International co-production was at the centre of the CineCoPro Conference of the Industry Days programme of the Munich International Film Festival this month. It brought together German producers and funders with counterparts from the five Nordic countries for a programme of presentations and roundtables as well as the CineCoProPitch showcase of nine projects in development.
Icelandic producer Rakel Gardarsdottir and actor-director Björn Hlynur Haraldsson of Vesturport pitched the €2.5m social drama Let There Be Light which is fully developed and ready to go into preproduction pending final financing confirmation.
“I came away really inspired by the German film landscape,” said Gardarsdottir. “There’s a lot of money and opportunity there that we’d love to explore further. The cultural fit is genuinely strong — Icelanders and Germans have a long and rich history of working together. Add to that the broader Nordic-German sensibility and values we share, and I think this could be the beginning of a really fruitful new chapter.”
Finnish producer Pauliina Piipponen of Making Movies pitched Pete Riski’s €4m supernatural thriller Alma and the associated action game based on the film’s plot.
“There was a nice balance of emerging and established producers on both sides, from the Nordic countries and Germany,” she said. “It was very valuable being able to get an insider view of the German market, especially as the whole industry has been changing so much.”
“In conversation with the Bavarian film fund, I found that there was a certain openness for more commercial content since Alma is not your regular arthouse film,” Piiponen explained. “It was interesting to see that Germany is very well established in the area of virtual production and in the funding the production of video games.”
CineCoPro award
Beyond the conference, German producers Sophie Ahrens, Fabian Altenried, and Kristof Gerega of Schuldenberg Films won the €100,000 CineCoPro Award for their co-production of Catalan filmmaker Jaume Claret Muxart’s coming-of-age story Strange River, which debuted in the Horizons programme at Venice 2025.
Muxart’s debut feature was filmed on location along the river Danube in Germany and Austria in summer 2024.
The winner was decided by a jury comprised of UK’s Kate Solomon, Fred Burle of Berlin-based One Two Films, and Tobias Walker of the local Munich production house Walker + Worm Film.
“This co-production carries the philosophy and poetry of the film with the same gentle flow as the river it depicts,” said Solomon.
The winner was selected from a lineup of 12 co-productions with German involvement, which also included Valeska Grisebach’s The Dreamed Adventure and Ana-Felicia Scultenicu’s Transit Times.
Strange River is being handled internationally by Films Boutique and will be released theatrically in Germany by Salzgeber at the end of this August.
Schuldenberg Films was also a co-producer of Visar Morina’s Shame And Money that took home the prize in Munich’s CineMasters competition at the weekend.
The CineCoPro Conference was also the platform for the first time this year for the First Cut+ Munich showcase of six works in progress, with the fiction debut I’m Coming For You by the Cameroonian filmmaker Cyrielle Raingou named as the winner of the Walker + Worm First Cut+ Award.
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