14/02/2017 - BERLIN 2017: Part of the EFM, this year’s Co-Production Market has helped a number of projects to get made, including Anne Zohra Berrached's The Wife of the Pilot

Director Anne Zohra Berrached and producer Roman Paul, who won the Eurimages Co-Production Development Award with The Wife of the Pilot (© Berlinale Co-Production Market)

As part of the European Film Market, the Berlinale Co-Production Market brings together 600 participants who have more than 1,200 individual meetings over the course of four days. This year, 36 narrative film projects were selected to be presented to potential co-producers and funding partners.

The Eurimages Co-Production Development Award, worth €20,000 was awarded to The Wife of the Pilot by Anne Zohra Berrached, which was presented by Berlin-based Razor Film Produktion. Sitting on the jury were industry professionals Pablo Pérez de Lema (Spain), Leontine Petit (the Netherlands) and Manfred Schmidt (Germany).

The renowned ARTE International Prize was awarded to the project Lost Country by Serbian director Vladimir Perišić, which was represented by KinoElektron (France), MPM Film (France) and Trilema Films (Serbia). The €6,000 prize is given out to a project that stands out artistically at the Berlinale Co-Production Market. 

Since 2004, Munich-based Verwertungsgesellschaft der Film und Fernsehproduzenten (VFF) has been rewarding promising projects by up-and-coming filmmakers in the Talent Project Market, a sub-division of the Berlinale Co-Production Market where filmmakers from Berlinale Talents can present their projects. The VFF Talent Highlight Award, which comes with €10,000, went to The Bus to Amerika by director Derya Durmaz, who presented the project together with producer Nefes Polat, from Turkey. Cuban producer Maria Carla del Rio (with her project Shock Labor) and producer Jeremy Chua from Singapore (with Tomorrow Is a Long Time), who had also been competing for the VFF Talent Highlight Award, each received a prize of €1,000 as well as the opportunity to pitch their projects to participants at the Berlinale Co-Production Market.