A new Swiss distribution company - Basle based Cineworx - has been launched by Pascal Traechslin, the head of distribution at Fama Film for the past six years.

Traechslin told ScreenDaily.com on the eve of Rotterdam's CineMart at the weekend that he has set up Cineworx with partners Waltraud Wesselmann (finance) and Thomas Schmutz (marketing).

He plans to have a two-pronged acquisition strategy concentrating on quality arthouse films and European children's films aimed at the 4-10 year-old age group.

Among the first titles in Cineworx's distribution slate are two competition films from the forthcoming Berlinale - Romuald Karmakar's Nightsongs (Die Nacht Singt Ihre Lieder) and Kim Ki-Duk's Samsaria - as well as Indian director Nikhil Advani's Tomorrow May Not Be - which is showing in this year's International Forum of New Cinema, Sabu's Blessing Bell from the 2003 Forum, and Diego Arsuaga's The Last Train (El Ultimo Tren).

The children's films strand currently consists of the Swedish film Too Little Heroes and the Danish 2003 Berlinale Kinderfilmfest entry Someone Like Hodder by Henrik Ruben Genz.

Traechslin explained that he had just acquired the Swiss rights to Nightsongs from Germany's Prokino who held rights to the German speaking territories (Polyfilm has picked the film up for Austria) and to Samsaria from Asian film specialist Rapid Eye Movies.

"As far as the rights of the children's films are concerned, I will never buy them alone because I need a German dubbed version and so would work with a German distributor. This will mainly be MFA as was in the case of the two films acquired so far," Traechslin said. "My own company Traechslin Film had been financing the acquisition of films for Fama Film over the past three years and it had become apparent for a while now that our ways would part."