CANNES: The Baltic Bridge East by West (B'EST), a new initiative designed for feature film projects from the European Union and the CIS countries and Georgia, is announcing its first project slate in Cannes on May 22, 2012. The workshop is held by the organizers of Baltic Event (Estonia) and International Film Forum for CIS Countries in cooperation with EAVE (European Audiovisual Entrepreneurs), Rfilms, Tandem Production (Russia), and with the support from MEDIA Mundus. B'EST consists of two workshops, which take place on June 23-27 in Moscow, within the framework of Moscow International Film Festival, and November 25-28 in Tallinn, within the framework of Baltic Event.

CANNES: Bulgarian film is represented in Cannes this year with the doc Sofia's Last Ambulance screening in the Critic's Week as well as four films screening in the market and Bulgarian director Stephan Komandarev as a Producer on the Move.  Drop by and see them at the South East Europe stand.

CANNES: The Industry office of the Festival del film Locarno is announcing the launch of STEP IN, a new industry initiative in Cannes. The initiative will focus in 2012 on European film distribution and exhibition in Eastern and Central European countries.

SOFIA: The 2011 report from Bulgaria's National Statistics Institute showed that national film production was down compared with 2010, but cinema attendance rose by 12%.

Throughout Cannes FNE will be highlighting the new projects being developed by scriptwriters working with ScripTeast.  ScripTeast (www.scriptesat.pl) is supported by the MEDIA programme of the EU and the Polish Film Institute (www.pisf.pl) and is one of the most successful script development programmes in Europe with many of the scripts going on to be produced as successful films.

Today we highlight:

The Lonely Go First

Scriptwriter: Darek Gajewski (Poland )

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Step Counter (The Notebook)

Scriptwriter: Svetla Tsotsorkova (Bulgaria )

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Up on the Roo

Scriptwriter: Rafał Kapeliński (Poland)

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BUCHAREST: Confections of a Discarded Woman directed by Michael Damian for the U.S. Hallmark Channel is in preproduction at Castel Film.  

The national Lithuanian Films stand begins its work at the film market The Marché du Film at the 65^th Cannes International Film Festival. Throughout 10 days of the film market the Lithuanian Films stand will introduce to the film industry not only the newest Lithuanian feature, documentary, short and animated films but also the freshest news from the country's film industry, the main of which is that Lithuania has established a film centre.

CANNES: Estonia recently established a new film commission to attract productions to the country.  According to the commission's helmer Martin Aadamsoo the Estonians plan to put a different twist on this by also establishing Estonia as a high end post production center that will attract AV business to the country not only to shoot but to make the whole production process in Estonia.