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Italian-French co-production “Heads or Tails?” (“Testa o Croce?”) claimed Eurimages Co-Production Development Award at Rotterdam’s CineMart on Tuesday.

Directed by Alessio Rigo de Righi and Matteo Zoppis, and set in the 1890s, it seduced jurors Ilse Ronteltap, Mira Staleva and Konstantina Stavrianou with its retro-flavored story of lovers on the run. “It brings us [closer] to the legends that we rarely see nowadays,” said Staleva. “It’s about violence, mystery, freedom, injustice and friendship.”

“Billi and Rosa decide to escape, but many people are chasing them. Then he becomes a hero to some, an icon. Which, obviously, goes straight to his head. The story is really about her own path: her journey to freedom,” Alessio Rigo de Righi told Variety following his win.

“It’s a western too, a real genre film, which is what we always wanted to do. One that’s actually set in Italy and owning it,...

Awards handed out to projects in 40th anniversary edition of CineMart.

Italy-France co-production Heads Or Tails (Testa o Croce)? and Ukrainian title Consider Vera were the major winners at Rotterdam’s IFFR Pro industry awards recognising projects from International Film Festival Rotterdam’s co-production market, CineMart.

The co-production market marks its 40th anniversary this year and hosted 20 features and five immersive projects. Itd ran from January 29 to February 1.

Heads Or Tails? from Italian-American directors Alessio Rigo de Righi and Matteo Zoppis took home the Eurimages Co-production Development Award of €20,000. It is produced by Ring Film and Shellac Sud and follows...

International Film Festival Rotterdam has unveiled its selection of 20 feature film projects and five immersive projects for the 40th edition of CineMart, the festival’s co-production market, which runs from Jan. 29 to Feb. 1. Following two online editions, the market is hosted in-person for the first time since 2020.

Filmmakers from Indonesia, Paraguay, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Ukraine are among the lineup, which features subjects such as hip-hop, migration and gender fluidity, as well as a cowboy.

Head of IFFR Pro, Inke Van Loocke, said: “In fragmented times, bringing together incredible filmmakers and projects from so many different territories continues to be an invaluable contribution to filmmaking across the world.

“Together with producers in the Rotterdam Lab, filmmakers in the selection, and our wider press and industry family, it will be a heartwarming feeling to experience the buzz of a proper IFFR in De Doelen again.”

Sweden’s Plattform...

12 features and 10 docs will be pitched Trieste co-pro forum next month.

New features from Ukraine’s Maryna Stepanska, Brazil’s Marcelo Gomes and Italy’s Letizia Lamartire are among the 22 projects selected for Trieste’s When East Meets West (Wemw) co-production forum which takes place January 22-25.

The Wemw line-up comprises 12 features and 10 documentaries from 19 countries, having received a record 410 submissions.

The titles, set to be pitched to attending producers, include Stepanska’s documentary It’s Not A Full Picture. Stepanska achieved international success with her 2017 love story Falling, about two young adults trying to find their path in the...

20 features and five immersive projects will be presented at the co-production market.

International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) has selected 20 feature projects for the 40th edition of its CineMart co-production market, including Eldorado, the next feature from The Unknown Saint director Alaa Eddine Aljem.

The project follows a group of migrants seeking to reach the secret utopian island of Eldorado, who actually end up in a factory of the same name that produces tomato sauce.

Scroll down for the full CineMart 2023 selection

The project is being produced by Francesca Duca for Morocco’s Le Moindre Geste.

Aljem’s debut feature The...

A total of 21 projects will be presented at the development and financing platform.

Caroline Deruas, Jonathan Nossiter and David Verbeek will be among the directors presenting their upcoming projects at the eighth edition of the Les Arcs Coproduction Village (Dec 10-13).

A total of 24 projects will presented at the three-day event unfolding within the Les Arcs European Film Festival (10-17) which announced the bulk of its programme last week.

Verbeek will present his long-gestating vampire project Dead & Beautiful.

Jonathan Nossiter will be at the market with The Last Words, his big screen adaptation of France-based Argentine writer Santiago Amigorena’s novel Mes derniers mots revolving around the last two members of the human race as they contemplate a world destroyed by mankind.

Deruas will present her second feature Sad Liza after Daydreams which premiered at the Locarno Film Festival over the summer.

Two animation projects have also made it into this year’s selection, Dutch experimental...

The Sarajevo Film Festival has unveiled the line-up for its 20th edition which runs August 15-23.

The 20th Sarajevo Film Festival (Aug 15-23) has announced its official selection. Among nine films in the feature competition, there are three world premieres, including the new film by Kosovo veteran Isa Qosja, Three Windows And A Hanging. Qosja won the Special Jury Award at Sff with Kukumi in 2005.

Two other world premieres in competition are first feature films: Georgian director Lasha Tskvitinidze’s I Am Beso, and Song Of My Mother by Turkey’s Erol Mintas.

The list of debuts in the competition is completed with Berlinale titles Brides by Georgia’s Tinatin Kajrishvili, Land Of Storms by Hungary’s Ádám Császi, and Macondo by Sudabeh Mortezai from Austria.

Cure - The Life Of Another, the new film by Andrea Staka who won Heart of Sarajevo for best film in 2006 with Das Fräulein, will have its...

Mina Djukic’s film wins best film, director and actress in National Class; Free Entry by Hungary’s Yvonne Kerekgyarto gets Cineuropa Award in Fresh Danube Film section.

The seventh Cinema City international film festival, which took place June 21-28 in Novi Sad, Serbia, wrapped with Mina Djukic’s Sundance title The Disobedient winning the Ibis Statuettes for best film, best directing and best female role for Hana Selimovic in the National Class, dedicated to Serbian films.

The best male role award went to Muhamed Dupovac for Slobodan Skerlic’s So Hot Was The Cannon.

The jury consisting of Wide Management’s Managing Director Loic Magneron, official delegate for Cannes Critics’ Week and Programme Consultant for the Hong Kong International Film Festival Raymond Phathanavirangoon, and Peter Stumbur, a programmer for Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival, also gave out two special mentions: to Milan Todorovic’s horror title Nymph, and Dragan Nikolic’s documentary The Undertaker.

The Fipresci...

Exclusive: New York-based Visit Films’ Efm slate includes the world premiere of Berlinale selection History Of Fear, Sundance award winner 52 Tuesdays and a couple of Rotterdam Tiger competition titles.

Benjamin Naishtat’s History Of Fear screens in competition and paints a portrait of social unrest in Buenos Aires during a heatwave as seen through the eyes of a diverse group of people.

52 Tuesdays (pictured) earned Sophie Hyde the best director prize in Sundance’s World Cinema section and follows a teenage girl over the course of one year as her mother prepares for a sex change operation.

Food Chains from Director Sanjay Rawal screens in the Culinary sidebar and exposes abuse of farm labourers in the Us.

All three films are feature directorial debuts and will also screen in the market.

Visit’s line-up includes six titles receiving their market premieres.

UK director Joanna Hogg’s Exhibition follows a married couple during a turbulent home sale, while...

About half way into Serbian director Mina Djukic's feature debut, our heroes, Leni and Lazar (childhood loves reunited) get caught in a rather curious rain shower. As if by magic conjured by the cinematic gods themselves, the sunny summer fields are caught off guard, awash, leaving the bicycling pair soaked to the bone in mere seconds. It's a moment that could only happen as such in the movies. As is what comes next...Abandoning their bikes outside a provincial community hall, the old friends run inside screaming. They kiss the wedding portrait propped at the door, snag a handful of balloons, pop them, and grab any clothes they can from coat check, and with great gusto and abandon, crash the wedding. As they prance around the...

[Read the whole post on twitchfilm.com...]...

AMC/Sundance Channel Global has acquired six titles from the Sundance Film Festival for exclusive international premieres this spring.

Titles acquired for all international territories where the Sundance Channel is broadcast include Mina Djukic’s The Disobedient, Geetu Mohandas’ Liar’s Dice, Tim Sutton’s Memphis and Sterlin Harjo’s This May Be the Last Time.

Sydney Freeland’s Drunktown’s Finest has been acquired for Asia (excluding Malaysia), Benelux, Eastern Europe, France, Iberia and Latin America, while Alejandro Fernandez Almendras’ To Kill a Man has been picked up for Asia, Eastern Europe, the Middle East and North Africa.

The deals were negotiated by Gail Gendler, senior director of acquisitions, AMC/Sundance Channel Global.

Bruce Tuchman, president of AMC/Sundance Channel Global, announced the deals from Park City, Utah. Tuchman commented: “We’re excited to acquire a terrific selection of movies fresh from the 2014 Sundance Film Festival to debut exclusively on Sundance Channel this spring.

“The channel...

Exclusive: New York-based Visit Films has lined up a typically compelling slate for Park City, all of which will make their market premieres at the Efm in Berlin next month.

Visit Films chief Ryan Kampe announced he has taken international rights to Next entry War Story starring Catherine Keener as a traumatised war photographer who is forced to deal with her Ptsd when she encounters a young refugee while visiting her mentor in Sicily.

War Story also stars Ben Kingsley and Hafsia Herzi and marks the second film in Mark Jackson’s Island trilogy after 2012 Spirit Award winner Without.

Visit has taken worldwide rights excluding Australia/New Zealand for 52 Tuesdays. Sophie Hyde’s World Dramatic Competition entry chronicles how a 16-year-old’s route to adulthood is accelerated when her mother announces plans to switch gender and sends the youngster to live with her father.

Del Herbert-Jane and Tilda Cobham-Hervey star in the Australian production.

Visit holds worldwide...

International Film Festival Rotterdam 2014

Bright Future

World Premieres

Above: The Pinkie

About Sarah (Elisa Miller, Mexico, United Kingdom)

Bella Vista (Vera Brunner-Sung, USA)

Creator of the Jungle (Jordi Morató (Spain)

La distancia (Sergio Caballero, Spain)

Dzma/Brother (Téona Mghvdeladze & Thierry Grenade, France, Georgia)

L’éclat furtif de l'ombre (Alain-Pascal Housiaux & Patrick Dechesne, Belgium, Germany)

Edén (Elise DuRant, USA, Mexico)

Helium (Eché Janga, Netherlands)

History of Eternity (Camilo Cavalcante, Brazil)

Hotel Nueva Isla (Irene Gutiérrez & Javier Labrador, Cuba, Spain)

The Iranian Film (Yassine el Idrissi, Morocco, Netherlands, Egypt)

Jacky au royaume des filles (Riad Sattouf, France)

L for Leisure (Lev Kalman & Whitney Horn, USA, Mexico, France, Iceland)

Little Crushes (Aleksandra Gowin & Ireneusz Grzyb, Poland)

Masked Monkey - The Evolution of Darwin’s Theory (Ismail Fahmi Lubish, Indonesia)

Oilfields Mines Hurricanes (Fabian Altenried, Germany, Iceland)

The Pinkie (Lisa Takeba, Japan)

The Quiet Roar (Henrik Hellström, Sweden, Norway)

Sitzfleisch (Lisa Weber, Austria)

The Songs of Rice (Uruphong Raksasad,...

Picks include the latest documentary from Ai Weiwei [pictured].

The International Film Festival Rotterdam has unveiled the selections for its Bright Future and Spectrum programmes (list of premiere titles below).

Across both sections there are 37 world premieres.

Bright Future is comprised of 63 films, all first and second features. Bright Future includes five films supported by the Hubert Bals Fund, including Carlos Armella’s Las voces.

Five films from Bright Future will compete in the Big Screen Award Competition, including telepathic dwarf thriller La distancia by Sergio Caballero; and Riad Sattouf’s Jacky au royaume des filles starring Charlotte Gainsbourg.

Other notable seelctions include Burrowing director Henrik Helstrom’s second feature The Quiet Roar, about a dying woman who reconnects with her past through an acid trip.

Spectrum, focusing on artistic and experimental cinema, includes 69 films, including three supported by the Hubert Bals Fund. Five Spectrum Films, including Jos de Putter’s See No Evil and Oxana Bychkova’s Another...

The Sundance Film Festival has unveiled its 2014 Competition lineup, made up of several categories. The 30th edition of the event will take place between January 16th-26th in the new year.

U.S. Dramatic Competition

Camp X-Ray (Peter Sattler)

Cold in July (Jim Mickle)

Dear White People (Justin Simien)

Fishing Without Nets (Cutter Hodierne)

John's Pocket (John Slattery)

Happy Christmas (Joe Swanberg)

Hellion (Kat Candler)

Infinitely Polar Bear (Maya Forbes)

Jamie Marks is Dead (Carter Smith)

Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter (David Zellner)

Life After Beth (Jeff Baena)

Low Down (Joe Preiss)

The Skeleton Twins (Craig Johnson)

The Sleepwalker (Mona Fastvold)

Song One (Kate Barker-Froyland)

Whiplash (Damien Chazelle)

U.S. Documentary Competition

Alive Inside: A Story of Music & Memory (Michael Rossato-Bennett)

All the Beautiful Things (John Harkrider)

Captivated: The Trials of Pamela Smart (Jeremiah Zagar)

The Case Against 8 (Ben Cotner, Ryan White)

Cesar's Last Fast (Richard Ray Perez, Lorena Parlee...

The 2014 Sundance Film Festival is right around the corner, and the Sundance Institute has released the full line-up for the competition films that will be premiering!

This year there were 12,218 total submissions, and 117 films were accepted from 37 countries around the world. It looks like there's a lot of good selection of films this year.

The Sundance Film Festival 2014 runs from January 16th to the 26th, and the GeekTyrant team will be there to cover as many movies as we possibly can.

U.S. Dramatic Competition

The 16 films in this section are world premieres and, unless otherwise noted, are from the U.S.

“Camp X-Ray” — Directed and written by Peter Sattler. A young female guard at Guantanamo Bay forms an unlikely friendship with one of the detainees. Cast: Kristen Stewart, Payman Maadi, Lane Garrison, J.J. Soria, John Carroll Lynch.

“Cold in July” — Directed by Jim Mickle, written by Nick Damici.

It’s among the two sections that we usually don’t put much focus on (yes, we love subtitles, but we’re more concerned, naturally more inclined to cover the deluge of American Indie film offerings) but among the dozen film selections in the World Cinema Dramatic Comp section we find the latest from Argentinean director Natalia Smirnoff (she gave us the Berlin Film Fest winner The Puzzle) who returns with Lock Charmer, we find the highly anticipated film from Hong Khaou (Lilting) and a title which we start speculating on last year in Stuart Murdoch’s God Help the Girl which stars Emily Browning, Olly Alexander and Hannah Murray (see pic above). Also worth the mention is the directing debut from writer Eskil Vogt – who co-wrote Reprise and Oslo, August 31st for Joachim Trier. Here are the dozen selected.

“52 Tuesdays” (Australia) — Directed by Sophie Hyde, written by Matthew Cormack.

Central and Eastern European filmmakers presented 19 projects at various stages of production at Karlovy Vary’s annual Works in Progress initiative.

The popular industry programme at Kviff is in its ninth year, and past films shown as Works In Progress include I Am, Lunacy, Katyn, Tricks, Alois Nebel and My Dog Killer, among many others.

This year’s selection included a standout pitch for The Disobedient [pictured], a Serbian coming-of-age road movie about two 24-year-olds from Tilva Ros producers Mina Djukic (who will direct) and Nikola Lezaic.The film is now in post for autumn delivery after wrapping its shoot in September 2012.

Another promising Serbian title, of a very different flavour, was the crowdpleasing dark comedy Monument to Michael Jackson (working title). The film will be ready to launch this autumn and the footage shown got the day’s only laughs out of the industry-heavy crowd. The film is a co-production with Macedonia and Germany.

Among the Czech...