TorinoFilmLab Meeting Event chooses winners
Judging by the enthusiasm of the participants and above all the first results (many projects presented last year are now in post-production), the TorinoFilmLab has proven to be a winning formula at is second edition. The good mood of the organizers says it all (especially director Savina Neirotti), as well as the filmmakers (screewriters and directors), who took part in the Meeting Event and met professionals from throughout the world, including Karl Baumgartner (Pandora Film), Philippe Bober (The Coproduction Office) and Carlo Brancaleoni of (RAI Cinema).
Their only regret perhaps is not having had the time to see a few films of the Turin Film Festival. But festival director Gianni Amelio was optimistic: at the awards ceremony he invited these “filmmakers of tomorrow” to submit their films next year “because I’d like to screen them here in Turin".
It just may be that someone from among the five winners of the Production Awards could be ready for next year’s competition at Turin. The Advisory Board gave each of them a monetary awards that corresponds not to how much the jury liked it, but how much funding was still needed for the budgets of the projects, all of which have one more producers on board.
"For its humoristic approach", €50,000 go to Palestinian director Azza El-Hassan’s Musical Chairs, which will be co-produced by Blinker Filmproduktion, Les Films d'Ici and Familia Productions; while the "artistic quality of the portrait of a lost generation" in British director Duane Hopkins’ Bypass (Third Films) earned €130,000.
A Salvo by Antonio Piazza and Fabio Grassadonia, set among the Palermo mafia and “promises a new perspective on a seemingly familiar subject” received €140,000. The film will be produced by Cristaldi Pictures and Acaba Produzioni). Postcards from the Zoo by Indonesia’s Edwin, "an invitation to an unforgettable and magical trip to a zoo”, earned itself €180,000.
Lastly, "for its courage and human approach to a dark and difficult subject matter,” Advisory Board gave €100,000 (the entire amount missing to close the film’s budget) to The Slut by Israel’s Hagar Ben-Asher. The film will be produced by Transfax Films.
There are six Development Awards winners, who will thus vie for next year’s Production Awards: Massoud Bakhshi’s Darkness at Noon (Iran), Ihab Jadallah’s Dead Sea (Palestine/France), Kirsi Marie Liimatainen’s The Scream of the Butterfly (Finland), Fabrice Main’s Heavy Water (France), Bogdan Mustata’s Wolf (Romania) and Tobias Nolle’s Wall of Fog (Switzerland).
The new Post-Production Award goes to Lucas Rosant, producer of Dead Sea, and funds his participation in European Post-Production Connection (EP2C) Training Programme, which will take place in July 2010 in Belgium.
(Translated from Italian)
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