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New features from Tatiana Huezo, Kirsten Tan and Stephan Komandarev are among the 35 projects selected for the 2025Berlinale Co-Production Market.

The 35 projects hail from 27 countries, and will participate in the market to find financing and production partners. The Berlinale has also programmed its Forum Special and Forum Expanded strands.

Scroll down for the full list of titles

Salvadoran-Mexican filmmaker Huezo will participate with her new project Galerna, produced by Mexico’s Pimienta Films. Huezo’s first fiction feature Prayers For The Stolenwon a special mention in Un Certain Regard at Cannes 2021, and was Mexico’s entry for the international feature Oscar.

The Berlinale’s Co-Production Market has selected 35 feature projects for its 2025 edition, including new works from Tatiana Huezo, Kirsten Tan and Stephan Komandarev.

The 35 projects hail from 27 countries, and will participate in the market to find financing and production partners. The Berlinale has also programmed its Forum Special and Forum Expanded strands.

Scroll down for the full list of titles

Salvadoran-Mexican filmmaker Huezo will participate with her new project Galerna, produced by Mexico’s Pimienta Films. Huezo’s first fiction feature Prayers For The Stolenwon a special mention in Un Certain Regard at Cannes 2021, and was Mexico’s entry for the international feature Oscar.

Thom Lunshof’s “First Zone,” Jaume Claret Muxart’s “Strange River” and Janicke Askevold’s “Solomamma” picked up a trio of post-production prizes out of this year’s Les Arcs Film Festival Industry Village, which ran from December 14 – 17.

Capping its 16th edition, the industry event brought together 700 professionals – among them leading sales agents, festival programers, producers and distributors – for three days of collective pitches and one-and-one meetings, all with a healthy amount of skiing (and fondue) thrown in.

Held at a mountaintop resort high in the French alps, the industry event has leaned it to its getaway status, forgoing formal public pitches in order to prioritize one-on-one connections via unique networking activities. “We’ve calculated that the time spent on ski lift is perfect for a pitch,” says industry head Jeremy Zelnick.

While French sales and distribution outfits often flock to the Industry Village, the Les Arcs remains focused on...

Dutch filmmaker Floor Van der Meulen’s drama Happy Days, about a woman who suffers a burnout after she commits to looking after grandchildren several days a week, has scooped one of the top prizes at the Les Arcs Coproduction Village.

It is one 18 feature film projects selected for the 16th edition of the project market unfolding within the framework of the Les Arcs Film Festival in the French Alps, from December 14 to 17.

Happy Days won the €20,000 Eurimages Coproduction Development Award, decided by a jury consisting of Emilia Fort, producer at Avalon (Spain); Eleni Chandrinou, Consultant and Greek representative for Eurimages, and Victor Pothevin, co-head of Acquisitions at Diaphana.

Produced by Keplerfilm, Happy Days is inspired by the phenomenon of grandparents increasingly giving up their retirement to help their offspring with childcare.

Van der Meulen says the premise was sparked by a conversation with a friend who complained that her...

Les Arcs Industry Village, the professional platform of Les Arcs Film Festival, handed out 14 awards at its 16th edition on Monday, December 16).

Winners included Floor Van der Meulen’s Happy Days, recipient of the €20,000 Eurimages co-production development award in the coproduction village.

Scroll down for the full list of winners

Produced by the Netherlands’ Keplerfilm, Happy Days follows a grandmother who risks burnout in trying to care for her grandchildren.

The film has €101,000 of a projected €2.6m budget in place, and is aiming for a late 2025 shoot ahead of a summer 2026 delivery.

The jury praised “a character rarely seen onscreen but omnipresent in our societies.

The Les Arcs Film Festival has announced the 18 in development film projects selected for its 16th Les Arcs Coproduction Village, aimed at connecting the upcoming features with coproducers, sales agents, distributors and other financing partners.

The copro meeting will take place within the context of Alpine festival’s industry program running December 14 to 17.

Sixteen of the 18 projects are directed by female filmmakers, with 38% of the features submitted directed by women. Ten are first fiction feature projects, seven are second features and one is by a more established filmmaker.

They include Ukrainian director Anastasiia Solonevych’s debut feature 30 Days Of Summer, about two sisters who reconnect against the backdrop of a military training camp. Solonevych won the Cannes Palme d’Or for Best Short Film in 2023 for As It Was.

German director Sophie Linnenbaum, whose 2022 fantasy drama The Ordinaries enjoyed a buzzy awards and festival run, will participate with second fiction feature The Nose.

The Loads‘ Ognjen Glavonic, Autobiography‘s Makbul Mubarak & Medusa‘s Anita Rocha da Silveira are among the selected filmmakers for TorinoFilmLab’s ScriptLab Participants. Glavonic will be at the lab with In The Shadow Of The Horns – his sophomore fiction feature. Indonesian filmmaker Mubarak comes with Watch It Burn – his sophomore feature while Brazilian filmmaker Anita Rocha da Silveira will be workshopping her third feature in I Can’t Dance. The 20 projects come from 20 writer-directors and eight co-writers, and have been selected from 550 submissions. Here are the ScriptLab 2023 projects and participants:

A Perfect Family – Writer: Adriano Valerio / Co-writer: Aude Py

All The Crows In The World – Writer: Yi Tang

Alma – Writer: Laura Herrero Garvin / Co-writer: Jorge Gil

Amari – Writer: Domien Huyghe, Co-writer: Wendy Huyghe

Blind Spots – Writer: Ely Chevillot

Brilliant Melody – Writer: Carlo Francisco / Co-writer: Jeremie Dubois

Counting Cards With My Father – Writer: Lydia Rui

Detour – Writer: Jakub Piatek / Co-writer:...

There is a particular focus on comedies.

TorinoFilmLab (Tfl) has selected 20 projects for its ScriptLab 2023, plus five story editors, in what it describes as the first ‘fully international’ iteration of the annual development scheme.

The 20 projects come from 20 writer-directors and eight co-writers, and have been selected from 550 submissions.

Scroll down for the full list of participants

Those selected will take part in three week-long residential modules in April, June and November; with two online modules in September and October. The participants will be divided into five groups, and tutored by script consultants Philippe Barriere, Severine Cornamusaz, Aleksandra Swierk, Marietta von Hausswolff and Gino Ventriglia.

Alpine event runs December 10-17.

The in-person 14th edition of Les Arcs Film Festival returns to the French Alps from December 10-17 to celebrate European Cinema and present eight films in Official Competition as well as the industry programme.

Official Competition selections vying for the Crystal Arrow award include David Wagner’s Eismayer from Austria (Loco Films handles sales), Macedonian director Teona Strugar Mitevska’s co-production The Happiest Man In The World (distributed by Pyramide Films), and Fulvio Risuleo’s Ghost Night from Italy (Vision Distribution), and Leonor Serraille’s French title Un Petit Frère (Diaphana Distribution).

Rounding out the...

Above: US Teaser poster for Crimes of the Future. Design by Bangers & Mash.In the middle of the Venice Film Festival, and in the lead-up to the Toronto and New York fests, still the most “liked” poster of the last six months of my Movie Poster of the Day Instagram was a teaser poster that appeared in the run-up to Cannes in the spring. The poster was for was one of the most anticipated films of Cannes, a film that has since been disseminated to the world with a much tamer big-head poster and even tamer home video art. The Crimes of the Future teaser racked up nearly 2,000 likes and not far behind it was a gorgeous art print for Cronenberg’s 30-year-old Naked Lunch by the very talented (and seemingly Cronenberg-obsessed) Nick Charge that I posted a few months later. As I’ve been doing for the past few years,...

New York – The 21st Tribeca Film Festival announced their Jury Prizes for 2022 on June 16th. Best U.S. Narrative was rewarded to “Good Girl Jane,” an adolescent story of young love, written/directed by Sarah Elizabeth Mintz. Best International Narrative goes to “January” and Best Documentary is “The Cave of Adullam.”

“January” is a Lativian/Lithuanian/Polish production concerning an aspiring filmmaker searching for “sides” in the backdrop of Latvian independence, directed by Viesturs Kairiss. “The Cave of Adullam” (USA) regards raising boys under the auspice of martial arts, and it’s directed by Laura Checkoway.

Best U.S. Narrative Feature for 2022 is ‘Good Girl Jane,’ directed by Sarah Elizabeth Mintz

Photo credit: Tribeca Film Festival

Awards were distributed in the following feature film competition categories – U.S. Narrative, International Narrative, Documentary, New Narrative Director, and the Nora Ephron Prize, honoring a woman writer or director. Awards were also given...

Pink Moon Review — Pink Moon (2022) Film Review from the 21st Annual Tribeca Film Festival, a movie directed by Floor van der Meulen, written by Bastiaan Kroeger and starring Julia Akkermans, Johan Leysen, Eelco Smits, Anniek Pheifer, Sinem Kavus, Glenn Coenen, Jenny Hsia, Claire Schuyffel and Lolu Ajayi. Filmmaker Floor van der Meulen’s new [...]

Continue reading: Film Review: Pink Moon: Offbeat Drama Has Solid Performances but a Meandering Plot [Tribeca 2022]...

Coming-of-age drama Good Girl Jane, written and directed by Sarah Elizabeth Mintz, took the Tribeca Festival Founders’ Award for Best U.S. Narrative Feature on Thursday while its star Rain Spencer won for Best Performance at the fest, which announced its winners ahead of wrapping this weekend.

The film follows lonely teenager Jane, bullied out of private school and at odds with her divorced parents, who spirals out of control after falling in with a hard-partying crowd and becoming smitten with a dangerously charismatic bad boy, played by Patrick Gibson. Andie MacDowell is Jane’s beleaguered mom. It’s produced by Fred Bernstein, Dominique Telson, Lauren Pratt, Mintz and Simone Williams.

January (Janvaris) by Viesturs Kairiss, from Latvia, Lithuania and Poland, about an aspiring filmmaker searching for identity against the backdrop of Latvian independence, was named Best International Narrative Feature.

Best Documentary Feature and Editing awards went Laura Checkoway’s The Cave of Adullam.

Tribeca Film Festival wrapped up its competition Thursday by announcing awards for “Good Girl Jane,” “January (Janvaris)” and “The Cave of Adullam,” among other films.

Sarah Elizabeth Mintz’ “Good Girl Jane,” about a lonely, bullied high schooler lured into the hard-partying scene by a charming bad boy, took home the Founders’ Award for Best U.S. Narrative Feature. Its star, Rain Spencer (“The Summer I Turned Pretty) also picked up the award for Best Performance in a U.S. narrative film.

The top prize for international narrative feature went to Latvian coming-of-age drama “January (Janvaris),” written and directed by Viesturs Kairiss. The film follows an aspiring filmmaker who tries to figure out who he is amidst the struggle for Latvian independence.

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‘Tíu’ Film Review: Icelandic Band Of Men and Monsters’ Documentary Is an Intimate Gem

Best Documentary Feature was awarded to “The Cave of Adullam,” Laura Checkoway’s portrait of sensei Jason Wilson,...

Urban Sales has nabbed world rights to “Hug Me – The Movie,” an English-language animated feature directed by Anna Błaszczyk. The pre-school movie is produced by Animoon, the Polish company behind “Even Mice belong in Heaven.”

Urban Sales, the Paris-based banner previously known as Urban Distribution International, will host the market premiere of the movie at Cannes’ Marché du Film.

An eco-friendly tale, “Hug Me” follows the adventures of a bear cub and his papa bear as they search for honey to prepare a birthday cake for the little one. With the den’s honey reserves and surrounding hives running out, Teddy convinces papa bear sets off to find the Golden Land which is believed to harbor an endless source of honey. “Hug Me – The Movie” is co-produced by the Polish outfit FixaFilm and Chinese company Animex, with the support of the Polish Film Institute.

The film marks the feature debut of Błaszczyk,...

As The Netherlands, under lockdown, celebrated the first half of 50th International Film Festival Rotterdam’s online, the physical half – set to take place in June with real audiences, panels and talks without Zoom links attached – still feels like a long way off.

Meanwhile, the industry is hopeful that the swift and pragmatic measures taken by its national funding agency, The Netherlands Film Fund, will be enough to see it through until the end of this year.

In January, the fund, headed by former IFFR director Bero Beyer, confirmed €30 million ($36.1 million) in new government support – double the amount that was available last year – to help the industry ride through its third national lockdown and beyond.

According to Beyer, most of last year’s efforts went into maintaining a certain level of production once restrictions were lifted in June: a national protocol for safety on film sets was devised along with...

The Eurimages Fund is supporting 28 features.

European support body Eurimages has selected 28 features for a total of €6.1m ($6.9m) funding, including new works by Robert Guédiguian and Jim Sheridan.

French filmmaker Guédiguian – who has directed 21 features since 1981 including his most recent, Venice 2019 selection Gloria Mundi – receives €470,000 for France-Canada co-production Bamako Twist.

Ireland’s Sheridan, who has been nominated for six Oscars across his career since his breakthrough debut feature My Left Foot, receives €280,000 for Ireland-uk-France documentary In Absentia, co-directed with Colm Quinn. The documentary looks into the murder of French producer Sophie Toscan Du Plantier in Ireland, in December 1996.

Other...

New projects by Tarik Saleh, Robert Guédiguian, Vaclav Kadrnka, Paco Plaza and Carla Simón, among the selection. At its 158th meeting held online due to the current health crisis, the Board of Management of the Council of Europe's Eurimages Fund agreed to support 19 fiction films, 2 animation films and 7 documentary projects for a total amount of €6,138,000. The share of eligible projects with female directors examined at this Eurimages Board of Management meeting was 34%; 37.5% of the projects supported were directed by women and € 2,078,000 was awarded to these projects, representing 34% of the total amount awarded. The projects selected: Sabattier Effect - Eleonora Veninova (North Macedonia/Serbia)Lucy goes Gangsta - Till Endemann (Germany/Netherlands)Sleep - Jan-Willem Van Ewijk (The Netherlands/Belgium)Pink Moon (ex Methusalem) - Floor van der Meulen (The Netherlands/Italy/Slovenia)Kerr - Tayfun Pirselimoglu (Turkey/Greece/France)Storm - Erika Calmeyer (Norway/Sweden)Three - Juanjo Giménez...

The young Dutch director will start filming her second feature at the beginning of April. Dutch writer-director Floor van der Meulen is now preparing her sophomore feature, a dramedy entitled Methusalem. The project will be filmed in the Netherlands, Slovenia and Italy, and will start principal photography at the beginning of April. After her studies at Rotterdam’s Willem de Kooning Academy, van der Meulen worked as an assistant director for documentarian Klaartje Quirijns and other Dutch filmmakers. In 2015, together with Issa Touma and Thomas Vroege, she made the internationally acclaimed short documentary 9 Days – From My Window in Aleppo, followed by another short set in Syria, Greetings from Aleppo (2017). Her debut feature, Last Male Standing, was made in 2019. The story of her new directorial effort, penned in its entirety by screenwriter Bastiaan Kroeger (C'est déjà l'été), revolves around a 29-year-old woman called Iris, who unexpectedly hears...