Projects

Projects

Ukraine in Focus

Antonivka

Directed by: Kateryna Gornostai

Produced by: Vika Khomenko | Moon Man LLC

Country of production: Ukraine

Original title: Антонівка

Language: Ukrainian

Runtime: 90'

Budget: 765 000 Eur

Completed in: 2026

Young couple Aurora and Darko move to live in her grandpa’s house in the post-war de-occupied village. They are taking care of an 88-year-old man, who’s blind. Aurora begins to be tormented by the fear of death. Gradually, it becomes the central theme of their lives and puts everything in its place.

Cannes Docs

Do You Love Me

Original title: هدوء نسبي

Produced by: Lana Daher (Lebanon) & Jasper Mielke (Wood Water Films, Germany)

Country of production: Lebanon, Germany

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).

Goes to Cannes

Brief History of a Family

Category: HAF Goes to Cannes

Directed by: Lin Jianjie

Produced by: Lou Ying, Wang Yiwen, Zheng Yue + First Light Films

Country of production: China, Denmark, France, and Qatar

Original title: 家庭簡史

Language: Putonghua

Runtime: 99 min

Completed in: 2023

In post-one-child policy China, the fate of a middle-class family becomes intertwined with their only son’s mysterious new friend.

Goes to Cannes

Fly Me to the Moon

Category: HAF Goes to Cannes

Directed by: Sasha Chuk

Produced by: Stanley Kwan, The Flow of Words Limited

Country of production: Hong Kong

Original title: 但願人長久

Language: Cantonese, Mandarin, Hunan Dialect, Japanese

Runtime: 120 min

Completed in: 2023 or 2024

A pair of sisters moving from Hunan to Hong Kong in the 90s are faced with an identity crisis, poverty and their father’s drug addiction.

Cannes Docs

The Boy And The Suit Of Lights

Original title: El Niño Y El Traje De Luces

Directed by: Inma DE REYES

Produced by: Aimara REQUES (Aconite Productions, Scotland), Beth EARL (Rustic Canyon, USA)

Country of production: United Kingdom

Runtime: 80'

Expected release: September, 2023

Production stage: Post-production

Budget: €364.283 (80% in place)

1st feature: Yes

Looking for: Sales Agent, Gap Financing, Buyers, Festivals

Synopsis:

Young Borja is growing up in Castellon, a small town in Spain, where the tradition of bullfighting weighs heavily on his shoulders. His grandad, Matias, pins his own unfulfilled dreams of becoming a professional bullfighter onto his grandchild. Like most underprivileged kids in his town, Borja doesn’t see a future beyond orange fields, farming, fishing and bullfighting.

Director’s profile:

Inma de Reyes (she/her) is a Spanish film director based in Edinburgh, where she graduated in MFA Film Directing. Her work has featured at The Skinny, MUBI, BBC Scotland and Screenskills. Inma is a Chicken & Egg Pictures grantee and Dok.Incubator 2022 participant. She recently directed ‘Isabel’s Independence’ for BBC Scotland, ‘Vivir Bailando’ for Screen Scotland and The Scottish Documentary Institute and ‘Eighty Serbian Dinars’ for FilmArt. The Boy And The Suit Of Lights is her first feature.

Producer’s profile:

Aimara Reques is the founder of Aconite Productions, an award-winning company based in Scotland dedicated to the production of high-quality creative documentaries for international distribution. She has over 30 years’ experience in the film industry in the UK and has collaborated with a number of renowned directors and producers from the UK and internationally. She was the leading producer and co-writer of the ambitious Victor Kossakovsky’s AQUARELA which premiered at Venice 2018 and was shortlisted for the Oscars in 2020 and her most recent film, Electric Malady, was nominated for a BAFTA this 2023. Aimara is a winner of two BAFTA Scotland Awards; a Fox Searchlight Award; an Amnesty International Media Award; and the Golden Star Award from El Gouna Film Festival.

Cannes Docs

In The Shadow of Light

Original title: A la sombra de la luz

Directed by: Isabel REYES, Ignacia MERINO

Produced by: Maria Jose DIAZ (Galgo Storytelling, Chile), Francisca BARRAZA (Funky Films, Chile)

Country of production: Chile

Runtime: 66'

Expected release: July, 2023

Production stage: Post-production

Budget: €200.000 (95% in place)

1st feature: Yes

Looking for: Festivals, Buyers, Gap Financing, Communications, Marketing, Strategic Guidance

Synopsis:

In a small town in Chile, rural life deals with an electricity grid providing power to the rest of the country. A child ventures out among hundreds of transmission towers, transformers, and thermal power stations and giving himself over to chasing rabbits. In the darkness, the threatening presence of the large-scale industrial complex reveals the workings of an unequal system.

Director’s profile:

Isabel Reyes Bustos is a Chilean journalist and documentary filmmaker born in Concepción. She has wide experience in investigative journalism, screenwriting and production. Her films deal with themes related to socio-environmental conflicts and issues of social relevance. She is the executive director and founder of Dos Be Producciones, where she is currently directing her first film “IN THE SHADOW OF LIGHT”. She is also the director of the documentary project in development “DRY VOICES” and producer of “THE SAFEST PLACE”, a documentary in development awarded by SANFIC Santiago Lab and DocsMX.

Co-Director’s profile:

Ignacia Merino Bustos is a Chilean director and producer born in Santiago. She is the founder of the production company Dos Be Producciones, where she directs her first feature documentary “IN THE SHADOW OF LIGHT”, in which she explores socio-environmental issues narrated by an observational and experimental approach to electricity. In her company, also produces the documentary in development “THE SAFEST PLACE”, awarded by SANFIC Santiago Lab and DocsMX. Her current work as a producer at the company Tres Tercios, specializes in non-fiction series, animation and short films, such as “SO THEY SAY” and “WE WILL BURN”. She began her career as an executive producer at Invercine & Wood, where she worked on the fiction series “MARY & MIKE” (Warner), “DIGNITY” (Amazon) and “NEWS OF A KIDNAPPING” (Amazon).

Producer’s profile:

María José Díaz has worked as an investigative journalist for TV series and produces non-fiction films in cinematic and XR formats. Her work is based on themes that explore different layers of the human condition and nature, told through narratives and platforms linked to innovation. María José is the producer of the documentary feature film “IN THE SHADOW OF LIGHT”, co-director and producer of the virtual reality project “ANCESTRAL SECRET VR” and producer of “KNOWING YOUR NATURE”, a mixed reality project in development. She is the founder of Galgo Storytelling, a creative lab to tell stories with technology and member of the Steering Committee and Communications Director of the National Film Festival of Ñuble, Chile.

Goes to Cannes

Father

Category: Tallinn Black Nights Goes to Cannes

Directed by: Tereza Nvotová

Produced by: Veronika Paštéková, Anton Škreko, Karel Chvojka, Miloš Lochman, Mariusz Wlodarski, Marta Gmosińska | DANAE Production, Moloko film, Lava Films

Country of production: Slovakia, Czech Republic, Poland

Original title: Otec

Genre: Drama

Language: Slovak

Runtime: 90'

Completed in: 2024

A story unfolds about a man who seemingly has it all, until one fateful summer day when he tragically realizes that his infant daughter, whom he thought he had dropped off at nursery, is actually still locked in the back of his car.

Goes to Cannes

The Activist

Category: Tallinn Black Nights Goes to Cannes

Directed by: Romas Zabarauskas

Produced by: Romas Zabarauskas, Gabriele Miseviciute, Glenn Elliott | Naratyvas

Country of production: Lithuania

Original title: Aktyvistas

Genre: Thriller

Language: Lithuanian

Runtime: 93'

Completed in: 2024

A young man infiltrates a radical neo-Nazi group to find the killer of his LGBT+ rights activist boyfriend.

Goes to Cannes

Mo Papa

Category: Tallinn Black Nights Goes to Cannes

Directed by: Eeva Mägi

Produced by: Sten-Johan Lill, Eeva Mägi | Kinosaurus Film Oü, Kultuurikuur Oü

Country of production: Estonia

Original title: Mo Papa

Genre: Drama

Language: Estonian

Runtime: 90'

Completed in: 2024

Eugen is released from prison at 28 years old, he has no one except his father Helmar who abandoned him when he was born, and friends Stina and Riko from the orphanage. Eugen attempts to begin a new life and contacts his father, but he finds himself returning to an endless cycle of violence.

Goes to Cannes

Dreaming of Lions

Category: Tallinn Black Nights Goes to Cannes

Directed by: Paolo Marinou-Blanco

Produced by: Justin Amorim, Paolo Marinou-Blanco, Eduardo Rezende, Luis Ortas Pau | Promenade, Darya Films, Capuri, Cinètica Produccions

Country of production: Portugal, Brazil, Spain

Original title: Sonhar com Leões

Genre: Tragicomedy

Language: Portuguese, Spanish

Runtime: 90'

Completed in: 2024

Dreaming of Lions is an absurdist tragicomedy about euthanasia and assisted suicide. Gilda and Amadeu meet at an underground organisation that helps the terminally ill kill themselves painlessly. When they discover it’s a scam, they escape to Mallorca to die, falling in love along the way.