ISTANBUL: Festival on Wheels team Ahmet Boyacicoglu and Basak Emre have moved into film production with Inside directed by Zeki Demirkubiz which had its world premier at Istanbul FF (www.iskv.org).

ISTANBUL: Audiences and foreign guests at the 31 Istanbul International Film Festival (www.iksv.org) now underway have the chance to see the latest in new Turkish films in the National Competition with 12 new titles including director Umit Unal's The Pomegranate and Zeki Demirkubuz's new Inside. There are also another five new titles screening Out of Competition and another 10 titles in the New Turkish Cinema section and 12 new Turkish docs.

This month we focus on Poland and Iza Wierzbinska who is manager of the Muranow Cinema in Warsaw.

{mosimage}LONDON: The 10^th annual Kinoteka festival of Polish film (www.kinoteka.org.uk) celebrated 10 years of bringing contemporary Polish film and culture to London culminating with a gala concert of the music of Krzysztof Penderecki and Jonny Greenwood at London's Barbican.

BERLIN: A new Georgian Ukrainian German coproduction Ursus the Caucasian Brown Bear is set to shoot in the Ukraine and Georgia in July and August of 2012. The 3.3m USD coproduction goes into pre-production next month.

First screening: 12 February 2012

BERLIN: Diaz Don’t Clean Up That Blood directed by Italian director Daniele Vicari about the violent clashes at the 2001 G8 Summit in Genoa was one of the interesting entries in the Panorama section of this year’s Berlinale. This feature film is intended to be an historically accurate recreation of the actual events that turned what was a social protest into a bloodbath that ended with many injured and one dead.

First Screening Tuesday 14 February

{mosimage}BERLIN: Russian producer Alexander Rodnyansky has set his sites on Hollywood with Jayne Mansfield’s Car, a period drama directed by Billy Bob Thornton. Rodnyansky is one of Russia’s most successful film producers with a number of international art house hits like Andrey Zvyagintsev’s Elena and Alexander Mindadze’s Innocent Saturday to his credit. This ensemble drama starring Billy Bob Thornton, Robert Duvall, John Hurt, Kevin Bacon and Robert Patrick has already been sold to the US for a major release establishing the Hollywood credentials of his AR Films shingle. So it looks like after Berlin Rodnyansky will be saying “Dasvidaniya Moscow” as he heads to the warmer climes of California for his future productions.

{mosimage}First Screening: Thursday 16 February

BERLIN: Danish director Nikolaj Arcel has brought to Berlin a lavish period costume drama that still manages to be character driven and emotionally satisfying which is quite a feat. The strong international sales that the A Royal Affair has had before its Berlin premier testify to his accomplishment.

{mosimage}PRAGUE: Vaclav Havel’s Leaving has dominated the nominations for the annual Czech Lions awards which will be held this Saturday 3 March 2012. The film was the first and only venture into directing for the former Czech president who died at the end of 2011. Leaving has garnered 12 nominations including Bert Film, Best Director and Best Screen play.

{mosimage}WARSAW: Polish director Marcin Janiec’s animated 3D short The Game has won two prestigious international awards. The short film about a life and death chess battle took Best of Show from the Indie Fest in California and Rising Star Award voted for by the jury of the Canada International Film Festival.