39 new film projects looking for partners at 9th Berlinale Co-Production Market

Popogrebsky’s 3D feature project Lost Rooms, which will first be pitched at Rotterdam’s CineMart later this month, is one of the trio selected under the Rotterdam-Berlinale Express banner. The other two are the Swedish-German co-production Tourist by Ruben Östlund and Taika Waititi’s Jojo Rabbit which is being structured at this stage as a US-New Zealand co-production.

Giurgiu’s Cristian and Kotwica’s Fleeing Dreams are two of 25 titles being presented in the co-production forum’s official selection which was chosen from a total of 311 entries (compared with 352 in 2011). Giurgiu will be producing the film through his own production outfit Libra Film, while Kotwica’s new feature was pitched by First Floor Productions at last December’s Baltic Event in Tallinn. His latest completed film Rat King, which had been a Screen International Best Pitch Award winner in Tallinn, is due to open in Finnish and Estonian cinemas this week.

In addition, the Co-Production Market’s organisers noted that this section will be having its first project ever from India with the selection of Bobby Bedi’s Kutch to be produced by Paradise Entertainment.

As for previous editions, the main selection’s key entry criteria are that the projects’ producers have some international experience and they must have at least 30% of the financing in place. The budgets of the 2012 range between €1m and €7m.

The lineup includes leading players from the world of co-productions such as Flying Moon Filmproduktion, Les Film d’ici, Opus Film, Element Pictures, and Bavaria Pictures.

At the same time, this year sees eleven projects by newcomers selected from another 247 applications (down from 27 in 2011) for the Talent Project Market which is organised in cooperation with the Berlinale Talent Campus. Incidentally, this third strand of the Co-Production Market features the only project coming from the UK – producer Michelle Eastwood’s Bummer – to the co-production event as a whole.

An innovation for the ninth edition will see a cooperation between the Co-Production Market and the Festival Scope online platform giving participants and other potentially interested partners an opportunity to screen previous films by the directors of the selected projects as preparation for their one-to-one meetings in Berlin.

There are also likely to be some projects from past editions of the Berlinale Co-Production Market coming back to the Berlinale this year to make their premiere as completed films in one of the festival sections. A case in point is Barnaby Southcombe’s I, Anna which will be shown in the Berlinale Special sidebar. Producers Embargo Films and Arsam International found their German partner Michael Eckelt at the Co-Production Market in 2010 and began shooting exactly a year ago at the end of January. Moreover, Olivia Silver’s Arcadia has been selected for Generation Kplus, with more titles set to follow.

A division of the Berlinale’s EFM, Berlinale Co-Production Market received financial backing from its main partners, the German regional fund MDM and the EU’s MEDIA Programme.