News

Philippines-based Fire and Ice Media has nabbed Asian sales rights to “Kurak,” a powerful Kyrgyz drama tackling violence against women, and is introducing the film to buyers at Berlin’s European Film Market (EFM).

The film, now in post-production, represents a milestone France-Kyrgyzstan co-production – the first in two decades – and stands as the largest Central Asian co-production to date in terms of participating countries.

Directed by Erke Dzhumakmatova and Emil Atageldiev, “Kurak” weaves multiple narratives centered on women facing systemic abuse, including a webcam model blackmailed by law enforcement, a mother seeking justice for her daughter’s suicide after assault by a politician’s son, and a journalist fighting to expose these crimes. The film incorporates real news footage to underscore its ripped-from-headlines authenticity.

The production gained early traction at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival’s Central Asian Co-production Workshop, backed by Cnc and the Eurasian Film Market.

The multinational production...

Exclusive: The Thessaloniki International Film Festival’s industry-focused Agora section has selected 15 projects from 17 countries for this year’s Crossroads Co-production Forum. Scroll down for the full list of projects.

Hailing from across southeastern Europe and the Mediterranean region, the projects are in various stages of development. The selection features debut and sophomore feature films alongside more experienced directors.

Among the notable projects is the latest feature film by prolific Romanian director Adrian Sitaru. There are also sophomore film projects from Yorgos Goussis, Kaltrina Krasniqi, Diego Llorente, Nikola Mijović, Ahu Ozturk, Sonia Liza Kenterman, and Ahmad Ghossein. Debut feature filmmakers are Neritan Zinxhiria and Thelyia Petraki.

The selected projects hail from countries including the Czech Republic, Slovakia, France, Bulgaria, Germany, Greece, Jordan, Kosovo*, Lebanon, Luxembourg, Montenegro, Serbia, North Macedonia, Palestine, Romania, Spain, and Turkey. This year’s selection was co-curated by an advisory committee featuring industry consultant Thibaut Bracq...

The 36th edition of Ireland’s Galway Film Fleadh has come to an end with Best Irish Film going to breakout hit Kneecap, which played at Sundance earlier this year and was picked up by Sony Classics. Scroll down for a full list of winners.

Written and directed by Rich Peppiat and produced by Trevor Birney, Jack Tarling, Patrick O’Neill, the film is the story of the eponymous Belfast hip-hop trio, played in the movie by group members Mo Chara, Móglaí Bap and DJ Próvaí. Michael Fassbender also stars. The film also won the Audience Award and the Irish Language Feature Film Award, a feat that has never happened at the Fleadh in 36 years.

Best Irish First Feature was Fidil Ghorm directed by Anne McCabe, written by Patricia Forde and produced by Pierce Boyce and Bríd Seoighe. Pic tells the story of 10-year-old Molly, who believes that if she learns...

Exclusive: More partners have joined Ard’s German political thriller series Dangerous Truth (Das Zweite Attentat).

Munich-based distributor OneGate Media and Bravado Equity, a subsidiary of Eric Welbers’ Bravado Media, have boarded as global distributor and gap financier, respectively. They join co-production partners Eikon Media, Wdr and Ard Degeto Film along with Deal Productions in Luxembourg for Ard.

Inspired by true events that took place in the lead up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the six-part, German-language drama centers around 35-year-old Alexander Jaromin, who for 20 years has been living with his mother in Athens under assumed identities in the witness protection program of the Federal Criminal Police Office (Bka) after his father and sister were killed in a terrorist attack. Tormented by the unknown, Alexander begins a desperate search to uncover the truth and soon finds himself under the close watch of the Federal Intelligence Service, with his...

Tim Roth and Trine Dyrholm hit the festival circuit this month with Désirée Nosbusch’s emotionally raw drama Poison, in which they co-star as an ex-couple who meet up years after the death of their young son which drove them apart.

The feature, which world premieres at Germany’s Munich Film Festival on July 5 and then heads to Ireland’s Galway Film Festival, is adapted from Dutch writer Lot Vekemans’ award-winning 2010 play.

It unfolds against the backdrop of the cemetery where the son is buried, with the reunion sparked by a letter notifying the ex-partners that their son’s grave is being moved due to building work.

When Roth and Dyrholm agreed to take on the roles, neither had an inkling of the personal events that would lend an extra emotional layer to the shoot.

Having signed for the film, Roth learned of son Cormac Roth’s diagnosis with stage...

The ever-busy Japanese character actor Tadanobu Asano — currently having a moment as one of the stars of Disney’s hit samurai series Shōgun — has joined the cast of Thai director Pen-ek Ratanaruang’s upcoming culinary thriller Morte Cucina. The actor and director last collaborated two decades ago on the romantic crime film Last Life in the Universe (2003), which was Thailand’s official submission to the Oscars that year and won Asano the best actor award at the Venice Film Festival.

Set in contemporary Bangkok, Morte Cucina follows a talented young female chef named Sao who has a chance encounter with a man who sexually abused her when she was a teen. “Using her talents in the kitchen, Sao sets her plan of revenge in motion — achieving a rather unexpected result,” the film’s logline reads.

The project’s producers are keeping the nature of Asano’s role under wraps for now,...

CAA has signed Deal Productions, a European film and TV banner co-founded by actor-turned-filmmaker Désirée Nosbusch (“Bad Banks”) and Alexandra Hoesdorff (“High Fantasy”).

Based in Luxembourg, the company handles development, financing, packaging and production of independently-produced films and TV worldwide. Nosbusch, a well-known actor whose recent credits include “Bad Banks” and “Sissi,” is now making her directorial feature debut with “Poison,” a drama starring Tim Roth and Trine Dyrholm.

Hoesdorff’s recent projects as a producer include “Souvenir” starring Isabelle Huppert; “High Fantasy,” which premiered at Toronto in 2017 and played at the Berlinale and Rotterdam; and “Flatland,” which competed at Toronto in 2019 after opening the Berlinale Panorama section. Hoesdorff has also produced several titles for streamers, including “Sawah” and “Girls With Balls,” released in 2020 on Amazon Prime Video and Netflix, respectively.

Deal Productions is currently in development and production on a slate of series and films supported by the lucrative Luxembourg Film Fund.

Exclusive: Cameras are rolling on Stargazer, a new feature from artist-filmmaker Christian Neuman, which producers have described as a “modern psychic thriller” starring Rosalind Halstead and Poppy Delevingne.

The pic is Neuman’s second feature, following the 2019 horror feature Skin Walker, starring Udo Kier and Amber Anderson. The first week of principal photography has wrapped up in London, with the production now in Belgium and set to conclude in Luxembourg by mid-December.

The film’s synopsis reads: “Stargazer follows Fey Vilar, portrayed by Rosalind Halstead, a celebrated actress grappling with the abduction of her son, Paul. Using performance as a coping mechanism, Fey’s life takes an unexpected turn when she is offered a role in a play in which she must embody the character of Estelle Maar, Paul’s captor, in order to uncover the truth about her son’s disappearance. The film is said to explore themes of grief,...

Acclaimed Thai auteur Pen-ek Ratanaruang is reteaming with veteran, Asia-based cinematographer Christopher Doyle for a subversive psychological thriller set in the colorful world of Thai cuisine.

Bangkok-set film Morte Cucina follows a talented young female chef named Sao who has a chance encounter with a man who sexually abused her when she was a teen. “Using her talents in the kitchen, Sao sets her plan of revenge in motion — achieving a rather unexpected result,” the film’s logline reads.

Morte Cucina is co-written by Pen-ek and Kongdej Jaturanrasamee (Hunger, Faces of Anne). It will be Pen-ek’s first feature since his noir crime thriller Samui Song, which premiered at the Venice Film Festival in 2017. The project reunites the Thai auteur and Doyle for the first time since their 2003 project together, Last Life in the Universe, which was Thailand’s official submission to the Oscars that year, and also won its Japanese star,...

It is the directorial debut from Luxembourg’s Désirée Nosbusch.

Poison, the directorial debut of Luxembourg TV presenter and Bad Banks actress Désirée Nosbusch, starring Tim Roth and Trine Dyrhom, has wrapped and released a first-look image.

The English-language drama is about a middle-aged man who is reunited with his ex-wife in a waiting room after many years apart. They are preparing to exhume the body of their late son, owing to toxins seeping into the ground where he is buried.

It is an adaptation of a play of the same name by Dutch writer Lot Vekemans.

The shoot took...

Rome’s growing Mia market, dedicated to international TV series, feature films and documentaries, has secured a rich roster of fresh international product in various stages and announced a clutch of prominent U.S. and European execs set to make the trek for the mostly in-person Oct. 13-17 event.

While companies such as ITV Studios, Banijay and Fremantle are either bowing out or reducing their presence at the Oct. 11-14 Mipcom market in Cannes — and the AFM has gone entirely online — Mia seems to be succeeding in luring a robust group of international industry heavyweights. They are also boasting a 30% increase in completed films screening on its film market side while some 80 new European film, TV and doc projects will be pitched to prospective partners.

Joe Russo, who with his older brother Anthony became the creative superheroes of the Marvel Universe with a string of four blockbusters climaxing with 2019’s “Avengers: Endgame,...

Barcelona-based studio Filmax has acquired world sales rights to “Lemon and Poppy Seed Cake,” an uplifting second chance in life drama from Spain’s Benito Zambrano, writer-director of critically admired features that have scored festival and Goya awards and broken out to sales abroad.

Also handling local distribution in Spain, Filmax will bring “Lemon and Poppy Seed Cake” onto the market at November’s online American Film Market.

Produced by Filmax and Luxembourg’s Deal Productions, whose credits include Berlin Festival’s 2019 Panorama opener “Flatland” and 2017’s “High Fantasy,” which screened at Berlin, Toronto and Rotterdam, “Lemon and Poppy Seed Cake” turns on two sisters, Anna and Marina.

Separated as teens, they re-meet to sell a bakery in Majorca that they’ve inherited from a mysterious benefactor. Neither are happy in life. Anna is locked in a loveless marriage; Marina travels the world as an Ngo doctor, a lonely existence.

Amsterdam-based producers network will hold annual meeting in UK for the first-time in Edinburgh event supported by Screen Scotland.

Ace producers has unveiled the 18 producers who have been selected to participate in 29th edition of its Ace Session training programme and join the Ace Network.

A total of 15 territories are represented in the selection, comprising Belgium, Czech Republic, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden and the UK, as well as, for the first time, Georgia and Lithuania.

The participants will attend the programme, running across 2019 to 2020, with a feature project in development.

The fresh intake...

Fitzgibbon, Sitaru, Vicari, Huddles, Runarsson and van Geffen will be at Les Arcs this December.

Ireland’s Ian Fitzgibbon, Romania’s Adrian Sitaru, Iceland’s Runar Runarsson (pictured), Italy’s Daniele Vicari and America’s John Huddles are among the directors who will be presenting their new projects at the Les Arcs Co-production village this year.

The event, which runs Dec 14-17 within France’s alpine, Sundance-style Les Arcs European Film Festival (Dec 14-21), unveiled the production line-up on Thursday as well as the productions that will be presented in the Works in Progress section on Dec 15.

This year’s co-pro selection mixes upcoming productions from established independent filmmakers with a slew of projects from feted shorts directors who are embarking on their first features.

“We pretty proud of this year’s line-up. There’s a lot of projects I would be seriously looking at if I were going to Les Arcs in a professional capacity rather...

Fitzgibbon, Sitaru, Vicari, Huddles, Runarsson and van Geffen will be at Les Arcs this December.

Ireland’s Ian Fitzgibbon, Romania’s Adrian Sitaru, Iceland’s Runar Runarsson (pictured), Italy’s Daniele Vicari and America’s John Huddles are among the directors who will be presenting their new projects at the Les Arcs Co-production village this year.

The event, which runs Dec 14-17 within France’s alpine, Sundance-style Les Arcs European Film Festival (Dec 14-21), unveiled the production line-up on Thursday as well as the productions that will be presented in the Works in Progress section on Dec 15.

This year’s co-pro selection mixes upcoming productions from established independent filmmakers with a slew of projects from feted shorts directors who are embarking on their first features.

“We pretty proud of this year’s line-up. There’s a lot of projects I would be seriously looking at if I were going to Les Arcs in a professional capacity rather...

Fitzgibbon, Sitaru, Vicari, Huddles, Runarsson and van Geffen will be at Les Arcs this December.

Ireland’s Ian Fitzgibbon, Romania’s Adrian Sitaru, Iceland’s Runar Runarsson (pictured), Italy’s Daniele Vicari and America’s John Huddles are among the directors who will be presenting their new projects at the Les Arcs Co-production village this year.

The event, which runs Dec 14-17 within France’s alpine, Sundance-style Les Arcs European Film Festival (Dec 14-21), unveiled the production line-up on Thursday as well as the productions that will be presented in the Works in Progress section on Dec 15.

This year’s co-pro selection mixes upcoming productions from established independent filmmakers with a slew of projects from feted shorts directors who are embarking on their first features.

“We pretty proud of this year’s line-up. There’s a lot of projects I would be seriously looking at if I were going to Les Arcs in a professional capacity rather...