News

Puerto Rican title ‘The Fisherman’s Daughter’ takes best international project.

Polish director Michał Marczak’s black comedy Certainly The End Of Something was named the winner of the Screen International’s best pitch award at the 21st edition of the Baltic Event’s Co-Production Market at the Black Nights International Film Festival in Tallinn this week

Written by Marczak with Pawel Demirski, the feature project centres on a woman from a notorious Warsaw neighbourhood, who kidnaps a kingpin of the “gentrification mafia” who are destroying her beloved district.

Marczak said he planned “to tell a highly nuanced tale of...

The line-up features 19 world premieres, including J.-P. Valkeapää’s ‘Hit Big’ and three Ukranian productions.

Estonia’s Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival has unveiled the full line-up for its official selection, featuring 19 world premieres, with the festival set to run from November 11-27.

World premieres include Finnish director J.-P. Valkeapää’s Hit Big, a Finland-Estonia-Spain co-production. Valkeapää’s credits include Dogs Wear Pants and They Have Escaped. The new film is about a Finnish former beauty pageant star, who left Finland for Spain’s Costa del Sol, finds her family’s murky criminal past starts to unravel. Charades is handling sales.

The official selection of the Baltic Event Co-Production takes place on November 23-24.

The Baltic Event Co-Production Market has set the projects that will take part in next month’s event, set to run from November 23-24, including two co-productions with Iran that deal with the issues of violence against women.

Blue Girl is an Iranian-Luxembourg co-production written and directed by Iranian filmmaker Mahmoud Ghaffari, and produced by Elaheh Nobakht and Alexander Dumreicher-Ivanceanu.

The Baltic Event Co-Production Market runs as part of the industry platform of Estonia’s Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival (November 11-27). Marge Liiske returns as the...

Projects from Greece and Ukraine lead co-production awards.

Ukrainian drama Cherry Blossoms from director Marysia Nikitiuk has picked up one of the top prizes at Sarajevo Film Festival’s industry platform CineLink, which handed out its awards last night (August 18).

See below for full list of winners

The project was among 12 presented at the CineLink Co-Production Market and won the Eurimages Special Co-Production Development Award of €20,000.

Cherry Blossoms centres on a man and girl who escape territories in Ukraine occupied by Russia and meet a Bosnian woman who survived the Balkan wars as a child. Nikitiuk’s first feature, When The Trees Fall,...

Click here to read the full article.

When the Sarajevo Film Festival was launched, back in 1995, it was in defiance. Founded during the siege of the city during the Bosnian War, the festival stood as a symbol of the power and resilience of cinema even in the face of violence and war.

In 2002, when the fest launched its CineLink program, it was amidst a mood of hope, a hope for a better future for the film industry in the former Yugoslavia and or the entire region of Southeastern Europe.

What started as a modest co-production market to encourage production with and between filmmakers in the region has now, two decades on, expanded to include a rich and diverse program of conferences, panels, talks and masterclasses. The heart of the Sarajevo Film Festival’s industry program, CineLink now plays an essential role in scouting for new talents from the region, mentoring...

Ukrainian industry players gathered in Cannes are determined to show they can provide a variety of new content, as well as stories that look beyond the current Russian invasion.

“I have been repeating this since 2014 — it’s a trap to be only associated with war,” says producer Julia Sinkevych, now behind Marysia Nikitiuk’s upcoming feature “Lucky Girl.”

Presented at the Cannes Market as part of the Ukrainian Features Preview, it shows a successful TV star who has everything, until she is diagnosed with cancer.

As noted by Ukrainian Institute’s Natalie Movshovych, several projects focus on the 1990s, including “When We Were 15” — awarded at Meeting Point Vilnius in April — “Do You Love Me?” by Tonia Noyabriova, Philip Sotnychenko’s “Lapalissade” and “Rock. Paper. Grenade” by Iryna Tsilyk, also behind festival favorite “The Earth Is Blue as an Orange.”

“We have to show as much range as we can now.

Butterfly Vision (completed)

Director: Maksym Nakonechnyi

Producers: Darya Bassel, Yelizaveta Smith

Production: Tabor Productions, 4 Film, Masterfilm, Sisyfos

Sales: Wild Bunch

Lilia, held as a prisoner of war for months, finally returns home. But she is struggling to resume her life as a soldier and wife, while discovering she is pregnant.

Chrysanthemum Day

Director: Simon Mozgovyi

Producers: Alex Chepiga, Artem Koliubaiev

Production: Mainstream Pictures

Young doctor encounters an old woman, known as a healer, who mysteriously survives a nuclear explosion. But she loses her memory and identity along the way.

Company of Steel (documentary)

Director: Yuliia Hontaruk

Producers: Yuliia Hontaruk, Ivanna Khitsinska, Alexandra Bratyshchenko, Uldis Cekulis, Igor Savychenko

Production: Babylon’13, Directory Films

Three veterans return home and try to understand how to live as civilians. The film is an attempt to feel and see the world through the eyes of people who went through war.

Demons

Director: Natalya Vorozhbyt

Producers: Dmytro Minzianov,...

The Cannes Film Marché has unveiled the full lineup of its Ukraine in Focus program which will provide Ukrainian filmmakers and producers with networking, pitching and co-financing opportunities over two days during the Cannes Film Festival, on May 21 and 22.

Under the program, key market initiatives such as Goes to Cannes, Cannes Docs Showcase and the Producers Network will be skewed towards projects and executives from Ukraine in order to support the country which was invaded by Russia on Feb. 24 and has been at war since then. Deadline first reported the news that Cannes was planning a focus on Ukraine program.

The Producers’ Network, organized in collaboration with the Ukrainian Institute, will include six producers, including Denis Ivanov from Arthouse Traffic, Darya Bassel from Moon Man, Natalia Libet from Digital Religion, Sashko Chubko from Pronto Film, Olga Beskhmelnytsina from Esse Production House and Vladimir Yatsenko from ForeFilms.

Docs in Progress, presented...

The Co-Founder of the Ukrainian Film Academy has been named Jury President for this year’s Series Mania.

Julia Sinkevych will judge the annual event’s International Competition, joining a jury featuring German actor Christian Berkel, Israeli actress Shira Haas (Unorthodox), Turkish creator and director Berkun Oya (Bir Baskadir) and French singer-songwriter and model Yseult.

French writer/director Marc Dugain has been appointed Vice-President as Sinkevych’s presence at the Lille event next month is uncertain.

The tireless Sinkevych is the Co-Founder of the Ukrainian Film Academy and a member of the European Film Academy.

From 2010 to 2020, she worked as General Producer of Odessa International Film Festival, one of the biggest audience film festivals in Eastern Europe.

She is also a producer and is currently working on feature films Lucky Girl by Marysia Nikitiuk and Lesia by Nana Janelidze. Past credits include Vitaly Mansky’s Close Relations and Nadia Parfan’s Heatsingers.

Ukrainian film producer and co-founder of the Ukrainian Film Academy Julia Sinkevych (“Heat Singers”) has been selected as jury president for this year’s Series Mania Festival and its international competition.

“She has always been committed to supporting Ukrainian artists and the culture of her country from Kyiv, where she lives,” the festival said in a statement. “As her presence in Lille is not certain at this point in time, renowned French writer and director Marc Dugain, has been appointed as vice-president of this year’s jury.”

Sinkevych is also a member of European Film Academy and a member of the Ukrainian Oscars committee. From 2010 until 2020, Sinkevych worked as general producer of Odesa International Film Festival, one of the biggest audience film festivals in Eastern Europe. Currently Sinkevych is working on feature films “Lucky girl” by Marysia Nikitiuk and “Lesia” by Nana Janelidze.

The jury also includes German Christian Berkel...

Argentina’s Manuel Abramovich, Ecuador’s Ana Cristina Barragán and the Ukraine-born Oksana Bychkova, all big fest winners, will introduce their latest films to an industry audience at San Sebastian’s pix-in-post strands, Wip Latam and Wip Europa, over Sept. 20-22.

The sections promise discoveries. They also underscore a reality. As art film pre-sales have plunged, public-sector equity financing has escalated, with producers tapping film funds around the world via international co-production. Wip Latam’s six films average four production partners a piece. Sales, which the films now seek in San Sebastian, is increasingly icing on the cake.

A drill down on titles:

Wip Latam

“Daughter of Rage,” (“La Hija de Todas las Rabias,” Laura Baumeister, Nicaragua, Mexico, Nederland, Germany, France, Norway)

Nicaraguan Laura Baumeister’s stirring feature debut which swept three of the four prizes on offer at San Sebastian’s 2019 Europe-Latin America Co-production Forum. Since then it...

Visually striking, but narratively undernourished, the father-and-son-bonding drama “Homeward” unfolds against the backdrop of a fraught road trip from Kyiv to Russia-annexed Crimea and marks a flawed debut from young Ukrainian helmer-writer Nariman Aliev, a Crimean Tatar. Indeed, the plight of Crimean Tatars (both historically and currently) forms an important element of the plot. While the subtle connotations surrounding which of the film’s different languages are spoken in various situations may not be understood by all viewers, the mixed feelings of love and resentment between father and son — and their pride in their Tatar heritage and homeland — come through loud and clear.

As the film opens, Kyiv college student Alim and his father Mustafa (Akhtem Seitablayev), newly arrived from Crimea, are paying a visit to one of the capital’s morgues to claim the shrapnel-pocked body of Alim’s older brother Nazim (Anatoliy Marempolskiy), one of many Ukrainian soldiers...

The Master Class is a five-day networking and mentoring programme for 20 emerging filmmakers.

Director Kevin Madconald, Endgame Entertainment CEO James D Stern and producer Gabrielle Tana are among the expert speakers participating in the Zurich Film Festival’s Master Class that begins today (October 3).

The Master Class is an intensive five-day networking and mentoring programme for 20 directors, screenwriters and producers from 18 counties.

Further speakers include filmmakers Christian Frei, Jacob Berger, Jon Kasbe and Ann Hui, and writer Thomas Meyer.

The programme kicks off today with Srf Writer’s Day, a collaboration with Schweizer Radio und Fernsehen. The day’s activities...

A March 2019 release date has been set; Sentsov working on film in prison.

A March 2019 release date has been set for the adaptation of the imprisoned Ukrainian filmmaker Oleg Sentsov’s dystopian play Numbers.

Ukrainian filmmaker Sentsov was arrested in May 2014 in connection with alleged activities opposing the annexation of the Crimean Peninsula by Russia, and sentenced by Russian court in August 2015 to 20 years imprisonment. He is currently serving out his sentence in Russia’s northernmost prison in Labytnangi, Yamalo-Nemets, and began an indefinite hunger strike on May 14, 2018.

Presenting the Numbers project “out of competition” at this year’s Film...

From behind enemy lines on the night before D-Day to a foreboding island in 1905 and a serial killer's journey through the streets of New York City, the 14th annual Fantastic Fest will once again transport moviegoers to a wide range of locations and characters via their eclectic film lineup, with their first wave of programming including the world premieres of Bad Robot's Overlord and Gareth Evans' Apostle, and the 4K restoration of William Lustig's Maniac:

Austin, TX — Tuesday, July 31, 2018 — Entering its 14th year of celebrating offbeat and brilliant cinema, this installment sees Fantastic Fest bring the very best in mind-melting mayhem and madness from all corners of the globe, which also includes a cinematic trip back in time to South Korea, highlighting a period of filmmaking that was mad, bad and dangerous to know!

Fantastic Fest is thrilled to present the World Premiere of the bone-chilling World War II horror-thriller Overlord,...

Overlord and Apostle will be among world premieres at the Austin, Texas event.

World premieres of J J Abrams-produced horror mystery Overlord and Welsh writer-director Gareth Evens thriller Apostle will feature in the line-up of this year’s Fantastic Fest in Austin, Texas.

The fourteenth edition of Fantastic Fest, which claims to be the largest genre festival in the Us, will run September 20-27 at Austin’s Alamo Drafthouse Cinema.

Also set for the event are the world premieres of Timo Tjahjanto’s thriller The Night Comes For Us, from Indonesia, and Swedish feature The Unthinkable.

Getting their North American...

The Council of Europe fund will soon have 40 members.

Membership of the Council of Europe’s cinema support fund Eurimages is set to reach 40 with the arrival of Ukraine and Montenegro as the latest members in its 30th anniversary year in 2019.

“The benefit of being part of Eurimages is not only the financial aspect, but also being part of a bigger network and the opportunities it creates for the producers,¨ said Roberto Olla, executive director of Eurimages.

Olla hopes the membership of Ukraine and Montenegro will be officially confirmed by early next year.

The two new countries would bring the...

‘Numbers’ will be produced by Anna Palenchuk and directed by Tamara Trunova.

Plans for a film adaptation of jailed Ukrainian filmmaker Oleg Sentsov’s play Numbers are to be presented at Odesa International Film Festival’s Film Industry Office’s (Fio) pitching forum next week.

Kiev-based producer Anna Palenchuk of 435 Films said she has been in regular correspondence with the imprisoned director to ask for instructions and remarks about both a new stage production and a film version of Numbers.

Sentsov is presently on hunger strike in a remote Arctic prison camp for eight weeks in protest at his...

At Karlovy Vary Intl. Film Festival this week a new initiative was launched in collaboration with Midpoint titled Works in Development – Feature Launch, where nine in-development projects were pitched at the Central European event.

Midpoint is a Czech training and networking platform under the auspices of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague aimed at writers, directors and producers from low audiovisual capacity territories. In addition to their festival ties, the organization runs a year-long center that organizes a wide range of activities.

The projects, which were selected from workshops run by Midpoint at the Trieste Film Festival in Italy in January, and in Belgrade, Serbia in May, came from Azerbaijan, the Czech Republic, Greece, Hungary, Montenegro, Poland, Romania, Serbia and Ukraine.

The event, which was described as a training platform for emerging filmmakers from Central and Eastern Europe, hosted workshops that focused on project development, financing and co-production. Invited participants were writers,...

Titles screening at the 18th edition include David Robert Mitchell’s Under The Silver Lake.

Swiss genre festival Neuchâtel Fantastic Film Festival (Nifff) has announced the programme for its 18th edition, held from July 6-14 this year.

The festival will open with the world premiere of web series Le 5e Cavalier, which won the Fantastic Web Contest at last year’s event. The closing film will be the Swiss premiere of animation Hotel Transylvania 3.

Scroll down for the full line-up

Across nine days the festival will screen over 150 films across 14 sections, consisting of 109 features and 60 shorts.

16 films will compete in the international competition,...

The Berlin Film Festival’s Panorama sidebar is now complete, bursting with 47 titles from 40 countries, and mixing documentary and features. Among the new additions today is Idris Elba’s directorial debut Yardie which just premiered at Sundance. Other selections announced include the Pedro Almodovar-produced Franco regime doc The Silence Of Others and Lemonade, produced by Romania’s Cristian Mungiu.

Also on deck are new works from Korea’s Kim Ki-duk, Human, Space, Time And Human; and Ursula Meier’s Shock Waves – Diary Of My Mind.

Wolfgang Fischer’s Styx will open Panorama Special on February 16. The nearly dialogue-free film film tells the story of a female doctor on a sailing holiday gone unexpectedly sour somewhere between Europe and Africa. The main program will open on the evening before with the previously announced River’s Edge from Isao Yukisada.

Below is the full...

Summer 1993 and My Happy Family also take home prizes from Ukrainian festival.

Peter Brosen and Jessica Woodworth’s fourth feature King Of The Belgians received the Golden Duke Grand Prix - based on voting by festival-goers - at the eighth Odesa International Film Festival (Oiff, July 14 - 22), which came to a close on Saturday evening.

The International Competition jury, headed up by German director Christian Petzold and including actress Sibel Kekilli and Romanian producer-director-festival organiser Tudor Giurgiu, awarded the prize for best international feature film to Catalan director Carla Simón’s autobiographical film Summer 1993.

Handled internationally by New Europe Film Sales, Simón’s film had its world premiere in the Berlinale’s Generation Kplus sidebar where it won the international jury’s grand prix and the Gwff best first feature award.

Meanwhile, My Happy Family by the directorial duo Nana & Simon continued its successful international festival career by picking up the jury’s awards for best director...

Screen investigates which films from around the world could launch on the Croisette, including on opening night.

With just over a month to go before the line-up for this year’s Cannes Film Festival is unveiled in Paris, Croisette predictions and wish lists are hitting the web thick and fast.

Screen’s network of correspondents and contributors around the world have been putting out feelers to get a sense of what might or might not make it to the Palais du Cinéma or one of the parallel sections.

Just like the Oscars, this year’s festival is likely to unfold amid a politically-charged atmosphere. Beyond Trump and the rise of populism across the globe, France will be digesting the result of its own presidential election on May 7. Against this background, the festival will be feting its 70th edition.

Below, Screen reveals which titles might - and might not - be in the running for a place at the...

The first trailer for When the Trees Fall (Koly Padayut Dereva) suggests that it's a coming-of-age movie with a striking edge. Directed by Marysia Nikitiuk in her feature debut, the film is a co-production (Ukraine/ Poland/ France/ Macedonia). Latido Films recently came on board to handle international sales and has released the trailer, which is mighty impressive. It begins by teasing a series of hazy, arthouse backgrounds before revealing several scenes that imply menace has come to town. Here's the storyline: Storyline: In a godforsaken village in Ukraine a rebellious little girl learns about life watching her teenage cousin's romance with a young criminal. But when he flees after a murder, her cousin is forced to marry someone else, and this little heroine has to...

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

The Works in Progress 2016 Awards at the 20th Tallinn Black Nights Film FestivalIndustry@Tallinn and Baltic Event is one of the fastest growing entertainment sector development summits in the winter season. They are held during the annual Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival, the only Fiapf accredited Competition Feature Film Festival in Northern Europe.

The Works in Progress sessions were first organized 15 years ago as a regional showcase part of the Baltic Event. Last year, upcoming international films were added to the program and today, its 2 sections, Baltic Event Works in Progress and International Works in Progress, offer buyers, producers and programmers a diverse and dynamic range of local and international projects to discover.

Industry@Tallinn & Baltic Event organized this year as well their Works in Progress pitching sessions. As a matter of fact, 26 films in production or postproduction looking for sales agents or festivals for international premieres were presented on...

Kfm: Russian investor boards ‘Black Angel’ remake, ‘made in Russia’ blockbusters, Kfm pitching winners, Latido picks up Ukrainian debut

Russian investment is set to be tapped for Roger Christian’s feature version of his 1980 cult short Black Angel.

Speaking during the first edition of the KinoPoisk Film Market (Kfm) in Moscow, the film’s producer Harald Reichebner said that 70% of the budget is in place as a co-production between the UK, Belgium and Hungary, with the final 30% now to come from an undisclosed private Russian investor.

The $9.7m production features an international cast including Dougray Scott, John Rhys-Davies, Rutger Hauer (who starred as The Mystic Monk in Christian’s 1994 biopic Nostradamus), Turkish-German actress-model Meryem Uzerli, star of the Turkish TV series Muhtesem Yüzyil, and Russian actor Vladimir Mashkov, known to international audiences from Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol and Behind Enemy Lines.

Berlin-based, Austrian-born Reichebner – who had previously worked with Christian as the producer on Nostradamus - told...

Warsaw Next workshop for young Polish filmmakers with 70+ participants is organized in cooperation with Sundance TV who hosts a masterclass on 15 October.

The Warsaw Film Festival (October 7–16, 2016) promotes Eastern European cinema as well as world cinema. With over 100 titles, five competitive sections, Fipresci workshops and the ever-expanding industry event CentEast Market, the 32nd edition of the Warsaw Film Festival this year is its largest ever event.

CentEast Market focuses on Eastern European cinema and will present 13 new works-in-progress, new Polish films and workshops for both filmmakers and film critics.

The CentEast Market runs 14–16 October during the final days of the Warsaw Film Festival. Since 2005, the market has provided a meeting space for sales agents, distributors, festival programmers and producers interested in Eastern European cinema.

This year’s CentEast Market will be repeated in Moscow a few days after its October 14 presentation in Warsaw. Peter Bebjak (The Cleaner [+]), Inara Kolmane (Mona...

Talya Lavie’s Zero Motivation won the Grand Prix at this year’s Odessa International Film Festival (Oiff), overshadowed in its final days by the shooting down of a Malaysian Airways plane.

Lavie’s debut feature, handled internationally by The Match Factory, was voted by the festival-goers to receive the Golden Duke statuette and the $12,000 cash prize.

Director Lavie and actress Shani Klein were accompanied on stage by the Israel Film Fund Katriel Schory to accept the Grand Prix from the hands of the Oiff president Viktoriya Tigipko.

News of the Malaysian Airways plane tragedy broke early on Thursday evening during a reception in honour of Turkish films showing at the festival.

A minute’s silence was held in memory of the crash victims ahead of Gogol Wives’ documentary Pussy vs Putin that evening.

On Friday, another minute of silence was held at the beginning of the awards ceremony in memory of the aeroplane’s passengers as well...

Talya Lavie’s Zero Motivation won the Grand Prix at this year’s Odessa International Film Festival (Oiff), overshadowed in its final days by the shooting down of a Malaysian Airways plane.

Lavie’s debut feature, handled internationally by The Match Factory, was voted by the festival-goers to receive the Golden Duke statuette and the $12,000 cash prize.

Director Lavie and actress Shani Klein were accompanied on stage by the Israel Film Fund Katriel Schory to accept the Grand Prix from the hands of the Oiff president Viktoriya Tigipko.

News of the Malaysian Airways plane tragedy broke early on Thursday evening during a reception in honour of Turkish films showing at the festival.

A minute’s silence was held in memory of the crash victims ahead of Gogol Wives’ documentary Pussy vs Putin that evening.

On Friday, another minute of silence was held at the beginning of the awards ceremony in memory of the aeroplane’s passengers as well...

New projects from Pakalnina, Louhimies and Kilmi at Tallinn market.

New films from Laila Pakalnina (Dawn), Aku Louhimies (True) and Jaak Kilmi (Heroes from the East) are among 12 projects from 11 countries selected for this year’s Baltic Event co-production market which will be held in Tallinn from November 27-29.

Local Estonian film-maker Kilmi will be at the Baltic Event for the second year in a row after presenting another feature project, The Hoppers, which won the Screen International Best Pitch Award last year.

As the Baltic Event’s organisers point out, the 2013 line-up has a large number of feature debutants – six in total – ranging from Romania’s Botond-Csaba Püsök (Miracle in Cluj) through Ukraine’s Marysia Nikitiuk (When The Trees Are Falling) to Finland’s Jussi Hiltunen (Law of the Land).

In addition, Julietta Sichel, the former programme director of Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, is coming to Tallinn with her company 8Heads Production and Stanislav Babic of Croatia...