12/06/2014 - Scheduled for today and tomorrow, the platform for the development and funding of feature-film projects has seen a great many people signing up straight away

Cineuropa met up with Pierre-Emmanuel Fleurantin, who, together with Guillaume Calop and Vanja Kaludjercic, is managing the first edition of the Paris Coproduction Village. Initiated by the Les Arcs European Film Festival and the Champs-Elysées Film Festival (third edition taking place from 11-17 June), today and tomorrow will see the event presenting a selection (see the news) of 12 international features (intended to be French or European co-productions) to producers, sales agents, distributors, financiers and representatives of regional funds in the French capital. The six resident projects from the 28th session of the Cinéfondation Résidence of the Cannes Festival also form part of this selection.

Pierre-Emmanuel Fleurantin: “We received over 250 projects, and the selection is very appealing, judging by the myriad requests that we received for meetings. We’ve even gone over and above what we were able to allocate over the two days, even though we’ve reduced the length of each meeting to 20 minutes in order to fit more of them in. There will be 540 meetings in total, but for certain projects like those of Pia Marais, Karim Aïnouz and Catalin Mitulescu, we were forced to drop over half of the requested meetings. So next year, the Paris Coproduction Village could possibly be extended from two to three days.

“The selected projects don’t have any French co-producer, nor do they have international sales agents. All of the French sellers are here, from the smallest to the very biggest (StudioCanal, Gaumont, etc), but lots of other European sellers have made the trip to Paris, like Protagonist Pictures, The Match Factory, Fortissimo and EastWest. I should say that among the selected projects, there are budgets of all shapes and sizes, ranging from less than €1 million up to €10 million, with several of the titles in the middle bracket, between €2 million and €3 million. We didn’t only want ‘small’ European arthouse films, but rather we wanted to vary things by including projects with great potential for international sales and distribution in other territories.

“In our view, Paris is the city for co-productions. Very few countries co-produce as much as France. Paris is where you’ve got the highest concentration of practically all the French production companies, all the international sales agents and some superb distributors that release foreign films in France. Also, in France you’ve got financial assistance from such sources as the CNC’s World Cinema Support, those of the various regions, and television networks that co-produce, like Arte, or those that pre-purchase, like Canal+ and so on. When we saw that Paris Project was coming to an end, we thought it was a real shame, and we got started on Paris Coproduction Village by steering it in accordance with our own beliefs: finding a balanced approach between the visions of authors and directors, and success on the market. The requests that have been flooding in just go to show the interest in the event, with major potential co-producers, such as SBS Films for example, having signed up, even though they didn’t use to come to Les Arcs – that’s a very good sign."

(Translated from French)