Cannes Docs

Runtime: 80' & 52'

Expected release: January 2023

Budget: €415,000 (20% in place)

1st/2nd feature?: 2nd feature

Looking for: Co-producers, funding, pre-buys, sales agent / distributor

Synopsis: 

The film follows the last gold miners living in the midst of wilderness in Lapland. Only an old television set as their messenger of the outside world, the miners try to make the most of their last moments in the existence as the government is closing down their way of living. Not happy with the government’s actions, this small community is fighting against the legislation that’s leading to their downfall.

Director’s profile: 

Juho-Pekka Tanskanen was born in 1988 in Helsinki, Finland and graduated from Lahti university of applied sciences’ cinema studies in 2014. Tanskanen is a member of The Association of Finnish Film Directors and his first feature length film Waiting for Barcelona was nominated for the Finnish National ‘Jussi’ award for best documentary. The film was widely praised and the Finnish main stream critics said that Waiting for Barcelona is a new generation’s film and leads the way in the Finnish cinema art. Tanskanen is currently studying in the master’s programme of fiction film directing at Aalto University and he co-founded Danish Bear Productions with Isabella Karhu in 2015.

Filmography:

Waiting for Barcelona, feature documentary, 2018
Sami’s film, short documentary, 2016
Death in the afternoon, short fiction, 2015

Runtime: 90'

Expected release: Fall/Winter 2021

Budget: €294,077 (40% in place)

1st/2nd feature?: 2nd feature

Looking for: Funding, Co-producer, pre-buys, sales agents

Synopsis: 

This film will take place in the village where I grew up and where all my childhood memories were created. For me, the village was always a paradise. But what I didn’t realise was that I was living in the middle of a civil war. Today I am going back to confront that childhood memory with the reality and circumstances of the political situation that my country is facing.

Director’s profile: 

Inadelso Cossa was born in 1984, in Maputo, Mozambique. Since 2006, he works as a film director, producer and cinematographer based in Mozambique, awarded with Estação Imagem – Mora prize for best documentary at FIKE – Évora International short film festival 2013 and Special Jury prize at FFER – Récife International Ethnographic film festival 2013.
« The Nights Still Smell of Gunpowder », his new documentary in development was already supported by IDFA Bertha Fund, Festival International du Film de Marrakech- Atlas Workshop, Berlinale Talents, Hot Docs – Blue Ice Group Documentary Fund, CNAP Image/Mouvement, La Fabrique des Cinémas du Monde.

Runtime: 77'

Expected release: June 2021

Budget: €169,016

1st/2nd feature?: 2nd feature

Looking for: Co-producers, funding, pre-buys, sales agent

Synopsis: 

We are at the tip of the Cotentin Peninsula, at Omonville-la-Rogue. It’s a stone village, built around a small fishing port.  I intend to follow three fishermen : Jacques, 72 years old, Baptiste, 35 years old and Paul, 25 years old, who’s unsure whether he belongs on a boat or in an office.
Three generations and three views on the place small fishermen occupy in a globalized society.

Director’s profile: 

Nicolas Gayraud was born in 1976 in Rodez, in the south of France. He grew up surrounded by farmers and craftsmen.  He taught himself filmmaking, and directed his first short-film in Super 8 in 1997. In 2006, he directs his first documentary film « La sortie d’école » which is nominated for Best creative documentary at the Documfest in Timisoara (Romania) in 2008.
In octobre 2014, his first long film « Le temps de quelques jours » is released. It attracted more than 25 000 people in theaters.
In 2013, he directed the film « ROOTS », an essay about accepting death. In 2014, he makes the film « Michel Dalladaire, la balade des êtres libres » about the famous clown who co-founded Cirque du Soleil.
He came back in 2017 to his parents house in the south of France, to film « PASSAGES ».
He is currently shooting « Inertia » in Normandie (France).

Runtime: 85'

Expected release: April 2022

Budget: €148,000 (17% in place)

1st/2nd feature?: 1st feature

Looking for: Croatian co-producer, French co-producer, other possible European co-producers, future sales agent and distributor, funding...

Synopsis: 

Gina was a Montenegrin girl who had become political prisoner in the 50’s in the ex Yugoslavia. The story follows Marina, Gina’s niece, on her way to the prison she is visiting for the second time – the first time as a baby seen in a photograph and now as an elderly lady. Together, we are bringing female side of the Yugoslavian camps, and questioning how many generations does it take to overcome a trauma.

Director’s profile: 

Sara Stijović (1997, Podgorica) holds a BA in FTV directing from the FDA Cetinje at the University of Montenegro. Now, she is specializing in Documentary film. Her short fiction and documentary films had been internationally awarded. She has taken part in several international campuses: Talent Campus of the 37th FIff, Tehran, Iran; Looking China Film Youth Project in Harbin, China… She is an Al Jazeera Ambassador. Her first feature film – Gina has been supported by Montenegrin film center, and is in development stage. She had won BEST PITCH for Documentary at the Balkan Film Market, Tirana. Gina has been selected for La Fabrique Cinéma de l’Institut français 2020, as the first ever Montenegrin, and this year’s only European, project to enter the program. She has been selected for CIRCLE – Women Doc Accelerator 2020. She is the Montenegrin female candidate for American Film Showcase.

Runtime: 90'

Expected release: January 2022

Budget: €230,000 (10% in place)

1st/2nd feature?: 1st feature

Looking for: Co-producers, funding, festivals and distributors from Latin America, Europe, Middle East and United States

Synopsis: 

A Haitian immigrant living in Brazil, Espera is always trying new ways to earn money to send to his daughter in Haiti. One day, he is called to identify an old friend’s corpse at a morgue. The search for the truth about his friend’s death plunges Espera into São Paulo’s Haitian community, its music and ancestral culture. The documentary follows Espera’s journey, a rediscovery of his own identity.

Director’s profile: 

Francisco Bahia is a Brazilian filmmaker, master in Geography. He has directed shorts and features that address the issues of territory and identity, which have been selected and received awards at several Brazilian festivals. Babylon is his first feature film as a director. He also works as a cinematographer in documentaries for TV and cinema.

Runtime: 60'

Expected release: December 2021

Budget: USD 71,812

1st/2nd feature?: 1st feature

Looking for: Co-Producer

Synopsis: 

This is a story of Bangladeshi single mothers who are struggling in the process of claiming their natural guardianship over their daughters. This process documentation will also unfold many sides of patriarchal attitude of the society.

Director’s profile: 

Kazi Krishnakali Islam is a renowned singer of Bangladesh. She writes & composes her own songs. Which made her popular among the music circuit of the country. This popularity earned her quite a reputation including a no of awards and accolades including the national film award for best singer in 2009. Besides being a singer she is actively involved in various social and cultural movements of the country.
Krishnakali started her career in early nineties of last century as assistant director for a no of television productions. Later on, she started producing her programs for satellite television channels and also directed a no of documentaries for NGO & private organizations.
NOC will be her debut feature documentary.

Runtime: 90'

Expected release: June 2021

Budget: €220,000 (70% in place)

Looking for: Co-producers, funding, pre-buys, sales agent, distributor

Synopsis: 

In 2014, Firda, Siti and Widi, three hijab-wearing Indonesian schoolgirls, formed a heavy metal band called Voice of Baceprot and also known as VoB. This documentary will follow the daily life of VoB from the village they live in to a long and winding road, going from performing on very small stages, to school gigs all the way up to prestigious stages.

Director’s profile: 

Indonesian film director Yosep Anggi Noen, born in Yogyakarta on 1983, studied Communications at the Socio-Politics Faculty of Yogyakarta’s Gadjah Mada University.
His first feature Peculiar Vacation and Other Ilnesses (2012) premiered at Locarno.At Vancouver it won Dragon and Tiger Special Mention Award.
His short film A Lady Caddy Who Never Saw a Hole in One (2013), won the Best Short Film at Busan and the the Grand Prix of Tokyo Short Shorts Film Festival.
Solo, Solitude (2016), his second feature, premiered in the Concorso Cineasti del Presente at Locarno.
His third feature film “The Science of Fictions” have its world premiere and won special mentionaward at concorso internazionale of Locarno 2019.
Curently he is working on Jilah And The Man With Two Names (Busan APM-2019 and CineMart 2020) and Voice of Baceprot (Pitching du Réel 2020)

Runtime: 70'

Expected release: May 2021

Budget: $1,111,598 (90% in place)

1st/2nd feature?: 1st feature

Looking for: Sales agent

Synopsis: 

Syrian teenagers Mahmoud and Fawzi are two friends living in a refugee camp in Jordan. Like many young boys in the camp, they dream of becoming professional soccer players while facing the difficult reality of their lives. When a world renowned sports academy visits the camp, both have a chance to make this dream come true.

Director’s profile: 

Ali El-Arabi is a documentary director and producer based in Cairo. He got his start as a producer and director at Dream TV (Egypt) where he worked on various documentaries such as Witness and Martyr, Dreaming of a Constitution and 6th of April Youth Movement. In addition he trained reporters on how to shoot news pieces. He went on to produce documentaries for ZDF, Stern TV Germany, and National Geographic in the MENA region. In 2015 El-Arabi set up Ambient Light, a Cairo-based production company where he focuses on various topics relevant to the MENA region such as refugee displacement and women and children’s rights. El-Arabi holds a bachelor’s degree in Integrated Marketing and Communications from Mansoura University. Captains of Za’atari is his first documentary feature film.

Runtime: 80'

Expected release: September 2022

Budget: €238,200 (5% in place)

1st/2nd feature?: 2nd feature

Looking for: Development and production funding, co-producers, pre-buyers

Synopsis: 

Amar and Gunaraj are working as Happiness Agents who travel door-to-door through the remote Himalayan mountains measuring people’s levels of happiness. Gross National Happiness is a satirical ‘road movie’ that takes us through a mosaic of stories exploring the desires of a society with a specific national identity created by the Happiness Ministry of Bhutan, a country that has been closed-off for centuries.

Director’s profile: 

Arun Bhattarai premiered his first feature-length documentary The Next Guardian at IDFA in the First Appearance Competition in 2017. Since then it has screened at more than 40 international festivals (True/False, Ambulante, San Francisco IDFF, MoMA DocFortnight, Camerimage, Docs Against Gravity etc.) and has had theatrical and television releases world wide. His recent documentary, Kelden was screened in NHK World and KBS Korea. Before becoming an independent filmmaker, he worked as a TV director at the Bhutan Broadcasting Service for 6 years. He graduated from the first edition of DocNomads Master in documentary directing for which he was awarded a full Erasmus Mundus scholarship in 2014. Currently he is also directing a short documentary Mountain Man, about Bhutan’s first glaciologist. The project won the Best Pitch Prize at If/Then Global Short Pitch at IDFA 2019.

Co-director’s profile: 

Dorottya Zurbó premiered her first feature documentary The Next Guardian at IDFA in the First Appearance Competition in 2017. Since then it has been screened at more than 40 international festivals (True/False, San Francisco IDFF, MoMA DocFortnight etc.) had theatrical releases and broadcasted around the world. Parallelly she worked on her first directorial debut Easy Lessons, a feature documentary premiered at the Locarno Film Festival Critics’s Week section in 2018 and participated in more than 40 international festivals (Sarajevo IFF, HotDocs, Thessaloniki IDF etc.) receiving awards such as the Hungarian Critics Award for Best Documentary. She graduated from the first edition of DocNomads Joint Master in documentary directing. She was part of Sarajevo Talent Campus 2015. She was awarded with a scholarship for young emerging artists from the Hungarian Academy of Arts (2015).

Runtime: 52' & 74'

Expected release: May 2021

Budget: USD 285,000 (44% in place)

Looking for: Funding, Co-producer, Sales agent

Synopsis: 

Three East and West Germans who have been living in South Korea recall the memory of the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989. As teenagers, they faced the unification in Germany and now looking at an atmosphere that may lead to reunification in South Korea. Andres, Mark, and Sonya start to reveal its bittersweet consequences and share controversial futures if the two Koreas were to become one.

Director’s profile: 

Since 2002, Wooyoung Choi (1977, Korea) has worked in a television production house as a director with B.A. specialized in Journalism. In 2013, he directed his first international feature documentary, HERE COMES UNCLE JOE with Sinae Ha. And he was done his second feature documentary, REACH FOR THE SKY together with a Belgium director, Steven Dhoedt in 2015. This documentary was invited to various film festivals such as the Busan, DOK Leipzig, Udine or Mar del Plata Film Festival to name a few. It was also broadcasted on National Geographic Channel (Korea), VRT(Belgium), YLE(Finland), ZDF(Germany), EBS(Korea) and many more. With this experience he co-produced the Korean-Philippine documentary, GOD BLISS OUR HOME and the Korean-Chinese co-production documentary, STAMMERING BALLAD.

Runtime: 70'

Expected release: March 2021

Budget: €200,000 (22% in place)

1st/2nd feature?: 1st feature

Looking for: Co-producers, funders, sales and festivals

Synopsis:

Kongo is Burning is a contemporary and celebratory tale of fashion, disco balls and the everyday hustle told by La Duchesse and Consolée, two transgender women flourishing in Bukavu, a city in the East of the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Director’s profile:

Arnold Aganze is a multi-award winning director who was born in 1986 in Mushenyi, a small village in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Raised between fields of maize and war, he started a degree in Political Science in Bukavu, before dropping it and moving to Kampala, Uganda. In 2013, in Kampala, Aganze joined Maisha Film Lab where he directed his first short documentary film Rastasophical Mood, an introspective essay on an alternative community in Kampala. In 2015, after developing several scripts that were costly and with no access to serious producers, Aganze brought together his close network of fellow filmmakers and they went on to shoot N.G.O: Nothing Going On.

Runtime: 90'

Expected release: May 2022

Budget: €350,000 (23% in place)

Looking for: Co-producers (France, Germany), sales agents

Synopsis:

A film meditation on individual freedom of a person under various kinds of pressure, including the pressure of state and the media. Film about what to do if we want to break free from various forms of violence.

Director’s profile:

Anna Kryvenko is a video and fine art photography artist. She is a graduate of the Centre for Audio-visual Studies at FAMU (CZ). Before she studied theatre directing at KNUTKT (UKR) and alternative theatre directing at DAMU (CZ). Her school films and performances were screened at Fluidum Festival, Jihlava Documentary Film Festival, Intermedia BB, Visions du Reél, etc. She participated in several group exhibitions. With her found-footage film Silently Like a Comet she won prize for the Best Experimental Act at FAMUFEST (CZ). For the film Listen to the Horizon she won the prize for the Best Czech Experimental Documentary at Jihlava IDFF (CZ). Her feature debut My Unknown Soldier premiered at DOK Leipzig (DE) and won Special Mention at ZagrebDox and Cronograf IDFF.

Runtime: 90'

Expected release: December 2020

Budget: €196,250 (38% in place)

1st/2nd feature?: 1st feature

Looking for: Funding, Pre-Buys, Sales Agents

Synopsis: 

In a landscape decimated by austerity measures and plagued by rising knife crime, a community called ‘Bike Life’ has sprung up in the void, providing one of the last safety nets for at-risk young kids. Through the lives of our protagonists, the film weaves a rich tapestry documenting the realities of street life in London at this unprecedented moment.

Director’s profile:

Alice has worked in a variety of formats from shorts to feature docs, and on broadcast documentaries for the flagship current affairs strands Panorama and Dispatches, and on programmes for the BBC, Channel 4 and Vice News. MEN BUY SEX was her first film which won the SIMA Creative Activism Award and was awarded Vimeo Staff Picks Best of the Month. AGENTS OF CHANGE was selected as a festival focus from the premiere UK documentary festival Sheffield DocFest. Her films have screened at festivals worldwide and premiered on Nowness and Dazed. BFI NETWORK x BAFTA CREW Mentee 2020.

Filmography:

TERRA INCOGNITA (2020, Short)
PEOPLE OF PIMLICO (2017, Collection of shorts), Royal Court Theatre
AGENTS OF CHANGE (2017, Short), Dazed & Confused
MEN BUY SEX (2015, Short), Fat Rat Films
VICE NEWS: EUROPE’S MOST HATED (2013, Digital Series), Assistant Producer, VICE

Runtime: 90'

Expected release: November 2021

Budget: €200,000 (25% in place)

Looking for: Coproducers, international funding and pre buys. The film already has a world sales agent

Synopsis: 

A fado singer, a soccer player, a vacuum cleaner sales woman, a lead singer in a rock band, a poet. All these people have something in common: they are taxi drivers working in a city that struggles to keep its soul in the wake of massive tourism. Lisbon in the Backmirror follows the poetics of everyday life in a neoliberal world in which subjectivity has been annihilated by pragmatism.

Director’s profile: 

His debut feature film Cinema, Aspirins and Vultures, a road movie set in the hinterlands, gathered great media attention in 2005 at Cannes Film Festival (Un Certain Regard official section) where it won France´s National Education Award. In 2009 he presented at Venice Film Festival I Travel Because I Have To, I Come Back Because I Love You, one of his most studied works. Co-directed with Karim Ainouz, the film blurs the line between fiction and documentary and has obtained enormous attention from film critics and art curators alike. In 2019 he presented at Berlin Film Festival’s Panorama Dokumenta section his documentary Waiting for the Carnival, an immersion of one year in a small rural village in the Hinterlands of Brazil to depict the excesses of modern day capitalism. The film was selected for the IDFA Masters program in 2019.