Projects
Projects
Married to a Poisonous Lady
Original Title: Married to a Poisonous Lady
Directed by: Masahiro Nimura
Produced by: Masahiro Nimura (Japan)
Country of Production: Japan
Runtime: 85'
Expected Release: September, 2023
Production Stage: In production
Budget: $180,000 USD (45% secured)
1st Feature: Yes
Looking for: Sales agents, international distributors, Co-producers, strategic guidance, investors, funders
Synopsis:
Death Row inmate Masumi Hayashi seems monstrous; accused of poisoning the curry at a summer festival, killing 4 and injuring dozens of others, as well as an insurance fraud scheme involving the same poison used in the killings. But one of her victims, her husband Kenji, is proving her innocence, and struggles against an impenetrable bureaucracy to clear her name and save her life. In spite of compelling evidence of a miscarriage of justice, his odds seem impossibly long.
Director’s profile:
Masahiro Nimura Director, Producer, has directed and produced various TV programs for 20years, titles, such as, School refusal has arrived (2021) for NHK, Short documentary about a unique method to bring out a dramatic recovery from schizophrenia. How To Train Your Schizophrenia and so on. In recent years, he has followed the subject of Japanese criminal justice, the death penalty, and false accusations.
Notes For a Film
Original Title: Notas para una película
Directed by: Ignacio Agüero
Produced by: Amalric de Pontcharra (Ignacio Agüero & Asociado Ltd, Chile), Tehani Staiger (Ignacio Agüero & Asociado Ltd, Chile), Elisa Sepulveda (Fulgurance Films, France)
Country of Production: Chile, France
Runtime: 92', 110'
Expected Release: September, 2022
Production Stage: Editing stage
Budget: €416,205 (85% in place)
1st Feature: No
Looking for: Presales / Sales Agents / Festivals / Buyers
Synopsis:
A film which portrays the radical transformation of the territory of Araucanía at the end of the 19th through the eyes of a young foreigner, Gustave Verniory. The film draws a sensitive cinematic space, playing with and creating a dialogue between past and contemporary. It is a path that meanders between human and geographic landscapes, in order to reveal the deep essence of the Araucanía territory.
Director’s profile:
Ignacio Agüero is a film director, mainly documentary films. He is a titular professor at the University of Chile and has taught film there for the last fifteen years. He was Director of the Master’s program in documentary filmmaking between 2012 and 2017. He has been an actor in numerous films. He has won numerous awards for his films, the latest of which is the Grand Prix at the FID Marseille in 2019, and the Prince Claus Lifetime Achievement Award in 2015. Two books have been published on his work, “El cine de Ignacio Agüero”, by authors Catalina donoso and Valeria de los Ríos, and “Dos o tres cosas que sabemos de él”, by several contributors coordinated by Eva Sangiorgi and Camila Donoso, edited by Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. Retrospectives of his films have been held in Barcelona, Mexico City, La Paz, Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Aires, Lima, Paris, Biarritz, Trieste, Chile.
Producers’s profile:
Amalric de Pontcharra is a french producer living in Santiago de Chile since november 2006. In Chile, he has been asociate producer of Ignacio Agüero’s El Diario de Agustín (Agustin Newspaper), El otro día (The other day), Como me da la gana II (This is the way I like it II) and Notas para una película (Notes for a film). Amalric de Pontcharra is funding member of Les Producteurs Indépendants Associés (Paris): As a Producer of this group he executive produced more than 100 hours of documentary features between 2000 and 2007 for Arte.
Becoming Ema
Original Title: Becoming Ema
Directed by: Patricia Drati
Produced by: Sidsel Lønvig Siersted (Good Company Pictures, Denmark), Marcel Pazman (Frame Film, Slovakia)
Country of Production: Denmark, Slovakia
Runtime: 80'
Expected Release: September, 2023
Production Stage: Production
Budget: €394.819
1st Feature: Yes
Looking for: Co-producers, sales agents/distributors, festivals
Synopsis:
Set in Slovakia, and the countryside of Mallorca, the film examines motherhood as an identity, a calling, a journey. In pursuit of a dream, Ema and her husband, spend their savings on a plot of land on Mallorca. While expecting their second daughter, they embark on an exhaustive journey to build a settlement. Ema believes she has chosen the best life for her family, close to nature, full of connection.
Director’s profile:
Patricia Drati is a director, creative producer and film development consultant, working with both documentary and fiction. Between 2009-2015, Patricia was Head of CPH:LAB at CPH:DOX International Documentary Film Festival. She curated, developed and managed the cross-cultural training and production lab for international filmmaking talents. Patricia completed Torino Film Lab as a story editor in 2016, where she has since then been a member of the selection committee. Patricia also works as a consultant for Doha Film Institute, Qatar and International Film Festival Rotterdam. Becoming Ema is her debut film as a director.
Producers’s profile:
Sidsel Lønvig Siersted has worked on widely distributed and internationally awarded titles such as Nielsson’s Democrats (2014, PBS), Polak’s Something Better to Come (2014, HBO Europe), Greenfield’s The Kingmaker (2019, Showtime) and Kossakovsky’s Oscar short-listed Aquarela (2019, Sony Classics). She is the producer of Jepsen’s Natural Disorder, selected for IDFA’s feature length competition 2015 and nominated for a Danish Film Academy Award and Danish Critics Award. She was a consulting producer on Costa’s Oscar nominated The Edge of Democracy (2019, Netflix) and development producer of Mulvad’s Love Child, which premiered at TIFF 2019. Most recently she co-produced the award winning, IDFA Bertha Fund supported My Darling Supermarket by Brazilian director Yankelevich.
Bailadila
Category: Film Bazaar Goes to Cannes
Directed by: Shailendra Sahu
Produced by: Raju Biswas
Country of Production: India
Original Title: Bailadila
Genre: Feature film
Language: Hindi and Chhattisgarhi
Runtime: 93min
Completed in: 2022
In the slumbering mining town of Bailadila is home to 10 year old Rinku’s elder brother Jiten, a passionate artist caught in a miserable teaching job. Rinku finds himself at the threshold of boyhood after losing his mother, moving in with his brother and experiences many things for the first time.
ROCK. PAPER. GRENAGE
Category: Ukrainian Features Preview
Directed by: Iryna Tsilyk
Produced by: Vladimir Yatsenko, Anna Yatsenko (ForeFilms)
Country of Production: Ukraine
Original Title: Я і Фелікс
Genre: Feature film
Language: Ukrainian
Runtime: 90
Completed in: 2022
Synopsis:
A coming-of-age story, based on Artem Chekh « Who are you? » autobiographical novel about relationships between a teenager and broken adults in Ukraine, 1990s. One day Tymophiy befriends a Felix – an Afghanistan war veteran, who has has PTSD and he loves classical music…
Electric Child
Category: Buyers Showcase
Directed by: Simon Jaquemet
Produced by: Michela Pini, Aurelius Eisenreich, Simon Jaquemet, Judith Lichteneckert, Titus Kreyenberg, Raymond van der Kaaij (8 Horses)
Country of Production: Switzerland, Germany, The Netherlands
Genre: Computer-Thriller, Drama, Science-fiction
Language: English, Swiss-German, Japanese
When his newborn son is threatened by a rare disease, a computer-scientist enters a pact with the complex AI life-form he is developing. This initiates a chain reaction that puts an end to the world as we know it.
Paws
Category: Proof of Concept
Directed by: Lukas Rinker
Produced by: Neopol Film
Country of Production: Germany
Genre: Creature Horror
Language: English
Young climate-researcher Nook is in grave danger. Her science-vessel has broken down way deep in the Arctic ice and her team is about to betray her and her cause – and dig for oil! When a hungry polarbear-mother then attacks the estranged crew, chances for survival decline rapidly.
Five and a Half Love Stories in an Apartment in Vilnius
Category: Tallinn Black Nights Goes to Cannes
Directed by: Tomas Vengris
Produced by: Uljana Kim, Alicia Ní Ghráinne, Roberts Vinovskis + Studio Uljana Kim / Tiger Darling Productions / Studio Locomotive
Country of Production: Lithuania, Ireland, Latvia
Original Title: PENKIOS SU PUSE MEILĖS ISTORIJOS, NUTIKUSIOS VIENAME VILNIAUS BUTE
Language: Lithuanian, English, Hebrew, Hungarian, Polish
Runtime: 112 min
Completed in: 2023
Five guests experience a crisis of love in an AirBnB in Vilnius; unaware of the stories that have transpired within the same walls and under the same bedsheets. Between each, the quiet cleaning lady, Jolanta, arrives to clean away the debris, while her own silent love story unfolds.
Loch Ness: They Created a Monster
Original Title: Loch Ness: They Created a Monster
Directed by: John MACLAVERTY
Produced by: John ARCHER
Country of Production: Scotland
Runtime: 88'
Expected Release: August, 2023
Production Stage: Completed
Budget: €455.000 (100% in place)
1st Feature: Yes
Looking for: Festivals, Distributors, Buyers
Synopsis:
In the 1970s, beneath the murky waters of Loch Ness, lay a world of violent rivalry, fakes’n’ fraud, sexual shenanigans and monster egos. Cameras peered into the depths – but the real action happened on the banks. The Loch was a natural history frontier – even Attenborough was impressed. Flimsy evidence became scientific fact, frustration turned to fakery – but the deeper you go, the darker it gets.
Director’s profile:
From swearing, to kilts, to accents to…. Scotch pies – John MacLaverty has been writing and directing documentaries in Scotland – and about Scotland – for over 25 years. Though born in Belfast, he’s made long form and entertaining films that celebrate Caledonian cultural life, with wit and stylistic flair. With his partner, John co-runs Indelible Telly, a new(ish) boutique production company who’ve been commissioned by BBC and others to produced film about the Scottish newspaper industry, about the travails of tourism, the scandal of anthrax testing in rural Scotland. Loch Ness, They Created a Monster heralds his arrival into the world of feature docs, and the combination of an epic subject, and epic setting and an epic era, makes for an epic debut.
Producer’s profile:
Bafta winner John Archer runs Hopscotch Films who specialise in international feature documentaries. Recent premieres include Mark Cousins’ My Name is Alfred Hitchcock (Telluride ‘22); Jono McLeod’s My Old School (Sundance, HotDocs ’22) which opened in US and UK cinemas last summer; Mark Cousins’ Story of Film a New Generation (Cannes ’21) and Women Make Film (Venice, TIFF,) which was awarded the inaugural Innovation in Storytelling Award from European Film Academy. Other recent feature docs from great directors are: The Ballad of a Great Disordered Heart, Dùthchas (EIFF 2022), Eminent Monsters, Make Me Up, Arcadia, Glasgow Love & Apartheid, and Harry Birrell Presents Films of Love and War. Hopscotch Films are co-producing Beast with Denmark’s Bullitt Films and Sweden’s Plattform Productions and recently combined forces with Channel X to produce comedy and drama together from Scotland.
The Death Tour
Original Title: The Death Tour
Directed by: Stephan PETERSON, Sonya BALLANTYNE
Produced by: Sergeo KIRBY (H2L Productions, Canada)
Country of Production: Canada
Runtime: 90', 44'
Expected Release: November, 2023
Production Stage: Post-production
Budget: $615.500 (92% in place)
1st Feature: Yes
Looking for: A list Festivals, European Distributors
Synopsis:
The Death Tour is a feature documentary following professional wrestlers on “the hardest tour in indie wrestling”. For weeks, these wrestlers travel across frozen lakes to put on shows for Canada’s most remote Indigenous communities. Sleeping on floors and eating canned food, this trip will force each wrestler to draw from their checkered pasts if they dare dream of a future in wrestling.
Director’s profile:
Stephan Peterson (Director/ Writer) is a Canadian Screen Award nominated documentary director, shooter, and story-editor. Since 2014, Stephan has been traveling the world shooting and directing TV series for CBC, Discovery, History, Nat Geo, Velocity and Motor Trends. Stephan’s experience working as a both a director and story editor on series like Big Rig Warriors (History), Hellfire Heroes (Discovery), Mega Trains (Discovery) and Restoration Garage (Velocity) has given him the ability to follow story in the field and to carefully craft it in the edit suite. Having directed on Ice Road Truckers (History), Cold Water Cowboys (Discovery), and Licence to Drill (Discovery), Stephan has proven he has what it takes to work with multiple characters in extreme conditions. This experience will serve him well in the filming of Death Tour, his first feature documentary.
Co-Director’s profile:
Sonya Ballantyne is a Swampy Cree writer and filmmaker from the Misipawistik Cree Nation in Northern Manitoba, Canada. Her work focuses on contemporary and futuristic portrayals of Indigenous women and girls. Her published works include children’s book Kerri Berry Lynn as well as contributions to anthologies such as Pros and Comic Cons and Resurgence. She has written for numerous creative properties such as Sesame Street, The Walking Dead: LAST MILE and CTV’s Acting Good. She was recently nominated for a Writer’s Guild of Canada award for her work on Acting Good. The Death Tour is her feature directorial debut.
Producer’s profile:
Sergeo Kirby has been producing, directing and filming award-winning feature documentaries for two decades. Notable credits include THE FORBIDDEN REEL, ABU, SHINERS, PATSY, H2Oil, ROADSWORTH, WAL-TOWN, and FENNARIO: THE GOOD FIGHT. Sergeo is the founding member of Loaded Pictures, a Montreal based documentary film company focusing on complex social documentaries. His documentaries have been seen on CBC, the Documentary Channel, GlobalTV, Canal D, Discovery, the Sundance Channel, and Bravo! among others and have been screened at hundreds of film festivals around the world. In 2017 ABU won the best documentary prize at 14 film festivals and SHINERS, released in the same year, won best documentary at 5 film festivals.