Film and Music Entertainment (F&ME), the London-based production outfit led by Sam Taylor and Mike Downey (read the interview), is launching five features on the international market place over a number of summer festivals, marking the full delivery of the first five features on its $21 million eight-picture 2014 slate.

Kicking off the summer festivals is the Matthew Macfadyen vehicle Lost in Karastan by British director Ben Hopkins, and written by Ida [+leggi anche:
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intervista: Pawel Pawlikowski
intervista: Pawel Pawlikowski
scheda film] writer/director Pawel Pawlikowski, which had its world premiere this week in competition at the Montreal World Film Festival. Shot entirely on location in Georgia, the film is a comedy about globalisation and nation-building, sex and art, money-laundering and love. 

The second film to be released over the summer is Mohsen Makhmalbaf’s The President [+leggi anche:
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scheda film], also a production shot in Georgia, opening the Orizzonti section of the Venice Film Festival. The film tells the story of a dictator who comes face to face with the people he previously subjugated. “This first of two films on our 2014 slate, we have shot back to back on location in Georgia,” says F&ME principal and producer Mike Downey, “and the results from a creative and a commercial perspective are excellent.”

Following its UK premiere in April, Julien Temple’s Rio 50 Degrees, the feature documentary, a political, social and musical history of Rio de Janeiro, will have its international premiere very much on home turf at the Festival do Rio. Tirana veteran Fatmir Koci’s Amsterdam Express, the first ever co-production between Albania and the UK, will also have its festival launch (at Vienna’s Let’s CEE Festival) after its highly successful Albanian release earlier in the year. Downey was also executive producer on Darko Lungulov’s Monument to Michael Jackson [+leggi anche:
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scheda film], which was world premiered at the Karlovy Vary Festival, continued at the Pula Film Festival and has just won the best film at the Montenegro Film Festival in Herceg Novi. F&ME also partnered on Srdjan Dragojevic’s Zero to Hero, which, as a Montenegro-produced film, also screened in Herceg Novi.