13/06/2022 - Karlovy Vary’s industry platform will welcome 35 projects hailing from Central and Eastern Europe, the Balkans, the former Soviet Union, the Middle East and North Africa

The industry platform of the upcoming edition of the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (see the news), Eastern Promises, has unveiled the identity of the 35 projects that will be showcased in the Works in Progress (4 July), Works in Development – Feature Launch (4 July), First Cut+ Works in Progress (5 July) and Odesa International Film Festival Works in Progress (5 July) sections. The most promising projects will receive awards of a total value of €125,000.

Ten fiction and documentary feature films in the late stages of production or in post-production from the countries of Central and Eastern Europe, the Balkans, the former Soviet Union, the Middle East and North Africa will be presented in Works in Progress. The prizewinner will be decided on by jury members Dennis Ruh (European Film Market), Óscar Alonzo (Latido Films), Esra Demirkiran (TRT), Michaela Patríková (SoundSquare) and Ewa Puszczyńska (Opus Film), who will see, among other titles, the fiction debut by rising Czech filmmaker Albert Hospodářský, Brutal Heat [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Albert Hospodářský
film profile]; Prague-based Iranian filmmaker Kaveh Daneshmand’s take on adoption, sexual identity and immigration in the context of a modern and open-minded family, Endless Summer Syndrome [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Kaveh Daneshmand and Gem De…
film profile]; and Georgian helmer Anna Dziapshipa’s documentary about the obsession with identity and home, Self-portrait Along the Borderline.

Works in Development – Feature Launch is a platform organised in collaboration with the MIDPOINT Institute international script development programme, the When East Meets West co-production market and the Trieste Film Festival. The jury, comprising Paul Ridd (Picturehouse Entertainment), Julia Sinkevych (JS Films, Odesa International Film Festival) and Danijel Hočevar (Vertigo), will take stock of several upcoming projects, such as the surreal dramedy Dolphin, written and directed by Sonja Orlewicz-Zakrzewska, where the protagonist’s boyfriend returns from holiday pregnant with a dolphin growing inside him; Cristian Pascariu’s A Flower Is Not a Flower, following an 11-year-old girl surviving the bitter reality of Romania in the late 1980s after being abandoned in an inhumane communist orphanage; and Kilián Vrátník’s coming-of-age film about the contemporary young generation on its journey to maturity, Side By Side.

Projects in First Cut+, which is designed to boost the competitiveness and marketability of feature films that previously participated in the First Cut Lab, will be judged by Esra Demirkiran (TRT), Boris Pugnet (First Cut+, Tiramisu) and Ji Lacerna (Full Circle Lab Philippines), and will be awarded with service packages and cash prizes that should allow the teams to finish the movies. This year’s selection includes Lilian Sijbesma’s Under the Naked Sky, which deals with a family situation where a ten-year-old girl starts to mentally outgrow her intellectually disabled mother; the personal story I Love You More, portraying Kosovar and Albanian queer youth, by Erblin Nushi; and Norwegian Dream, where Leiv Igor Devold aims to “put the focus on how different identity markers work together in a society that pressures individuals”.

As previously reported (see the news), KVIFF has decided to host the Works in Progress programme of the 13^th Odesa International Film Festival in support of Ukrainian filmmakers and festival organisers. Therefore, eight full-length film projects in the final stages of shooting or in post-production, produced in Ukraine or in co-production with Ukraine, will be presented by their directors and producers. The selection includes Simon Mozgovyi’s mystical sci-fi drama Chrysanthemum Day, following an old “flower woman”, known by many as a healer, who survived a nuclear explosion and might be the key to humanity’s future; Yuliia Hontaruk’s Company of Steel, which sees three young veterans thrust back into trauma after the Russian invasion of Ukraine; and Natalka Vorozhbyt’s mystical drama Demons, a story about the relations between a very different man and woman, about their unique “cosmic system”, about intimacy and chemistry, and about their inability to come to an agreement.

The full list of projects set to be presented is as follows:

Works in Progress

The Ice That Still Supports Us (Estonia/Lithuania)
Director: Arko Okk
Producers: Arko Okk, Sandra Heidov, Teresa Rozanovska

Part of Society (Georgia)
Director: Rati Tsiteladze
Producers: Olga Slusareva, Rati Tsiteladze

The Burdened (Yemen/Sudan)
Director: Amr Gamal
Producers: Mohsen Alkhalifi, Amr Gamal, Amjad Abu Alala, Mohammed Alomda

Endless Summer Syndrome [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Kaveh Daneshmand and Gem De…
film profile] (Turkey/France)
Director: Kaveh Daneshmand
Producers: Gem Deger, Eva Larvoire, Cédric Larvoire, Kaveh Daneshmand

Brutal Heat [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Albert Hospodářský
film profile] (Czech Republic/Slovak Republic)
Director: Albert Hospodářský
Producers: Ondřej Lukeš, Lukáš Kokeš

Windless (Bulgaria/Italy)
Director: Pavel G Vesnakov
Producers: Veselka Kiryakova, Alessandro Amato, Luigi Chimienti

The Visitors [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] (Czech Republic/Norway/Slovak Republic)
Director: Veronika Lišková
Producer: Kristýna Michálek Květová

Machtat [+see also:
trailer
film profile] (Lebanon/Tunisia/France)
Director: Sonia Ben Slama
Producer: Tania El Khoury

Self-portrait Along the Borderline (Georgia)
Director: Anna Dziapshipa
Producers: Anna Dziapshipa, Sakdoc Film

Elephant [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] (Poland)
Director: Kamil Krawczycki
Producer: Jakub Mroz

Works in Development – Feature Launch

You Better Be (Bulgaria)
Director: Jonathan Heidelberger, Magdelena Ilieva
Scriptwriters: Jonathan Heidelberger, Drago Bago, Magdelena Ilieva
Producers: Magdelena Ilieva, Drago Bago

The First Week of August (Croatia)
Director, scriptwriter: Filip Mojzeš
Producer: Matej Merlić

Twentyseven (Slovak Republic)
Director, scriptwriter: Gregor Valentovič
Producer: Zora Jaurová

Side by Side (Czech Republic)
Director: Kilián Vrátník
Scriptwriters: Natalie Golovchenko, Kilián Vrátník
Producer: Noemi Krausová

My Name Is Lily (Cyprus)
Director: Yianna Americanou
Scriptwriters: Yianna Americanou, Christina Georgiou
Producer: Stelana Kliris

My Best Friend’s Baby (Sweden)
Director, scriptwriter: Sophie Vuković
Producers: Eliza Jones, Markus Waltå

Dolphin (Poland)
Director, scriptwriter: Sonja Orlewicz-Zakrzewska
Producer: Magdalena Sztorc

All My Friends Soon Will Be Dead (Latvia)
Director, scriptwriter: Armands Zacs
Producer: Alise Gelze

A Flower Is Not a Flower (Romania)
Director, scriptwriter: Cristian Pascariu
Producer: Adriana Răcășan

First Cut+

Night Detour (Canada)
Directors: Ariane Falardeau St Amour, Paul Chotel
Producers: Omar Elhamy, Simon Allard, Jeanne Dupuis

Goldfish (UK/USA/India)
Director: Pushan Kripalani
Producer: Amit Saxena

Under the Naked Sky (Netherlands/Belgium)
Director: Lilian Sijbesma
Producer: Germen Boelens

The Maiden (Canada/USA)
Director: Graham Foy
Producers: Daiva Zalnieriunas, Dan Montgomery

I Love You More (Kosovo/Albania)
Director: Erblin Nushi
Producers: Fjolla Nushi, Erblin Nushi

Norwegian Dream (Norway/Poland/Germany)
Director: Leiv Igor Devold
Producer: Håvard Wettland Gossé

Charcoal (When My Life) (Brazil/Argentina)
Director: Carolina Markowicz
Producer: Zita Carvalhosa

The Territory (Turkey)
Director: Mesut Keklík
Producer: Burak Yavuz