New films from Romania, Georgia, Serbia and Sweden are among 13 projects which will be pitched to potential production partners at this year's Connecting Cottbus East-West co-production market which begins on Thursday.

According to Connecting Cottbus's artistic director Gabriele Brunnenmeyer, the 2007 lineup was selected from over 50 entries from 23 countries and, as an innovation this year, the projects will all be in the running for the Coco Best Pitch Award, sponsored by EastWest Filmdistribution, offering script doctoring services.

The projects include Georgian filmmaker Giorgi Chalauri's debut Susa, Sweden-based Othman Karim's lyrical drama Wild Poppies, Radu Jude's feature debut The Happiest Girl In The World, and White White World by Serbian director Oleg Novkovic whose Tomorrow Morning won three prizes at last year's FilmFestival Cottbus.

Over 130 industry figures including Pandora Film's Karl Baumgartner, Eurimages' secretary general Jan Vandierendonck, sales agent Philippe Bober of The Coproduction Office, Fortissimo Films' Ellis Driessen and Apple Film Production's Dariusz Jablonksi will be attending Connecting Cottbus's programme of public pitchings, one-to-one meetings and round tables, including case studies of Kornel Mundruczo's Delta and Ilya Khrzhanovsky's Dau.

The projects which found partners at previous editions of Connecting Cottbus have included Serbian director Srdan Golubovic's psychological thriller The Trap, Ferenc Torok's German-Hungarian co-production Overnight, Khrzhanovsky's Dau, Romanian theatre director Silviu Purcaretes' feature debut Conversation With Sefarim, and Bulgarian Stefan Komanderev's The World Is Big And Salvation Is Around The Corner.