll be talking about this projects-turned-into-films down the road - we only need to look at Venice/Tiff for recent examples such as Samuel Maoz's Lebanon and Shirin Neshat's Women without Men to see the quality of films that got their start here. - Wedged between Sundance and Berlin is the extremely important Rotterdam film festival. Rotterdam functions as Europe's first major film fest of the year, but it seconds as a premiere destination for filmmakers such as Andrei Zvyagintsev (The Return), Amat Escalante...