Projects
Projects
Pesta
Category: Proof of Concept
Directed by: Hanne Berkaak
Produced by: Tonje Skar Reiersen & Lise Fearnley (Mikrofilm)
Country of Production: Norway
Genre: Folk Horror
Language: Norwegian
Set in Norway during the Black Plague (1349), PESTA is a romantic folk horror film about four teenagers fighting to survive as the world as they know it is coming to an end.
One-dimensional Man
Category: Tallinn Black Nights Goes to Cannes
Directed by: Andres Puustusmaa
Produced by: Katerina Monastyrskaya, Roberts Vinovskis (Leo Films, Studio Locomotive)
Country of Production: Estonia, Latvia
Original Title: ÜHEMÕÕTMELINE MEES
Language: Estonian, English, Russian, Chinese
Runtime: 105 min
Completed in: 2023
Raul was raised in a violent and pathological attitude, blindly driven by communist ideology. Driven by his jealousy of his wife and her bohemian lifestyle, Viktor, being a high ranking KGB officer, stated her as a predator against the Soviet nation, and one early morning she is taken by KGB agents.
Tish
Original Title: Tish
Directed by: Paul SNG
Produced by: Jennifer CORCORAN (Freya Films, UK)
Country of Production: United Kingdom
Runtime: 90', 60'
Expected Release: June, 2023
Production Stage: Post-production
Budget: €380.000 (100% in place)
1st Feature: No
Looking for: Festivals, Sales Agents / Distributors, Buyers, Strategic Guidance
Synopsis:
Tish Murtha was a photographer whose images of people on the margins of society in Thatcher’s Britain challenged and documented the inequality she herself had suffered. Despite early acclaim Tish was unable to make a living from photography and she died in poverty. Tish’s daughter Ella explores why she did not receive her due and what her work tells us about the value placed on working-class communities.
Director’s profile:
Paul Sng is a bi-racial British Chinese filmmaker based in Edinburgh, Scotland whose work focuses on people who challenge the status quo. His work has been broadcast on television and screened internationally. His feature film credits include DISPOSSESSION and POLY STYRENE: I AM A CLICHE (winner of BIFA 2021 Best Documentary, BIFA 2021 Raindance Discovery Award). He is a BAFTA Breakthrough 2022/23 artist.
Producer’s profile:
Jen Corcoran is a creative producer based in Newcastle, UK. Jen established Freya Films with a focus on thoughtful, contemporary storytelling and narratives from the margins across both documentary and fiction. Jen’s BIFA-nominated documentary NASCONDINO [HIDE AND SEEK] (BFI Doc Society Fund) premiered In Competition at LFF 2021 and CPH:DOX 2022 while her previous work has played at Tribeca, Sheffield DocFest and BFI Flare among others. Jen led award-winning regional development programme Tees Valley Screen between 2019-2020 and is a freelance film programmer and lecturer.
Mama no himitsu
Original Title: Mama no himitsu
Directed by: Laurence LÉVESQUE
Produced by: Catherine BOILY (Metafilms, Canada), Rosalie CHICOINE PERREAULT (Metafilms, Canada)
Country of Production: Canada
Runtime: 90'
Expected Release: January, 2023
Production Stage: Post-production
Budget: $499.640 (100% in place)
1st Feature: Yes
Looking for: Festivals, Sales Agents, Distributors, Buyers
Synopsis:
Noriko Oi, a Japanese-Canadian woman, returns to her native land in the hopes of reviving her deceased mother’s memories, a survivor of the Nagasaki atomic bomb, while emptying her childhood home. What is left of memories when families’ secrets are locked away and end up casting a shadow over the collective recollections?
Director’s profile:
In 2017, Laurence directed a short fiction film, DRAP CONTOUR, which won several international awards. She then signed a short documentary, PORT D’ATTACHE, in 2019. The film was selected at the prestigious Visions du Réel, won the Best National Short Film Award at RIDM and was nominated for best short film at the Québec-Cinéma gala. In 2022, Laurence completes a master’s degree in which she reflects on documentary writing and directing. MAMA NO HIMITSU is her first feature film.
Producer’s profile:
After graduating from the Los Angeles City College Theatre Academy in 2012 where she studied acting, Catherine Boily then started to get involved as a producer on various projects. Moving back to Montreal in 2015, she met Sylvain Corbeil and Nancy Grant from Metafilms, with whom she’s been working with since. Under Metafilms, Catherine has produced many short films and music videos, in addition to working multiple positions on feature films shot in Canada, the United States, Czech Republic, England and Namibia. Most recently, she was also an Executive Producer with Martin Scorcese on the latest Paul Schrader movie The Card Counter, which had its world premiere at the 2021 Biennale. Catherine is now developing emerging talents’ feature films projects at Metafilms.
Rosalie Chicoine Perreault searches for projects and filmmakers with a unique vision that stand out from the current cinematographic landscape, both in fiction and documentary. Amongst her most recent projects, GEOGRAPHIES OF SOLITUDE (Jacquelyn Mills, 2022), her first feature documentary, was awarded three prizes during its world premiere at the 72nd Berlinale, in addition to winning Best Canadian Feature at Hot Docs. «
Once Upon a Time in a Forest (WT)
Original Title: Olipa kerran metsä (WT)
Directed by: Virpi SUUTARI
Produced by: Virpi SUUTARI (Euphoria film oy, Finland)
Country of Production: Finland
Runtime: 90', 120'
Expected Release: April, 2024
Production Stage: 4/5 shot, editing has started
Budget: €455.000 (90 % in place)
1st Feature: No
Looking for: Festival Premiere, Other Festivals, Distributor, Gap Financing, Strategic Guidance
Synopsis:
Once Upon a Time in a Forest is a film about brave young people who are defending one of the last coniferous forest areas in Europe. It is a morality play and a love story of a younger generation whose main object of love is the Finnish forest. This cinematic documentary explores environmental feelings and witnesses how the 22-year old protagonist Ida grows up to be the leader of the new Forest Movement.
Director’s profile:
Virpi Suutari is an award winning filmmaker known for her personal cinematic style and emotional narratives that often challenge the borderline between documentary and fiction. One of her most beloved films is The Garden Lovers (2014). Her films have been shown in the major festivals such as IDFA, Visions du Réel, CPH: DOX, Locarno and Gothenburg film festival. Her latest feature documentary AALTO (2020) on architect Alvar & Aino Aalto has been distributed all over the world. The Idle Ones (2002) was nominated for the Best European Documentary (EFA) and she has won several awards as the best nordic documentary. Suutari has received the national film academy award, the Jussi Award, three times. Suutari has also worked as a journalist in the major newspapers in Finland. She is the member of the European Film Academy and the honorary Doctor of Arts in the University of Lapland.
Producer’s profile:
Virpi Suutari is an experienced and an award winning documentary film maker. She has worked in this field for almost 30 years and she is now one of the main owners of Euphoria film, a film production company based in Helsinki.
In the recent years Suutari has produced some of her own films such as short films Elegance (2016) and A People’s radio – Ballads from a Wooded Country (2021) and a feature documentary AALTO (2020) which has been distributed by Autlook filmsales and sold widely across the world.
Touché
Original Title: Touché
Directed by: Martina Moor
Produced by: Filippo Macelloni (NANOF, Italy)
Country of Production: Italy, Belgium
Runtime: 85'
Expected Release: September, 2023
Production Stage: Post-production
Budget: €185.000 (80% in place)
1st Feature: Yes
Looking for: Festivals, Buyers
Synopsis:
Italo-Brazilian fencing champion Nathalie Moellhausen filmed intimately over 10 years. Three Olympics with two different flags. Challenges, defeats (many) and victories (few). A legendary trainer, a number of dubious mentors, a famous chef as a boyfriend. A distressing relationship with a cumbersome father. A turbulent journey, defined by blind ambition and haunted by demons of failure.
Director’s profile:
Martina Moor, is an Italian filmmaker and editor based in Brussels. She graduated in Visual Arts and Theatre from University of Architecture of Venice and later she gained an MA in TV Screen Documentary from Goldsmith University, in London. Since 2010 she has been directing and producing several short experimental films and edited award winning feature documentaries and video art pieces. Touché is her first feature length documentary film as director.
Producer’s profile:
Filippo Macelloni is an award-winning director, producer and writer. His work has played in numerous film festivals and on TV networks across the world. In 2001, together with Lorenzo Garzella, he founded NANOF, independent production company based in Rome, committed to develop and produce documentaries, fiction and cross media projects. Some of their most significant film credits include: “Climbing Iran” (2020), “The Disappearance of My Mother”, premiered at Sundance 2019; “The lost World Cup”, premiered at the Venice Film Festival in 2011, “Silvio Forever”, released in 2011.
Life
Original Title: Monguen
Directed by: Antonio CARO
Produced by: Michel TOLEDO (Tótem Producciones, Chile)
Country of Production: Chile
Runtime: 90'
Expected Release: May, 2024
Production Stage: Editing
Budget: €135.000 (83% in place)
1st Feature: Yes
Looking for: Festivales, Sales Agents, Distributors, Co-Producers, Gap Financing
Synopsis:
Fresia, a young Pewenche girl who has lived all her life in a community that mistrusts Chilean institutions, must gradually move away from her home and territory because she is pregnant. Fresia visits clinics for her maternity check-ups, travels to cities she does not know and finally enters a public hospital, where after a long wait she gives birth to her baby, Dalila, who is born with the cleft palate.
Director’s profile:
Born in 1982 in Kiev, in a Chilean-Russian family. Living in Chile since the age of 10, he first studied Medicine. From 2006 to 2009 he worked as a general practitioner in the Pewenche territory of the Bio-bio river. During that time he was the chief of the maternity department at the Santa Barbara hospital, and in 2007 he was the founder of the Intercultural Health Team. Then, he graduated as a film director at the EICTV in San Antonio de los Baños, Cuba. In 2012 he was selected at Nikita Mikhalkov’s Film Academy in Moscow. He’s been guest teacher of film directing at the Escuela Veracruzana de Cine Luis Buñuel and the Universidad Veracruzana in Mexico. Previous documentary works include his co-direction with the Mapuche filmmaker José Carihuentro « Pentukuwün, Viajando con Imágenes » (24 min, 2016); « Arbenin’s Mask » (50 min, 2017) and « Through the Wall », feature- length documentary.
Producer’s profile:
Michel Toledo is a chilean director, screenwriter and producer. He studied Film at the University of Valparaíso, Chile; Advanced Screenwriting at EICTV, Cuba and has a Master’s degree in Film and Digital Image from the University of Sydney in Australia. He is the founder and creative director of Totem Productions, a company dedicated to create audiovisual projects for film, television and digital media. He develops audiovisual works in short, feature film and serial formats, both in the documentary and fiction genres. He also works as an academic in the University of Viña del Mar, where he teaches photography and production in the degree of Film Studies and Audiovisual Communication and transmedia production at the Master’s Digital Communication and Transmedia from the same university. Actually he is in charge of research and creation for the film studies department.
A Film By Fernando Ruiz Vergara
Original Title: Um Filme de Fernando Ruiz Vergara
Directed by: Concha BARQUERO, Alejandro ALVARADO
Produced by: Sara SÀNCHEZ, José M. RODRÍGUEZ (Azhar Media, Spain), Alejandro ALVARADO (Alvarquero, Spain)
Country of Production: Spain
Runtime: 90'
Expected Release: February, 2024
Production Stage: Closing first cut
Budget: €182.440 (90% in place)
1st Feature: No
Looking for: Co-Producers, Gap Financing, Distributors, Buyers, Sales Agents, Festivals
Synopsis:
After his death, Ruiz Vergara left dozens of sketches for films he was unable to make. The filmmaker only directed one film, Rocío, heartbreaking and fascinating, cursed after its judicial censorship in the early years of Spanish democracy. Since then, his projects remained in the imagination. In Um filme de Fernando Ruiz Vergara we take up again the films dreamed by Fernando to film them, from the present.
Director’s profile:
Concha Barquero and Alejandro Alvarado (Málaga, 1975) filmmakers, lecturers, researchers and programmers. They have formed a creative tandem since 2001 under the name Alvarquero. They have directed, scripted and edited a dozen films, mainly creative documentaries and experimental pieces. Among these works, their short film Descartes (2021) and the feature film Pepe el andaluz (2012) stand out. Their works have been selected in audiovisual competitions around the world, such as the Mar del Plata International Film Festival (Argentina), European Media Art Festival of Osnabrück (Germany) or DocLisboa (Portugal) and have won numerous awards, such as the Best Spanish Documentary Award at Documenta Madrid, the Grand Prize for Spanish Cinema at Zinebi or the XXIX Andalusia Journalism Award in the audiovisual category.
Producer’s profile:
After working in the production of films, documentaries and spots for more than 10 years, producers Sara Sánchez and José M. Rodríguez founded Azhar Media in 2010, an independent production company focused on the international market, with experience in a wide range of formats (commercials, video clips, corporate,…), and with a strong focus on the international market. In addition to producing several documentaries for television (El mapa de Carlos, Amor Brujo:regreso a casa…) the exploration of new audiovisual narratives has led them to non-fiction and experimental films: La vida perfecta (in postproduction, co-production with Argentina), Um filme de Fernando Ruiz Vergara and El mar nos mira de lejos (premiere at Berlinale 2017, selected in more than 20 international film festivals).
The Tongue of Water
Original Title: The Tongue of Water
Directed by: Polen LY
Produced by: Lucas SENECAUT (L'OEIL VIF Productions, France), Rithy PANH (ANUPHEAP Productions, Cambodia), Thibaut AMRI, Benjamin COSTES (Avant la Nuit, France)
Country of Production: France, Cambodia
Runtime: 90'
Expected Release: February, 2024
Production Stage: Post-production
Budget: €250.000 (88% in place)
1st Feature: Yes
Looking for: Festivals, Sales Agents / Distributors, Buyers, Gap Financing
Synopsis:
In Cambodia, Neang, an indigenous mother, tries to rebuild her life after her village is swallowed up by a dam reservoir. Despite pressure from the government and industrialists to leave her ancestral land, she fights to keep her community and family together. Between memories and connection with nature, The Tongue of Water tells the story of her journey of resilience.
Director’s profile:
Polen stopped his medical study to pursue his passion in filmmaking in 2012. He explored his filmmaking skill and taste through self-teaching while making his short films and documentaries that often explore social issues, human stories, and nature’s. His works often reflect his significant personality in story-telling through his way of using natural elements as symbolism. His last short film Further And Further Away was selected in the short film competition at the 2022 Berlinale. At the same time, Polen works on his first feature documentary, called The Tongue Of Water.
Producer’s profile:
After a master’s degree in private law, Lucas Senecaut studied cinema and production in Montpellier, his hometown. Lucas settled then in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, to co-direct his first documentary film entitled Khmerica. In parallel, he worked at the Bophana Center with director and producer Mr Rithy Panh. Back in France, Lucas continued his learning as a production manager within the company Les Films de l’Œil Sauvage alongside producer Quentin Laurent. His background in production includes several award-winning films such as Downstream to Kinshasa (Official Selection Cannes Film Festival 2020) or Against the Tide (Jury Price Winner Sundance 2023). In 2021, he worked on his first short fiction film entitled Sound of the Night. In 2022, he co-founded L’Oeil Vif Productions. In 2023 he completed Khmerica and La Maison Brûle (Quinzaine des Réalisateurs 2023) as an associate producer.
Tata
Original Title: Tata
Directed by: Lina VDOVÎI, Radu CIORNICIUC
Produced by: Monica LĂZUREAN-GROGAN (Manifest Film, Romania), Corso Film (Germany), Halal production (Netherlands)
Country of Production: Romania, Germany, Netherlands
Runtime: 75'
Expected Release: January, 2024
Production Stage: Work in Progress
Budget: €733.180 (84% in place)
1st Feature: Yes
Looking for: Festivals, Sales Agents, Distributors, Buyers
Synopsis:
A journalist, long estranged from her father for being violent to her as a child, discovers that he’s being abused. When she agrees to help him expose the injustice, will she also be able to heal the pain he caused her?
Director’s profile:
Lina Vdovîi is an award-winning independent reporter from Moldova, based in Romania, with experience in investigative and narrative journalism and new media. Her articles have been published in major national and international outlets and her work was nominated for the European Press Prize. Lina’s filmmaking career started with the news and documentary producing for the national German television ZDF. She was the screenwriter of Acasa, My Home. Currently, she is co-directing her debut documentary TATA, a film about her relationship with her violent father. The project won several awards: the Eurimages Co-production Development Award at CPH:Forum 2021 for the best pitch and – Alex Leo Serban award at Transilvania International Film Festival for best script.
Co-Director’s profile:
Radu Ciorniciuc’s debut feature documentary film, “Acasa, My Home”, tells the story of a family that lived for two decades in the wilderness, in perfect harmony with nature, until they are chased out and forced to adapt to life in the big city. The film premiered at Sundance 2020, where it won the Special Jury Award for Cinematography. It later had an exceptional festival run, and has been selected for a nomination at the European Film Academy Awards.
Producer’s profile:
Monica Lăzurean Gorgan is an experienced Romanian producer, with over ten years of international co-productions. Among the titles of the films she produced or co-produced, there are: Between Revolutions (Berlinale 2023), ACASA, MY HOME, by Radu Ciorniciuc, winner of the Cinematography Award, Sundance 2020, TOUCH ME NOT by Adina Pintilie, winner of Golden Bear (Berlinale 2018), CHUCK NORRIS VS COMMUNISM by Ilinca Calugareanu (Sundance 2015), A MERE BREATH, THE CAGE by Adrian Sitaru, with over 20 awards including an award in Berlinale 2010. Monica is an EAVE 2011 graduate, “Producer on the Move” at Cannes IFF 2012 and Oscar Academy member.