CANNES: Bulgarian Script writer Iglika Triffonova was awarded the Krzysztof Kieslowski Award for best Eastern and Central European Script at a gala awards ceremony in during Cannes IFF on 18 May. The award was for her script False Witness and carries a cash prize of 10,000 Euros.
CANNES: Paris based international sales outfit Le Pacte has picked up both of the Bulgarian films that are screening in official selection in Cannes IFF this year. The Island directed by Kamen Kalev and produced by his Waterfront Film (Bulgaria www.waterfrontfilm.net) and coproduced by Chimney Pot (Sweden) is screening in the Directors' Fortnight and Ave directed by Konstantin Bojanov and produced by KB Films (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.) and coproduced by Camera Ltd is screening in Critics' Week.
BUDAPEST: Pal Adrienn directed by Agnes Kocsis and produced by Ferenc Pusztai won the main prize for best feature film and best producer at this year's edition of the Hungarian Film Week (www.magyarfilmszemle.hu).
ISTANBUL: The 30th edition of the Istanbul International Film Festival (www.iksv.org) awarded its top prize, the Golden Tulip for the International Competition, to Egyptian director Ahmad Abdalla's Microphone. The Special Jury Prize was given ex aequo to Seyfi Teoman's Our Grand Despair and Federico Veiroj's A Useful Life. The Golden Tulip Best Turkish Film was given to Tayfun Pirselimoğlu's film Hair which also won the Best Director award.
ISTANBUL: Development funding for a number of new feature film projects was announced at the Istanbul IFF (http://film.iksv.org/trrnfor ) Meetings on the Bridge industry event last night. The new Turkish German Development Fund backed jointly by the Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg Film Fund, the Hamburg Film Fund and the Turkish Ministry of Culture and Tourism awarded development funding to seven projects out of 13 projects presented for a total of 100 000 Euros. This was the first round of funding to be awarded by the new fund which was a launched last year.
BERLIN: Polish cinematographer Wojciech Staron's lensing of competition entry The Prize (El Premio) with his extreme close-ups and somber images dominates this film and gives it a tension and a feeling of menace. Directed by Argentine born and Mexican based director Paula Markovitch the film is partly autobiographical.
BERLIN: Billed as Bela Tarr's last bow The Turin Horse seems to be a throwback to his eight hour epic Satantango in terms of pace and monotony. Though a mere two hours and twenty minutes-almost a short film by Tarr standards- the film will be an endurance test for audiences as they struggle to decipher the Hungarian master's meaning and unravel this apocalyptic allegory.
BERLIN: Escape from the Chernobyl nuclear disaster seems like an obvious topic for a fast moving action film with tension mounting as the clock ticks off the minutes. Russian director Alexander Mindadze in his second feature has given us a nail biting beginning as Valery Kabysh played by Anton Shagin arrives at Chernobyl just as the reactor blows up.
BERLIN: Turkish film director Seyfi Teoman follows his internantionally successful Summer Book with the light-hearted Our Grand Despair. While the film's story begins with Nihal (Gunes Sayin) a young woman who is trying to recover from her grief after her parents are killed in a traffic accident it is really about the relationship between Ender (Ilker Aksum) and Cetin (Fatih Al) two Turkish men in their thirties sharing a flat in Ankara.
BERLIN: Ralph Fiennes does not disappoint with his directorial debut of Shakespeare's Coriolanus. Indeed Fiennes' mastery of the Shakespearian material makes this look more like the work of an experienced director than a first-timer. The language has been updated by John Logan and set by Fiennes in the modern day Belgrade but the story has lost none of its Shakespearian power.
