Regional backing for Don’t Look Back
After its special screening at Cannes in May, Marina De Van’s second feature Don’t Look Back [+see also:
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film profile] is being released in Belgium on Wednesday, June 24.
The film has attracted press attention thanks to its superb female stars, Sophie Marceau and Monica Bellucci. Like its international cast, the film is also the fruit of a broad European collaboration, between France’s Agat Films & Ex Nihilo, Italy’s Urania Film, Luxembourg’s Samsa Films, and Belgium’s Entre Chien et Loup and Les Ateliers de Baere. Moreover, it is the first joint production between two founding members of the European network of regional funds, Ciné-Regio.
Philippe Reynaert, director of the Walloon film fund Wallimage, commented: “We are delighted to finally be able to work with the Apulia region. It’s taken some time, but collaborations between all the different regions are still not that simple, due to sometimes contradictory regulations.”
He continued: “In Wallonia, we started out with a real industrial desert. Today, we’re not only seeing the emergence of a generation of filmmakers and technicians, but also a true industrial explosion: over 30 companies have recently joined the TWIST cluster. Since 2001, the €20m invested by the region have yielded more than double that amount.”
Investment has been made in post-production in Wallonia (special effects and sound mixing), while the Apulia Film Fund has ploughed money into film shoots. Raffaella Delvecchio commented: “We’ve invested €40,000 and contributed our experience in hosting film shoots. The film commission was created in 2004, but the fund has only been active since 2007. So far, we’ve backed 20 diverse and varied co-productions, including a Bollywood film!”.
The regional funds make it possible to anchor audiovisual productions locally, whether for tourism-related or industrial reasons. Sébastien Delloye, a producer at Les Ateliers de Baere, appreciates this local anchoring: “Receiving support from the Wallimage fund conditions the type of expenditure we make in Belgium. As a result, we regularly work with technicians with whom we develop relations of trust and good working partnerships.”
(Translated from French)
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