Aiming to lend greater visibility to European productions filmed in non-hegemonic languages (ie, those that are not filmed in German, Spanish, French, English, Italian or Russian), last year the San Sebastián Film Festival launched the Glocal in Progress industry activity. After a Basque film, Dantza [+leggi anche:
trailer
making of
intervista: Telmo Esnal
scheda film], was awarded at the first edition (which was in fact presented as a Special Screening at this edition of the festival – read the interview with its director, Telmo Esnal, here), a Baltic movie called Invisible [+leggi anche:
recensione
trailer
intervista: Ignas Jonynas e Kristupas …
scheda film] has now emerged victorious.

Invisible, which was crowned with the Glocal in Progress Award (which comes with €10,000 for the majority producer of the film and its entire post-production), is being directed by Lithuania’s Ignas Jonynas, whose first feature, The Gambler [+leggi anche:
recensione
trailer
intervista: Ignas Jonynas
scheda film], took part in the New Directors section of the festival back in 2013. The movie zooms in on a young man who pretends to be blind in order to enter a dance competition on television, and who is forced to face up to fame and his own dishonesty when an old acquaintance is released from prison. The film is being co-produced by Lithuania (Magic Films), Latvia (Locomotive Productions) and Ukraine (Limelite), and it is currently in post-production.

Another movie that was part of the selection, A Simple Man, helmed by Greek first-timer Tassos Gerakinis, tells the story of a convict who, while trying to escape, forces a peace-loving wine producer to hide him in his house – but the wine producer’s daughter ends up falling in love with him. The film is a co-production between Greece (Bad Crowd and Faliro House Productions) and France (Arizona Productions), and it rocked up at the festival in search of support for the post-production stage, a sales agent and perhaps another producing country.

The final movie selected, Queen Lear [+leggi anche:
trailer
scheda film], directed by Turkey’s Pelin Esmer, a filmmaker who previously competed for the Golden Shell in 2009 with 10 to 11 [+leggi anche:
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scheda film], follows five peasants from the Turkish mountains who travel around performing an adaptation of King Lear by Shakespeare, as their lives start to converge with the world of the play. The film is being produced by Esmer herself for Sinefilm, and the team came to the gathering in search of funding for the final edit.

This year, the festival placed a particular emphasis on this specific topic during its industry activities, and the agenda included a conference on diversity in European cinema as a market value, which saw the participation of representatives of organisations such as the Lithuanian Film Centre, the Estonian Film Institute, the National Film Centre of Latvia, Ffilm Cymru Wales and the Basque Government. In addition, the Baltic countries (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania), whose languages are indeed non-hegemonic, enjoyed this year’s “Focus on”, which the festival dedicates to a specific territory at each edition.