KRAKOW: Tomasz Szafrański is currently shooting Rock’n’Roll Eddie, a comedy for children and youngsters, set to premiere in 2018.
BUCHAREST: Soldiers. A Story from Ferentari, the debut feature by Serbian director Ivana Mladenovic, was acquired by the German sales agent Beta Cinema. This contemporary gay love story set in the poorest neighborhood of Bucharest will have its world premiere at the San Sebastian Film Festival and it was also selected for Toronto Festival’s Discovery section.
TIMIȘOARA: The Mediaș European Film Festival (MECEFF) relocates to Timișoara and runs in competition 13 films from CEE from 3 to 9 September 2017.
WARSAW: Polish public broadcaster TVP is currently shooting a new original family oriented comedy series entitled Under the Same Sky. The first season will have 12 episodes of 25-minutes each.
PLOVDIV: The second edition of DroneUp IFF, a festival of films shot using drones, will take place in the Roman Stadium Plovdiv and Mall Plovdiv from 25 to 27 August 2017.
The Award by the Locarno Festival’s online event in partnership with Festival Scope and offered by Cinelab Bucharest, has been chosen by the audience and is given to Meteorlar by Gürcan Keltek.
The second edition of the initiative by the Locarno Festival in partnership with Festival Scope has presented a selection of 10 films from the Concorso Cineasti del presente. After its premiere at the Festival, each film was screened until August 20, with a limit of 400 tickets per film, made available worldwide and for free.
For this year’s Cinelab Award, the audience has chosen Meteorlar by Gürcan Keltek. The Award was exclusively given by the Locarno Festival initiative on Festival Scope. The winner is given technical services worth 22,000€, which is offered by Cinelab Bucharest.
Meteorlar had its world premiere in Locarno. It is Turkish filmmaker Gürcan Keltek’s debut feature. The film was produced by 29P Films and is sold internationally by the greek world sales company Heretic Outreach. Meteorlar also won Locarno Festival’s Swatch Art Peace Hotel Award.
With the aim of expanding the festival experience beyond theaters, Festival Scope is the online platform that brings exclusive events to film lovers worldwide. It partners with the most prestigious film festivals like Venice, Rotterdam, New Directors/New Films, Cannes’ La Semaine de la Critique and Directors’ Fortnight, Clermont-Ferrand.
The 2017 edition, the fifth under Carlo Chatrian as artistic director, has ended successfully and has been crowned by the Pardo d’oro for the film MRS. FANG directed by WANG Bing.
261 films in 11 days, 16 under the open sky in the Piazza Grande and 18 in the Concorso internazionale. Among great guests attending this year feature unforgettable greetings to the Piazza by Todd Haynes and by Jean–Marie Straub, the toast by Mathieu Kassovitz, Michel Merkt’s roar and a touched Adrien Brody. José Luis Alcaine, Nastassja Kinski, Aleksander Sokurov have also appeared along with them on stage for the section dedicated to Locarno70 and the Premio Cinema Ticino awarded to Esmé Sciaroni.
Tributes to great artists who have passed on, such as Jeanne Moreau, Hans Hurch and George Romero, have not been forgotten.
In the context of this evening’s Award ceremony on the Piazza Grande, it was announced that the Prix Public UBS is awarded to THE BIG SICK, by Michael Showalter.
Carlo Chatrian, Artistic Director: ”Locarno70 is about to end, and the first provisional assessment is positive. The magical moments that characterised the evenings on the Piazza Grande have been many, just like the guests who offered the public precious moments, or the films that occasioned a full house, or the proposals which aroused interest in the press and professionals. Locarno has confirmed itself as a hub for discerning what direction the currents of independent cinema are taking, but also as a meeting venue between those who create cinema and those who enjoy it, between those who come from very far away and those who on the other hand represent a territory. Seeing the queues outside the new PalaCinema, or the GranRex cinema packed in every one of its rows for a retrospective which has hit its target, fills us with joy and makes us look towards the future with optimism.”
Mario Timbal, Chief Operating Officer: “According to our intentions, this edition wished to be both a celebration for the seventieth anniversary and a springboard for the next years of the Festival at the same time. The rising attendance and the many positive feed-backs we received clearly indicate that our targets have been met. The new screening rooms have consolidated the basic infrastructure of the event, and the meeting areas and many collateral events have demonstrated a great potential which can be developed further over the coming years, allowing the Festival to look confidently towards the future.”
The Awards PDF may be downloaded here.
The evening on the Piazza Grande will end with the official awards and the screening of the closing film GOTTHARD – ONE LIFE, ONE SOUL by Kevin Merz.
The 71st Locarno Festival will take place from 1 to 11 August 2018.
Locarno Festival’s Signs of Life Award electronic-art.foundation for Best Film has been granted to COCOTE by Nelson Carlo De Los Santos Arias.
Signs of Life aims to explore new ground, narrative forms and innovative cinematic language. Originally out-of-competition when founded in 2014, Signs of Life is now a competitive section. This year’s jury is composed of Chris Fujiwara, film critic and programmer (USA, Japan), Jordan Cronk, film critic and programmer (USA) and Maria Bonsanti, programmer (Italy).
The Signs of Life Award electronic-art.foundation for Best Film 2017 is awarded to COCOTE(Dominican Republic, Argentina, Germany, Qatar) by Nelson Carlo De Los Santos Arias from the Dominican Republic.
The Signs of Life jury awarded Nelson Carlo De Los Santos Arias’ film for “its capacity to reinvent the traditions of anthropological cinema in a creative manner”.
The Fundación Casa Wabi – Mantarraya Award was given to director Dane Komljen for PHANTASIESÄTZE (Germany, Denmark) “for its rigorous and fascinating approach to landscape, language and memory”.
The jury has given a Special Mention to ERA UMA VEZ BRASÍLIA (Brazil, Portugal) by Adirley Queirós “for its original and ambitious construction”.
The Signs of Life Award electronic-art.foundation worth 5,000 Swiss francs was made possible thanks to the support of electronic-art.foundation (Zurich). The foundation’s mission is to sustain innovative cultural projects on an international scale.
The Fundación Casa Wabi and Mantarraya, in collaboration with the Festival Internacional de Cine de Morelia, have given support for Fundación Casa Wabi – Mantarraya Award which consists of an up to three-month-long residence in the Casa Wabi in Puerto Escondido (Mexico).
The awards will be presented tonight at the 9.30 PM Piazza Grande screening.
The names of prizewinners for the Open Doors Hub coproduction platform and the Open Doors Lab producer-training workshop were announced today, 8 August.
The 2017 session was the second in the three-year cycle dedicated by Open Doors to exploring eight countries in Southern Asia: Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nepal, Maldives, Myanmar, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.
The prizes, both cash and in the form of tangible assistance, have been awarded to projects and participants in the international platform Open Doors Hub and the training workshop Open Doors Lab, with the aim of supporting their progress after the Festival.
The aim of the Open Doors Hub coproduction platform (2-8 August) is to allow director/producer teams from the eight countries involved to discuss their projects with potential partners, fostering international collaborations and funding.
The Open Doors Jury awarded the following prizes to Open Doors Hub projects in support of their future development or production:
Open Doors Grant (50,000 Swiss francs)
An award financed by Open Doors in collaboration with the City of Bellinzona and the Swiss film production fund Visions Sud Est, with the backing of the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC):
35,000 Swiss francs
BADESZENEN, by Dawood Hilmandi (Afghanistan)
15,000 Swiss francs
ONE SUMMER DAY, by We Ra Aung (Myanmar)
CNC grant (8,000 euros)
ONE SUMMER DAY, by We Ra Aung (Myanmar)
Prix ARTE International Open Doors (6,000 euros)
MADE IN BANGLADESH, by Rubaiyat Hossain (Bangladesh / France)
Also bringing this year’s session to a close today is the Open Doors Lab: a five-day workshop dedicated to eight emerging producers from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.
Three participants in the Lab have received one special mention and two awards, respectively from representatives of Initiative Film and the TorinoFilmLab. The former provides the winner with a distance development package, while the latter offers an invitation to the TFL Meeting Event in Turin, allowing the attendee to continue commercial negotiations with European decision-makers.
Open Doors to development – Initiative Film Grant
Rasitha Jinasena with his project MAHAMAYA (Sri Lanka)
Special mention to Jawed Taiman with his project THE LAST NIGHT (Afghanistan)
Open Doors – TFL Award
Jami Mahmood (Pakistan)
“Residency Internationale Kurzfilmtage Winterthur @ Villa Sträuli”
The Winterthur International Short Film Festival, in collaboration with Villa Sträuli and the Locarno Festival, offer a two-month residency to applicants in the Open Doors, Leopards of Tomorrow and Filmmakers Academy programs who are from Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe or Latin America.
PRADEEPAN RAVEENDRAN, Open Doors Screenings, Sri Lanka
Special mention to RATI TSITELADZE, Filmmakers Academy, Georgia
The program of Open Doors Screenings presents a selection of 22 films from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Sri Lanka and continues until the end of the Festival.
From the very beginning Open Doors has been able to count on the invaluable and loyal partnership of the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) of the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs (FDFA).
