German producers Katharina Bergfeld and Heino Deckert of ma.ja.de. Fiction, co-producers of Colombian filmmaker Simón Mesa Soto’s A Poet, won the third annual €100,000 CineCoPro award at this year’s Munich International Fim Festival (MIFF), presented by Bavarian regional fund FFF Bayern with support from the Bavarian State Chancellery.
The dark tragicomedy premiered in Un Certain Regard at Cannes in May where it won the jury award.
Ma.je,de coproduced what is Soto’s second feature with his Colombian outfit Ocúltimo, and Sweden’s Momento Films.
“Equitable and eye-level collaborations across continents are possible and urgently needed,” said Bergfeld as she collected the award. “This is what made this production so beautiful [because it] was really based on trust and transparency, and sharing the idea of creative equity.”
The CineCoPro jury was comprised of producer Anne Carey, of the US’ Purple Pebble Pictures, Mathijs Wouter Knol, CEO of the European Film Academy and German producer Jochen Laube of Sommerhaus Filmproduktion.
The winner was chosen from 11 international coproductions with German co-producers. The line up included Greta-Marie Becker’s documentary Germaine Acogny - Romancing The Shadow, Stefan Haupt’s Max Frisch adaptation I’m Not Stiller, Argentinian filmmaker Celina Murga’s drama The Freshly Cut Grass, Ute Briesewitz’s mystery thriller American Sweatshop, and Norwegian director Joachim Trier’s Cannes title Sentimental Value.
Coproduction spotlight
The award was presented as part of the four edition of MIFF’s CineCoPro Conference. Before announcing this year’s winner, Dorothee Erpenstein, CEO of FFF Bayern, said: “international co-productions play a very important role at our fund”. She made special mention of the dedicated funding programme for international co-productions which can give up to €2m in production support for a theatrical film of series project.
The conference brought German producers and funders together with opposite numbers from Austria, Switzerland and South Tyrol to allow the 60 participants to explore the potential for greater collaborations between the four regions.
Ten projects were showcased at the CineCoPro Pitch event, ranging from Contrast Film’s thriller series Gold through Lorenz Suter’s satirical comedy WeSHARE to Julia Neuhaus’ debut feature En Passant.
Pitching Vienna Film Academy graduate Rosa Friedrich’s satirical comedy Who Is Afraid of God, producer Sabine Moser of Freibeuter Film revealed German actors Katharina Hirschberg and Lena Urzendowsky, will star in the debut feature that plans to shoot in summer/autumn 2026.
Meanwhile, Carmen Stozek and Lisa Bayer of Bantry Bay Productions were joined by actor-writer Lena Lessing to present the comedy drama Dying Is Hard Work, the next feature project by Austrian filmmaker Johanna Moder. Ursula Werner and Julia Jentsch are attached to star as a mother and daughter embroiled in a conflict together with a younger adopted sister when the mother announces her decision to end her life by self-imposed starvation. Principal photography is scheduled for spring/summer 2026.
The pitching forum also provided a platform for Arash T. Riahi 0f Golden Girls Film to present the € 450,000 documentary Superhumans, which will be the directorial debut of Ukrainian activist Inna Shevchenko, who is the leader of the international women’s movement FEMEN.
Set in a centre for prosthetic limbs in Lviv, the film will show amputee soldiers fighting a second battle to reclaim their bodies rebuilt with metal.
“It is a war film, but not a film about war,” said Riahi who added that there is “a need to make the film fast within the next eight months, maybe”
Riahi had previously worked with Shevchenko when she wrote the screenplay for the documentary Girls & Gods which premiered at CPH:DOX in March.
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