Warsaw’s CentEast market welcomes more than 200 participants

Industry participants such as sales agents Camille Neel (Bac Films International), Sasha Wieser (EastWest Filmdistribution), Stelios Ziannis (Aktis Film International), Nadja Jumah (m-appeal), and theatrical distributors Fidalgo Film (Norway), Filmmuseum (Netherlands), Mikado Film (Italy) and Arthouse Traffic (Ukraine) were in Warsaw to see a batch of new Polish films in CentEast’s Warsaw Screenings showcase.

Screenings included Marcin Wrona’s award-winning The Christening, Krzysztof Nowinski and Dominika Dlugokecka’s documentary 50/50 (which had its world premiere at Filmfest Hamburg at the beginning of the month) and Damian Nenow’s 3D stereoscopic short The City Of Ruins which digitally reconstructs the city of  Warsaw before the end of the Second World War.

This year also saw the second collaboration with the Russian production company TVIndie and the Moscow-based 2Morrow Film Festival to stage the presentation of seven “works in progress” from Eastern Europe looking for sales agents and festival invitations.

Producers and directors of the seven projects – including Victor Ginzburg’s adaptation of the Victor Pelevin novel Generation P and Romanian Anca Damian’s debut animation documentary Crulic – The Path To Beyond – pitched their projects to an audience including representatives of Cannes’ Critics’ Week, Karlovy Vary and Tribeca film festivals on Oct 15.

The same projects – and a raft of new Russian films – were then presented two days later as part of the 2Morrow Film Festival at the Pioneer Film Theatre in Moscow.

Another two industry events were organised by CentEast with the Berlin-based fellowship initiative, the Nipkow Programm, which came to Warsaw for three days of brainstorming of its participants’ projects. This year’s intake had included the directors Alvaro Brechner, Samir Nasr, Hanna Slak, Partho Sen-Gupta, and producers Fabian Massah and Gabor Sipos.

Bavaria Film International’s Thorsten Ritter spoke about the do’s and don’t’s of how to work with sales agents, and a second panel with French producer Christine Camdessus, screenwriter Benedikt Röskau and marketing expert Tobias Pausinger embarked on a debate about the future trends in the sale and marketing of films.

Moreover, the festival once more hosted the Warsaw FIPRESCI Project allowing a select number of young film critics from Eastern Europe to attend one of the region’s leading film festivals. This year’s participatants were Alexandra Buzas from Romania, David Klag from Hungary, Artavazd Yeghiazaryan from Armenia and Magdalena Dzibik from Poland.