Projects
Projects
Guest Star
Category: Thessaloniki Goes to Cannes
Directed by: Vasilis Christofilakis
Produced by: Vasilis Christofilakis, Teta Apostolaki + Atmosphere People, Greek Film Center, ERT
Country of production: Greece
Original title: Guest Star
Genre: Feature film
Language: Greek
Runtime: 120min
Completed in: 2022
Loukianos is the son of two famous Greek actors. Although he tries to live up to their fame, he is broke, living a tiny apartment and suffering from agoraphobia. His life is about to change when he is offered to be the host of a successful late-night talk show.
A Guide To Living For The Dead
Category: Buyers Showcase
Directed by: Baris Fert
Produced by: Ipek Erden (Vayka Film), Emre Pekçakir
Country of production: Turkey
Original title: Ölüler Için Yasam Kilavuzu
Genre: Action, Dark Comedy, Thriller
Language: Turkish
Deniz, a crime machine who lost her feelings and ability to empathize years ago, chases after a mysterious software that is supposed to be in Istanbul and finds herself in a chaotic, one night only adventure.
Gnomes!
Category: Proof of Concept
Directed by: Ruwan Suresh Heggelman
Produced by: Richard Raaphorst (The Mad Scientists Movement), Monique van Kessel (Make Way Film)
Country of production: The Netherlands
Genre: Horror
Language: Dutch
When a talented arrogant mountainbiker enters an off limits forest section, she inadvertently becomes the key piece in a secret battle between humanity and gnomanity, and the only person to rescue us from complete annihilation.
Dark Nature
Category: Fantastic 7
Directed by: Berkley Brady
Produced by: Michael Peterson
Country of production: Métis, Canadian
Original title: Dark Nature
Genre: Horror
Language: English
Toronto International Film Festival
A therapy group are forced to confront the monsters of their past when an isolated weekend retreat in the Canadian Rockies tests not only their emotional resilience, but their ability to survive.
Epiphania
Directed by: Jan Kounen
Produced by: Philippe Aigle & Séverine Lathuillière - Naïa Productions
Country of production: France, Belgium
Original title: Epiphania
Language: French
Runtime: 90min
Completed in: 2023
After a giant tsunami, the arrival of a new hybrid species disrupts the social order. These half-human, half-animal children, called Epiphanians, develop a visceral hatred of human beings as they grow up. The Earth, mistreated and threatened by Humans, seems to be sending its own army.
Dame Valerie Adams: More Than Gold
Original title: Dame Valerie Adams-More Than Gold
Directed by: Briar March
Produced by: Leanne Pooley (Eight Productions, New Zealand)
Country of production: New Zealand
Runtime: 90'
Expected release: October, 2022
Production stage: Post Production
Budget: $1,250,000 USD (100% in place)
1st feature: No
Looking for: Sales Agents, Festivals, Distributors, Buyers
Synopsis:
The inspirational story of one of the World’s greatest shot-putters; Olympic gold medallist Dame Valerie Adams. Tokyo was the Tongan, New Zealander’s 5th Olympic campaign and the culmination of an odyssey that started with a troubled childhood, traversed poverty, health issues and a near death experience…to the top of the sport’s world – where she stands as a role model, a mother, and an athletics icon.
Director’s profile:
Briar March is a filmmaker and Fulbright scholar. Her films have been broadcast on major television networks around the world, have been theatrically released, and are regularly exhibited in film festivals having won over 30 international awards. Her last feature Mother’s of the Revolution premiered at the BFI London Film Festival (2021). Her filmography also includes feature documentaries, A Place To Call Home (2014), There Once was an Island: Te Henua e Nnoho (2010), and Allie Eagle and Me (2004), as well as documentary shorts: The Coffin Club (2017), Smoke Songs (2012), Michael & His Dragon (2010), Sick Wid It (2010), and Promenade (2011). In 2011-2012 she was a full-time Instructor in Documentary Film Production at Florida Atlantic University. Briar received an M.F.A in Documentary Film and Video Production at Stanford University, and a B.F.A at Auckland University’s Elam School of Fine Arts.
Producers’s profile:
Leanne Pooley has been a documentary filmmaker for over 25 years. She has directed films all over the world, winning over 30 international awards awards (including Best Documentary at TIFF). Leanne is a New Zealand Arts Laureate, an “Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit” and a member of The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (The Oscars). Born in Canada, Leanne immigrated to New Zealand in the mid-1980’s and began working for TVNZ. In 1992 she moved to England where she made documentaries for Britain’s major broadcasters including the BBC, ITV, Channel 4 as well as PBS and Discovery in America. Leanne returned to New Zealand in 1999 and established SPACIFIC FILMS. Her documentaries have screened in more than 100 countries and include topics ranging from rugby to the Pope.
Back Home
Original title: Back Home
Directed by: Nisha Platzer
Produced by: Joella Cabalu (Back Home Productions, Canada)
Country of production: Canada, Cuba
Runtime: 110'
Expected release: September, 2022
Production stage: Post Production
Budget: $249,347 (100% in place)
1st feature: Yes
Looking for: US and International distributors, sales agents, and film festivals with a track record of working with creative experimental documentaries.
Synopsis:
Back Home follows a sister’s pursuit to get to know her older brother, 20 years after he took his own life. Through intimate recollections re-imagined on 16mm and Super8, and handmade visuals, she connects with the friends who knew him best – his chosen family. Floating between memory and present time, Back Home is a fragmented meditation on the transformative power of grieving in community.
Director’s profile:
Nisha Platzer is a queer artist and filmmaker from Vancouver. Her films meld sounds and imagery that you can dream and drown in. Her last short film, Vaivén (2020) won the best film award at aluCine Latin Film & Media Arts Festival and competed at festivals worldwide including Raindance, Festival Nouveau Cinema, FIDBA and Ji.hlava IDFF. Nisha studied at the Escuela Internacional de Cine y Televisión in Cuba. Her work has been supported by the Canada Council for the Arts, the BC Arts Council and the National Film Board of Canada. She teaches handmade film workshops and is a member of Iris Film Collective. An alumnus of IDFAcademy, the VIFF mentorship program, and the Hot Docs Doc Accelerator Lab, her work can be found in music videos, narrative and experimental films. Currently, she is in post production on her first feature documentary, Back Home, supported by Telefilm Talent to Watch.
Producers’s profile:
Joella Cabalu is a Filipino Canadian documentary filmmaker based in Vancouver. Her films lay bare narratives about intimacies, identities, and relationships. Her first mid-length documentary, It Runs in the Family (2015) — a personal exploration of acceptance and what the modern queer family can be in the Filipino diaspora — won the Audience Choice Award at the Vancouver Queer Film Festival and a special jury mention at CAAMFest for the Loni Ding Award for Social Justice Documentary. Joella has worked as a producer alongside women directors to realize critically acclaimed short documentaries, including Born Identities (TIFF 2021), On Falling (Tribeca 2020), Biker Bob’s Posthumous Adventure (MDFF 2019), Do I Have Boobs Now? (Slamdance 2017), and FIXED! (DOXA 2017). She is producing her first feature documentary Back Home with support from the Telefilm Talent to Watch fund.
Company of Steel
Original title: Zalizna Sotnya
Directed by: Yuliia Hontaruk
Produced by: Yuliia Hontaruk (#Babylon`13, Ukraine), Ivanna Khitsinska (#Babylon`13, Ukraine), Alexandra Bratyshchenko (#Babylon`13, Ukraine), Igor Savychenko (Directory Films, Ukraine)
Country of production: Ukraine
Runtime: 110'
Expected release: December, 2022
Production stage: Post Production
Budget: €161,009 (50% in place)
1st feature: No
Looking for: Sales agents / distributors, co-producers, gap financing
Synopsis:
After enduring horrors during the War in the Eastern part of Ukraine, three young Ukrainian war veterans return home. They try to understand how to live in civil life and to win their private wars. But in February 2022 full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine started and they are faced with new challenges of reality. What experience do the heroes gain in these wars, how are they initiated by accepting death?
Director’s profile:
Yuliia Hontaruk is a Ukrainian documentary and feature film director and producer.
2013: Co-founder creative association “BABYLON 13”
2014 Member of the Ukrainian Union of Cinematographers,
2016 Member Ukrainian Film Academy
Producer’s profile:
Babylon’13 is an association of independent filmmakers formed at the beginning of the Revolution of Dignity. The Babylon’13 films traveled around the world, with more than 400 screenings. The films were also broadcasted on the world’s leading TV channels, such as the BBC, TVP, ZDF, RAI and so on. For more than 8 years of it’s activity Babylon’13 has released 7 full-length documentaries on the revolution, annexation of Crimea and the war in Donbass.
Children of the Lowest Heaven
Original title: Ønskeliv
Directed by: Birgitte Stærmose Mortensen
Produced by: Lise Lense-Moeller (Magic Hour Films, Denmark)
Country of production: Denmark, Kosovo, Sweden, Norway, Germany (TBD)
Runtime: 80'
Expected release: May, 2023
Production stage: Late production / early editing
Budget: € 1,022,400 (85% in place)
1st feature: No
Looking for: Festivals, sales agent, gap financing
Synopsis:
On the murky streets of postwar Pristina 2009, a group of children sell cigarettes and whisper tales of loss and hope. A decade later these children, now young adults, still fight to survive at the bottom of society in one of Europe’s youngest and poorest nations, where hope is found in religious fundamentalism, or the dream of emigration. A collective portrait of a condition, a state of being.
Director’s profile:
Birgitte Stærmose Mortensen: An internationally acclaimed writer-director of early award-winning shorts and fiction feature films (Darling & Room 304). For the past five years Stærmose has worked internationally as lead director on drama mini-series for HBO, Starz and Netflix (Industry2, The Spanish Princess, In From the Cold and The English Game). She is currently in production on her third feature film Camino. The short hybrid Out of Love, which is an integral part of Children of the Lowest Heaven, was widely awarded internationally and received Best Documentary Award from the Danish Academy.
Producers’s profile:
Film producer, founder, and CEO of Magic Hour Films, a company set up in 1984 and based in Copenhagen. Magic Hour Films develops, produces and co-produces feature documentaries and fiction films for the national and international markets. A large number of productions are international co-productions, and many have received international acclaim, the top winner being Burma VJ by Anders Østergaard with 52 international awards and an Oscar-nomination. Other titles include Into Eternty by Michael Madsen, and Heartbound by Janus Metz and Sine Plambech. In addition, Lise has been teaching international workshops including since 1992 for EAVE, as first group leader, now Head of Studies. Lise also runs a small publishing house.
Bye Bye Tiberias
Original title: Bye Bye Tiberias
Directed by: Lina Soualem
Produced by: Jean-Marie Nizan (Beall Productions, France)
Country of production: France, Belgium, Palestine, Qatar
Runtime: 80'
Expected release: 2023
Production stage: Post-Production (editing)
Budget: €369,108 (65,13 % in place)
1st feature: No
Looking for: Gap financing, festivals, international sales agent & distributors, french distributor, buyers, co-producers
Synopsis:
30 years ago, Palestinian actress Hiam Abbass left her native village Deir Hanna in Galilee to follow her acting dream in France. Camera in hand, her daughter Lina questions her mother’s bold choices and the way the women in her family – who she has left behind – have influenced her life. How do those who live on the screen of our memories define who we are today ?
Director’s profile:
French-Palestinian-Algerian filmmaker and actress, based in Paris. After studying History and Political Science at La Sorbonne University, Lina started worked as a programmer in film festivals, such as the International Human Rights Film Festival in Buenos Aires, among others. Her debut feature documentary Their Algeria premiered in Visions du Réel 2020 and received several award such as First Film prize in CINEMED 2020, Best Arab Documentary in El Gouna Film Festival 2020, Best Feature Length Arab Documentary at Amman International Film Festival 2021, Best Documentary Award at Cinemania Film Festival 2021. Lina acted in three feature films directed by Hafsia Herzi, Hiam Abbass and Rayhana. She is currently developing her second feature documentary Bye Bye Tiberias, and works as a co-author & researcher on fictions, documentaries and TV series such as Oussekine (Disney+).
Producers’s profile:
Jean-Marie Nizan is a director and producer of documentaries and audiovisual programs. After studying architecture, he turns toward moving images. His films are broadcasted on Canal+, France Télévision, TF1 or Arte. He directed films about cinema in Iran, China, Thaïland, Argentina and in Australia, about the work of Daniel Buren and a documentary on Robin Wood for Arte. With Beall Productions, he dedicates himself to the production of documentaries, including Boléro, A Global Hit by Damien Cabrespines and Anne-Solen Douguet (Arte), Philippe Doumic, the twinkling eye by Sébastien Cauchon and Laurence Doumic (OCS, TV5Monde), The Cinematograph, Birth of an Art by Stefan Cornic (Arte), Mad In Belgium by Yves Montmayeur (Ciné+, BeTV).