German public regional funds Mitteldeutsche Medienfoerderung(MDM) and Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg are to serve as partners at thisyear's CineLink co-production market during the Sarajevo Film Festival (August19-27).

"Last year, we had a similar agreement with the Vienna FilmFund and Austrian Film Institute who brought over a dozen producers to meetwith their opposite numbers from South Eastern Europe in Sarajevo,"CineLink project manager Amra Baksic Carno told Screendaily.com."Germany is already a partner for the region's filmmakers, so it seemedonly natural to have two German funds as partners this year."

In cooperation with MDM and Medienboard, CineLink willinvite a number of German producers, distributors and sales agents to Sarajevoto have meetings with filmmakers from South Eastern Europe whose projects havebeen selected to be pitched at CineLink.

In another innovation this year, Berlin-based Script House'straining initiative Eastwest Crossings will collaborate with CineLink for thetwo workshops organised for the selected projects between April and June beforethey are presented at the market in August.

As Script House's Juergen Seidler pointed out, "theEastwest Crossings initiative aims to strengthen the market potential of theprojects from South-east Europe as well as to start the formation of aregion-wide distribution network."

This year, the CineLink market is open to feature projectswith theatrical potential from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Slovenia, Croatia,Serbia and Montenegro, Macedonia, Albania, Romania and Bulgaria, althoughBaksic Carno expects the CineLink's net will be cast wider for the fourthedition in 2006 to include entries from Hungarian producers since thefestival's Regional Competition will be open to films from Hungary this year.