The Rough Cut Presentations section has expanded, including five additional projects from Ukraine.
IDFA Forum (November 12-15), the co-production and co-financing market of International Documentary Festival Amsterdam (IDFA), has selected its 2023 edition titles, with the likes of Aboozar Amini, Asmae El Moudir and Michael Madsen returning with their latest projects to Forum Pitch, while the Rough Cut Presentations section has expanded.
Afghanistan-born, Netherlands-based filmmaker Amini’s Kabul, City In The Wind screened at IDFA in 2018, and is now pitching Kabul, Year Zero, which threads together four vivid coming-of-age stories against the backdrop of war.
After presenting The Postcard at IDFA...
IDFA Forum (November 12-15), the co-production and co-financing market of International Documentary Festival Amsterdam (IDFA), has selected its 2023 edition titles, with the likes of Aboozar Amini, Asmae El Moudir and Michael Madsen returning with their latest projects to Forum Pitch, while the Rough Cut Presentations section has expanded.
Afghanistan-born, Netherlands-based filmmaker Amini’s Kabul, City In The Wind screened at IDFA in 2018, and is now pitching Kabul, Year Zero, which threads together four vivid coming-of-age stories against the backdrop of war.
After presenting The Postcard at IDFA...
- 10/5/2023
- by Mona Tabbara
- ScreenDaily
This year, Latvia is sharing a spotlight with neighboring Lithuania and Estonia at the European Film Market, which has dedicated its 2023 Country in Focus Spotlight to the Baltic nations. It’s a sign of the tremendous strides the country has taken to put itself on the world cinema map, with the screen industries both producing more films and TV series than ever before and luring increasingly ambitious international projects to Northeastern Europe.
Here’s a rundown of some of the top Latvian projects in the pipeline that their producers will be pitching in Berlin:
Blue Blood
Director: Juris Kursietis
Producers: White Picture, Stellar Film, Asterisk*
The follow-up to Kursietis’ Cannes Directors’ Fortnight player “Oleg” is the story of a successful couple whose comfortable life is turned upside-down when the husband is implicated in a massive corruption scandal.
Sales: N/A
Soviet Milk
Director: Ināra Kolmane
Producers: Jānis Juhņēvičs, Marta Romanova-Jēkabsone...
Here’s a rundown of some of the top Latvian projects in the pipeline that their producers will be pitching in Berlin:
Blue Blood
Director: Juris Kursietis
Producers: White Picture, Stellar Film, Asterisk*
The follow-up to Kursietis’ Cannes Directors’ Fortnight player “Oleg” is the story of a successful couple whose comfortable life is turned upside-down when the husband is implicated in a massive corruption scandal.
Sales: N/A
Soviet Milk
Director: Ināra Kolmane
Producers: Jānis Juhņēvičs, Marta Romanova-Jēkabsone...
- 2/17/2023
- by Christopher Vourlias
- Variety Film + TV
When a young Viesturs Kairiss started to dream about becoming a filmmaker thirty-some-odd years ago, he knew his path wouldn’t be straightforward or easy. Before the fall of the Soviet Union, aspiring Latvian directors would have to travel to Moscow or St. Petersburg to enroll in venerable Soviet film schools. After independence, Kairiss was among the first class of graduates from the newly launched film studies program at the Latvian Academy of Culture, one of many ways in which the small Baltic republic attempted to assert its own identity after half a century of Soviet rule.
“We didn’t have any technique,” Kairiss admits of he and his film school peers, laughing. For his first feature film, “Leaving by the Way” (2001), he enlisted friends for below-the-line work and recruited actors from the local theater school. When the film bowed in the Crystal Globe competition at the Karlovy Vary Film Festival,...
“We didn’t have any technique,” Kairiss admits of he and his film school peers, laughing. For his first feature film, “Leaving by the Way” (2001), he enlisted friends for below-the-line work and recruited actors from the local theater school. When the film bowed in the Crystal Globe competition at the Karlovy Vary Film Festival,...
- 2/17/2023
- by Christopher Vourlias
- Variety Film + TV
IDFA is one of many festivals to have strong Ukrainian line-up - but can this continue?
While hundreds of filmmakers, sales agents and distributors were descending on Amsterdam for IDFA’s industry event The Forum over the weekend, another documentary festival was taking place far away in war-torn Ukraine.
The Docudays UA International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival was held in Kyiv, lasting only from 11-13 November, with few international guests in attendance and no industry events.
Films screening included Oleksiy Radynski’s Infinity: According To Florian, Pawel Lozinski’s The Balcony and Theo Anthony’s All Light, Everywhere.
The...
While hundreds of filmmakers, sales agents and distributors were descending on Amsterdam for IDFA’s industry event The Forum over the weekend, another documentary festival was taking place far away in war-torn Ukraine.
The Docudays UA International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival was held in Kyiv, lasting only from 11-13 November, with few international guests in attendance and no industry events.
Films screening included Oleksiy Radynski’s Infinity: According To Florian, Pawel Lozinski’s The Balcony and Theo Anthony’s All Light, Everywhere.
The...
- 11/17/2022
- by Geoffrey Macnab
- ScreenDaily
HBO Max To Build ‘The Bridge’ In Hungary
HBO Max’s Hungarian arm will run a local version of Banijay survival format The Bridge. The format tasks bringing contestants together to build a 250-metre-long bridge to an island for the chance to win a large cash prize, and this latest deal marks its sixth international adaptation. Presented by Csaba Magyarósi, The Bridge Hungary is produced locally by Free Monkeys Production, based on the original Spanish format. Production took place neat Lake Belis in Romania, near the Hungarian border. Deadline understands it was given the greenlight before HBO Max stopped commissioning in the Cee region. Most production staff in Europe have now been let go, as Deadline revealed last month.
eOne Bolsters Canadian Non-Scripted
eOne has bolstered its non-scripted offering in Canada by signing a VP Development and promoting Scott Boyd to the same level. Christine Diakos joins in the newly-created...
HBO Max’s Hungarian arm will run a local version of Banijay survival format The Bridge. The format tasks bringing contestants together to build a 250-metre-long bridge to an island for the chance to win a large cash prize, and this latest deal marks its sixth international adaptation. Presented by Csaba Magyarósi, The Bridge Hungary is produced locally by Free Monkeys Production, based on the original Spanish format. Production took place neat Lake Belis in Romania, near the Hungarian border. Deadline understands it was given the greenlight before HBO Max stopped commissioning in the Cee region. Most production staff in Europe have now been let go, as Deadline revealed last month.
eOne Bolsters Canadian Non-Scripted
eOne has bolstered its non-scripted offering in Canada by signing a VP Development and promoting Scott Boyd to the same level. Christine Diakos joins in the newly-created...
- 9/15/2022
- by Jesse Whittock, Max Goldbart and Zac Ntim
- Deadline Film + TV
Click here to read the full article.
In a typical year, fans of Eastern European cinema, after enjoying the Karlovy Vary Film Festival in early July, would hop on a two-hour flight to Odesa, Ukraine for the Odesa International Film Festival, the No. 1 annual event for Ukrainian cinema.
2022, of course, is a far from typical. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24 has made the Oiff untenable this year, but festivals across the region are showing cross-border solidarity with Ukraine filmmakers and the country’s stricken local industry. The PriFest in Kosovo (July 26-31) has agreed to cooperate with the Oiff on a series of special screenings of full-length and short films by Ukrainian debutant directors, and Poland’s Warsaw Film Festival will take over the screening of Oiff’s entire competition program at its event, which runs Oct. 14-23.
In Karlovy Vary, meanwhile, the festival is devoting a section...
In a typical year, fans of Eastern European cinema, after enjoying the Karlovy Vary Film Festival in early July, would hop on a two-hour flight to Odesa, Ukraine for the Odesa International Film Festival, the No. 1 annual event for Ukrainian cinema.
2022, of course, is a far from typical. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24 has made the Oiff untenable this year, but festivals across the region are showing cross-border solidarity with Ukraine filmmakers and the country’s stricken local industry. The PriFest in Kosovo (July 26-31) has agreed to cooperate with the Oiff on a series of special screenings of full-length and short films by Ukrainian debutant directors, and Poland’s Warsaw Film Festival will take over the screening of Oiff’s entire competition program at its event, which runs Oct. 14-23.
In Karlovy Vary, meanwhile, the festival is devoting a section...
- 6/28/2022
- by Scott Roxborough
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Butterfly Vision (completed)
Director: Maksym Nakonechnyi
Producers: Darya Bassel, Yelizaveta Smith
Production: Tabor Productions, 4 Film, Masterfilm, Sisyfos
Sales: Wild Bunch
Lilia, held as a prisoner of war for months, finally returns home. But she is struggling to resume her life as a soldier and wife, while discovering she is pregnant.
Chrysanthemum Day
Director: Simon Mozgovyi
Producers: Alex Chepiga, Artem Koliubaiev
Production: Mainstream Pictures
Young doctor encounters an old woman, known as a healer, who mysteriously survives a nuclear explosion. But she loses her memory and identity along the way.
Company of Steel (documentary)
Director: Yuliia Hontaruk
Producers: Yuliia Hontaruk, Ivanna Khitsinska, Alexandra Bratyshchenko, Uldis Cekulis, Igor Savychenko
Production: Babylon’13, Directory Films
Three veterans return home and try to understand how to live as civilians. The film is an attempt to feel and see the world through the eyes of people who went through war.
Demons
Director: Natalya Vorozhbyt
Producers: Dmytro Minzianov,...
Director: Maksym Nakonechnyi
Producers: Darya Bassel, Yelizaveta Smith
Production: Tabor Productions, 4 Film, Masterfilm, Sisyfos
Sales: Wild Bunch
Lilia, held as a prisoner of war for months, finally returns home. But she is struggling to resume her life as a soldier and wife, while discovering she is pregnant.
Chrysanthemum Day
Director: Simon Mozgovyi
Producers: Alex Chepiga, Artem Koliubaiev
Production: Mainstream Pictures
Young doctor encounters an old woman, known as a healer, who mysteriously survives a nuclear explosion. But she loses her memory and identity along the way.
Company of Steel (documentary)
Director: Yuliia Hontaruk
Producers: Yuliia Hontaruk, Ivanna Khitsinska, Alexandra Bratyshchenko, Uldis Cekulis, Igor Savychenko
Production: Babylon’13, Directory Films
Three veterans return home and try to understand how to live as civilians. The film is an attempt to feel and see the world through the eyes of people who went through war.
Demons
Director: Natalya Vorozhbyt
Producers: Dmytro Minzianov,...
- 5/20/2022
- by Marta Balaga
- Variety Film + TV
Last week Darya Bassel, the curator of Docudays UA’s industry platform, returned to her home in Kyiv and found herself smiling “like a crazy person” to be back at work and resuming something of a daily routine. “I’m still sitting 12 hours a day with my laptop,” she said during Slava Ukraini, an early morning session that kicked off Day 2 of Hot Docs’ Industry Live conference.
“There are just some additional tasks on my to-do list,” she continued. “I never thought that I would ever deal with ordering bulk flak vests or medical kits for filmmakers.”
Docudays UA’s International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival, which usually takes place in March, may have been postponed due to the Russia-Ukraine War but its efforts to support the Ukrainian filmmaking community are ongoing—and include ensuring members of that community remain not just visible but active participants at high-profile international events.
“There are just some additional tasks on my to-do list,” she continued. “I never thought that I would ever deal with ordering bulk flak vests or medical kits for filmmakers.”
Docudays UA’s International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival, which usually takes place in March, may have been postponed due to the Russia-Ukraine War but its efforts to support the Ukrainian filmmaking community are ongoing—and include ensuring members of that community remain not just visible but active participants at high-profile international events.
- 5/4/2022
- by Jennie Punter
- Variety Film + TV
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