Milan's Mifed market has announced its market premieres for its 70th edition (Nov 9-13), as well as unveiling a new strand designed to showcase young European filmmakers to buyers.
Mifed's new titles include Wild Bunch's Janis And John, Samuel Benchetrit's film about Janis Joplin which stars Marie Trintignant in one of her last roles before her death in August, and Chilean director Raoul Ruiz' new film, Taste For Murder, sold by Roissy Films.
New Line will be screening The Notebook, Nick Cassavetes's film starring Gena Rowlands, Joan Allen, James Garner and Ryan Goslin. Based on Nicholas Sparks' novel, the project is about a retired salesman who regularly visits an elderly woman suffering from Alzheimer's disease to read from a notebook on her shelf which tells the story of two young men in North Carolina in 1946 who were both courting the same girl.
Also from New Line is Jon Favreau's big-budget Christmas comedy Elf, starring Will Farrell, about a child who was once adopted by one of Santa Claus's elves after the little boy accidentally ended up in one of Santa's bags of presents and got whisked away to the North Pole.
Other market premieres include The Republic Of Love, Deepa Mehta's adaptation of Pulitzer-prize winning author Carol Shields' novel starring Bruce Greenwood, Emilia Fox and Edward Fox, sold by The Works.
The idea behind new strand Emerging European Filmmakers, dedicated to young directors from the 25 countries of the enlarged Europe, is to bridge the gap between the market and emerging film-makers.
Feature films and shorts from European filmmakers born after January 1973 have been selected by an international jury comprising French actor Jean Sorel, Polish critic Grazyna Torbicka, Primitivo Gordillo Rodriguez, president of Spain's FEECE, Roberto Di Diodato, director of the Italian production house Multimedia San Paolo and the Italian filmmaker Alessandro D'Alatri.
A stand at Mifed featuring films from the young directors, in which some video facilities will be available, will allow buyers to see the selected films.
The announcements come as the stand-off between AFM and Mifed heats up. In 2004, AFM, will hold a rival market in November in a bid to form a two-market calendar with AFM and Cannes - despite strong resistance from a host of buyers who are reluctant to abandon Mifed.
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