Cannes Docs

Runtime: 90'

Expected release: March, 2024

Production stage: In Production

Budget: € 364.218,26 (60.39%)

1st feature: Yes

Looking for: Festivals, sales agents, distributors, buyers, gap financing, strategic guidance, French co-producer

Synopsis:

“Do You Love Me” is Lana Daher’s personal journey through the fractured historical, social, cultural, and political landscapes of Beirut. Using mainly archive footage, the film weaves together the past and the present in a quest to better understand Lebanon’s history and current status today.

Director’s profile:

Lana Daher is a filmmaker living and working in Beirut. She earned her BFA in Graphic Design from the American University of Beirut (2006) and her MA in Filmmaking from Goldsmiths College, the University of London (2012). Since then she has shot & directed music videos, short films and commissioned documentaries. More recently including two short documentaries for Studio Olafur Eliasson. ‘Do You Love Me?’ is her first feature documentary which she is directing as well as co-producing. Drawing from her life in Lebanon, her work explores the current environment and themes of society, memory, history and how we can live in the present.

Producers profile:

Wood Water Films are Jasper Mielke, Karoline Henkel and Arto Sebastian. They got together during their studies at Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg in Ludwigsburg and set out in 2015 to fulfill their collective dream of their own production company. Wood Water Films is a feature film production company with a focus on debut films. Their passions are fiction and documentary films with cultural and social-political subjects. Thereby the spectrum ranges from cinema documentary features like BEHIND CLOSED DOORS which won the prestigious Filmprize of the Robert Bosch Stiftung in 2017 to debut fiction features like SNOWBLIND from director Arto Sebastian which had its successful cinema release in 2018 or YOU TELL ME (2019) from director Michael Fetter Nathansky as well as more recently award winning ALASKA by Max Gleschinski (2023).

Runtime: 90'

Expected release: September, 2024

Production stage: In production

1st feature: Yes

Looking for: Gap financing, strategic guidance, editing and narrative-build consultants, co-producers

Synopsis:

A 16-year-old former child soldier, Nasser, returns home to a small village South of Yemen to care for his family and prevent his two younger siblings from dropping out of school and following the same path. The ongoing 8-year war had broken his older brother and father before him and forced Nasser to become the guardian of his younger siblings’ fate.

Director’s profile:

Mariam Al-Dhubhani is a Yemeni-Russian award-winning journalist, filmmaker, curator, and educator based in the MENA region. She first pursued her passion for media during the 2011 Arab uprisings and co-founded her first media production. She is a two-time TEDx speaker and one of the first directors to utilize virtual reality to highlight stories from Yemen. Mariam attempts to shed light on the dangers of stereotyping the region in the mainstream media and provides a counterviewpoint to showcase equality in humanity.

Producer’s profile:

Mohammed Al-Jaberi is a Yemeni producer and cinematographer who worked on award-winning short documentary films focusing on Yemen. His feature-length debut is a film showing the impact of the war in Yemen on children, produced in collaboration with DFI and AlJazeera. He received specialized training from international film experts including the French Cambodian director, Rithy Phan, and the Sundance consultant Bruni Burres. He participated in a number of international film industry events including in Beirut DC, HotDocs, Doha Film Institute, AJB DOC, Close up Initiative, MEDIMED, Jacob Burns Film Center, IDFA, and Cairo International Film Festival. He holds two degrees in international relations and development.

Runtime: 75'

Expected release: April, 2024

Production stage: Production

Budget: €200.000 (25% in place)

1st feature: Yes

Looking for: Co-producers, sales agents, buyers, festivals

Synopsis:

When Elsadig and Abuzar meet while filming the Sudanese revolution 2019, neither knew they would eventually turn the camera on each other. An intimate journey of a growing friendship between two directors, whom seeking redemption and beauty through the art of filmmaking when all the odds are against them.

Director’s profile:

Elsadig Abdelgayoum is a Sudanese photographer and filmmaker. He studied Multimedia and participated in a few filmmaking and photography workshops in Khartoum and other cities in the continent. Elsadig employs filmmaking, photography not only as tools to tell stories, but to research and develop further understandings and new prespectives towards his own reality. In 2012 Abuzar Osman graduated from the telecommunication engineering. His passion of classic photography started during his childhood before fleeing Darfur region. Aubzar has joined filmmaking workshops and directed two graduation projects. Between December 2018 until the end of March Abuzar joined a journalistic network Ayin (Witness).

Producer’s profile:

Transforming from a Development professional to a storyteller, Alyaa is searching for controversy, hope and beauty behind closed doors. She has creative credits as a producer, director, cinematographer, editor and visual artist in about ten shorts that were screened in international film festivals. Alyaa has two higher degrees in filmmaking from the UK; PGD London Film School 2012 and MA with distinction in Cinematography and Post Production from the University of Greenwich 2014. A graduate of EAVE producers workshop 2021, Alyaa is currently leading two feature documentaries that are supported by regional and international documentary funds and film institutions.

Runtime: 90'

Expected release: April, 2024

Production stage: In production

Budget: €110.000 (22% in place)

1st feature: Yes

Looking for: Gap financing, co-producers, strategic guidance, festivals

Synopsis:

One thousand five hundred bodies were buried at an illegal mass grave created by Brazil’s military dictatorship in the 70’s. Decades later, a group of forensic anthropologists try to uncover their identities, but a radical political change threatens their work. During the last five years, we’ve been following the path of these bones. Hidden at a laboratory, they await to tell the story of a Country.

Director’s profile:

Tainá Muhringer Tokitaka is a Brazilian filmmaker. She works as a screenwriter, making films regarding violence, crimes and human rights. She co-wrote the feature film “Three Tidy Tigers Tied a Tie Tighter” which won the Teddy Award at Berlinale 2022. In the same year, the TV series that she worked as a screenwriter, “Evandro’s Case: a Devilish Plot” was nominated for the International Emmy Awards and received a prize from brazilian’s screenwriter association (ABRA) for best screenplay. She also wrote documentaries, such as “God Has AIDS”, that premiered at IDFA and won best film at Queer Porto, and TV series for streaming channels. She graduated both in Film Studies and language and literature. She’s currently writing her Masters Degree, where she studies the use of documents produced by the Brazilian dictatorship in recent films. Written in Bones is her first film as a director.

Producer’s profile:

Angelo Ravazi has worked since 2008 as an executive producer. He graduated in Film Studies and in History. He created his production company, “Massa Real”, based in Sao Paulo, to foment the work of new filmmakers and to produce films that have a social impact. He has produced feature films and documentaries that were exhibited at international festivals. Amongst them, films like “The Arrow and the Uniform », about indigenous populations and the military dictatorship in Brazil, “The Revolution of the Year », about the Arab Spring, and “Us” about people who were killed by the state.

Runtime: 52', 90'

Expected release: April, 2024

Production stage: In production

Budget: $452.071 (25% in place)

1st feature: No

Looking for: Gap financing, buyers, distributors

Synopsis:

Click The Link Below is about the murky world of money-making gurus online. Some people are living in extravagant luxury while others are lost in broken dreams. The Norwegian filmmaker Audun Amundsen looks behind the facade of their business, while he himself tries to escape the 9-5, and join the new online riches. He spends thousands of dollars on online programs. What does it take to succeed?

Director’s profile:

Audun Amundsen is an award winning Norwegian Documentary Filmmaker and an online marketing consultant at GonzoDocs (www.gonzodocs.com). He has received governmental and non-governmental grants several times for his films, which have sold to major TV-channels, and screened on festivals worldwide. Amundsen is known for submerging deep into long duration projects and making participatory documentaries (Newtopia and Help, I’ve gone Viral!). Favourite topics are our human nature and future prospects with the goal of raising awareness for the better.

Runtime: 75'

Expected release: November, 2023

Production stage: Post-production, Rough cut stage

Budget: €200.050

1st feature: Yes

Looking for: Festivals, sales agents, distributors, buyers, gap financing

Synopsis:

Serhiy returns home after 3 years at war, between Ukraine and Russia, deeply burned out. He served as a commander and was responsible for other people’s lives. The veteran starts working night shifts, dedicates short hours of rest to his three sons and wife. War trauma manifests when the couple starts expecting a baby. After a large-scale invasion Serhiy is forced to defend Ukraine on the frontline again.

Director’s profile:

Lesia Diak is a Ukrainian documentary film director and producer. Before shifting career to filmmaking she worked for 7 years in the area of journalism and communications. Lesia graduated from the Serhiy Bukovsky Film Program in 2017. In 2022, she completed her studies at DocNomads, an international documentary film directing Master’s program. She created several short documentaries selected for international film festivals and primarily dedicated to trauma and healing experience. Her work-in-progress feature-length documentary debut “Dad’s Lullaby” has received the award for the best documentary film in post-production at Docu Sarajevo Talents from the East, a special mention and won the post-production grant from IDFA Bertha Fund. In 2023 Lesia founded DramaFree film production company.

Producer’s profile:

Monica Lăzurean-Gorgan is an experienced producer and a member of the AMPAS/Oscar, as well as EFA. Monica is the producer of the successful documentary Acasa, My Home by Radu Ciorniciuc, winner of the Sundance Cinematography Award and other 40 international awards, delegate producer for Touch Me Not by Adina Pintilie and co-producer for Chuck Norris vs Communism by Ilinca Calugareanu. Monica is the director for feature length documentaries such as A Mere Breath, winner of Best Doc in Sarajevo IFF, Best Doc in CEE Vienna IFF, co-director of Wood, premiered in HotDocs and CPH:Dox 2020 etc.

Runtime: 80'

Expected release: November, 2024

Production stage: Late development

Budget: €233.496 (12% in place)

1st feature: No

Looking for: Distributors, co-producers, gap financing, strategic guidance

Synopsis:

Set by a beautiful river canyon in Western Ukraine, a pacifist community with unique religious beliefs, sees their peaceful way of life gradually distressed by regular floods and eventually an unexpected war.

Director’s profile:

Dmytro Sukholytkyy-Sobchuk is a Ukrainian author and filmmaker, graduated from the Kyiv National I.K. Karpenko-Kary Theatre, Cinema and Television University. Participant of the Berlinale Talents, Locarno Film Academy, he is the founder of the script platform Terrarium. He was first noticed with his short film «WEIGHLIFBTEuRd»g,eat 1E9F5A9c5o5neteunroder, winner of the Best Short Film Award in Angers and Grand Prix of the Warsaw IFIFn. pHlaisce fi1r7st00f0eaeturoe, «PAMFIR», was developed by TorinoFilmLab, Midpoint and Cannes’ Cinefondation and achieve a selection at Cannes Film Festival Directors’ Fortnight in 2022 as well as Nomination at European Film Award, European Discovery Prix Fipresci.

Producer’s profile:

Karina Kostyna is a Ukrainian film producer. Graduated from Institute of International Relationships, National University of Taras Shevtchenko. Master of international business. After 10 years in advertising, followed her heart and left for film. Karina has a number of successful, ambitious and award-winning film projects in her background, both doc and fiction. Alumni of the School of Young Producers by Mannheim Meeting Place 2021, Talents Nest at Meeting Point Vilnius 2021, EAVE Change workshop 2021-2022, EWA Mentoring program 2022. Executive producer of Pamfir, feature film, by Dmytro Sukholytkyy-Sobchuk, 2022 Cannes Film Festival, Directors’ Fortnight premiere.

Runtime: 70'

Expected release: January 2024

Production stage: Editing

Budget: $ 208.000 (70% in place)

1st feature: No

Looking for: Festivals, Sales Agentes, Gap Financing

Synopsis:

In a sub-Andean forest, an American horror movie is being filmed. Miguel, a local bodybuilder, steps up to the challenge of playing the role of a monster. Marcos, an indigenous peasant, offers his bulls for use during the shoot. The experience of their first-time participation in a film is both strange and dangerous, as they navigate a world alien to them, rife with unfamiliar codes and expectations.

Director’s profile:

Martín Boulocq studied cinematography in Jorge Sanjinés’ Andean School of Cinematography. At 25 years of age he released his first film “The Most Beautiful of my Very Best Years”, participating in San Sebastian, Locarno, Montreal and won prizes in La Habana, Valdivia, Guadalajara and others. The film was acclaimed by Bolivian critics as one of the 12 fundamental films in the history of Bolivia. His second film “Los viejos” was premiered at Busan Film Festival and screened at Torino Film Festival and Gottemborg Film Festival. His latest film “The Visitor” (2022) won best screenplay at Tribeca Film Festival, won Best film at Antalya Film Festival and screened at Moscow Film Festival, Gottemborg Film Festival and many others. His films have been screened at theaters and museums all over Latin America, Europe and North America. He has co-produced with Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, and USA.

Producer’s profile:

Andrea Camponovo Gamio was born in Tarija, Bolivia. She began her career as a producer and actress in 2004. Since 2011, she has been a partner in the film production company CQ Films together with Martin Boulocq, where she has produced both short and feature films that have reached international audiences. In 2017, she produced the feature film Eugenia, an award-winner at the Guadalajara International Film Festival and currently available on Amazon Prime. In 2021 she produced Rodrigo Bellot’s Blood Red Ox. In 2022 she produced Martín Boulocq’s The Visitor, a co-production with Uruguay/Cimarron, premiered and awared at the 2022 Tribeca Film Festival. Her most recent project as a producer, CRIMINAL BODY, has won a W.I.P prize in Ventana Sur and has been selected for “Spotlighted projects” in Cannes Docs at Marché du Film – Cannes Film Festival 2023.

Runtime: 80'

Expected release: November, 2024

Production stage: Production

Budget: €205.500 (49% in place)

1st feature: Yes

Looking for: Sales agents, broadcasters, strategic guidance

Synopsis:

When raising a kid as a homeless single mother becomes too hard for Jana, she decides to work as a surrogate mother for foreign couples in order to give her daughter, Elene, the life she’s never had. Surrogacy seems like a way to a brighter future: only 9 months of carrying someone’s baby in exchange for 14.000 USD, an unimaginable amount for her – she’s on board! But is it that simple and priceless?

Director’s profile:

Ketevan Vashagashvili is a documentary filmmaker based in Tbilisi, Georgia. She is a Chevening alumni with an MA in Digital Documentary from the University of Sussex (UK). Her main interest lies in social and human rights issues. Ketevan has 12 years of experience working at Georgian TV channels and online platforms, directing and producing TV documentaries, series, and programs. Currently, she is developing her first independent feature-length documentary, 9-Month Contract about a surrogate mother Jana. Nine years ago Ketevan made a short documentary about the same character which created a significant impact in Georgia.

Producer’s profile:

1991 Productions is a Tbilisi, Georgia-based film production and service company. Its founders Nino Chichua and Anna Kazaradze develop, finance and produce thought-provoking fiction and documentary films through European co-productions. Company’s most recent work is director Levan Akin’s new feature film produced by French Quarter Film (Sweden) and co-produced by 1991 Productions among others. Company’s 2020 feature documentary Glory to the Queen (Georgia, Austria, Serbia) was funded by Eurimages and screened over 25 festivals globally, winning the Best Documentary award in Georgia in 2021. Currently, 1991 Productions is producing feature documentary 9-Month Contract (EAVE CHANGE) and developing feature film Tear Gas (funded by GNFC, CNC), feature documentary Berliner (Nipkow 2022), and miniseries Nino and Iliko (Midpoint 2022).