KARLOVY VARY: The Bulgarian/Greek coproduction The Father by the directing team of Kristina Grozeva and Petar Valchanov will premiere in the main competition of the Karlovy Vary IFF, which begins on 28 June 2019.

PRAGUE: A total of 22 films and projects received support from the Czech Film Fund in the area of distribution in the June 2019 grants round.

PRAGUE: The Czech Republic, Croatia, Estonia, Latvia, Macedonia and Poland are among the 24 countries presenting TV series projects at the 30th edition of Cartoon Forum, which takes place 16 – 19 September in Toulouse, France. A total of 85 projects will participate in the event, which expects some 1,000 sector professionals in attendance.

KOSICE: Monos directed by Alejandro Landes won the Blue Angel for Best Film at the closing ceremony of Art Film Fest on 22 June 2019. The Slovak film Loli Paradicka directed by Richard Staviarsky won the Audience Award.

VALLETTA: Latvia’s Oleg by Juris Kursietis and Albania’s A Shelter Among the Clouds by Robert Budina were awarded the Best Fiction Feature Award ex-aequo at the first edition of the Cinema of Small Nations Competition held at the Valletta Film Festival (14-23 June 2019).

TALLINN: The Estonian government has approved a one-time rise in the amount of funding available through the country’s film incentives.

BARCELONA: The Balkan cinema chain Blitz-CineStar was awarded the International Exhibitor of the Year award by the Union of Cinemas (UNIC) at the CineEurope Convention in Barcelona. The award recognised Blitz-CineStar as a company which keeps raising the bar and creating continuous growth, with particular emphasis put on the quality of the cinema experience and paying special attention to innovation, which made Blitz-CineStar into one of the leading and fastest-growing exhibitors in the region as well as Europe.

The first workshop of 2019 Ex Oriente Film begins in Slovakia on 20 June.

NICOSIA: Nicolas Cage stars in Jiu Jitsu by Greek-American director and producer Dimitri Logothetis, the first international production to be shot entirely in Cyprus since the launch in 2018 of the cash rebates of up to 35 percent on qualifying expenditures.