Barbora Chalupova's Madam - CoCo WIP 2026, courtey CoCo

Source: Coco

Barbora Chalupova’s ‘Madam’

Women filmmakers dominate the lineup of projects to be presented at the forthcoming Connecting Cottbus (coco) East-West co-production market, which runs in the German city from November 4-6 as part of the East European-focused Cottbus film festival.

Nine of the 13 projects in development in this year’s cocoPITCH section and three of the five films in the cocoWIP showcase have female directors at the helm.

Hungarian filmmaker Zsuzsi Konrad’s Something Wild and Ukrainian writer-director Anastasiia Tykha’s Reminiscence are among the feature debuts being pitched to an audience of potential co-producers, sales agents, commissioning editors and other industry representatives active in East-West European co-production

Konrad’s film is inspired by her short of the same name which had centred on a straight-A student starting to turn into a bear. It is currently structured as a Hungarian/Irish co-production between Patricia D’Intino’s Good Kids, Maya Korn’s Cork-based MHK Productions, and Lili Horvát and Dóra Csernátony’s Poste Restante.

Tykha’s drama, which she developed with producer Darya Bassel’s of Moon Man at the 2025 edition of Midpoint Intensive Ukraine and this year’s Midpoint Feature Launch programmes, follows a young woman, trapped in her unresolved grief for her brother’s disappearance in a war zone, as she drifts between past and present in attempts to confront her loss and start life anew.

Other projects being pitched include Kazakh filmmaker Dana Alimjanova’s debut Purple Sun which was also selected this month as one of 12 projects to participate in Venice’s Biennale College Cinema training lab as well as new feature films by such established names as Romania’s Andrei Cretelescu (Aventura), Poland’s Agnieszka Zwiefka (Wild Gooseberry) and Turkey’s Onur Saylak (Adem And The Others).

Meanwhile, the cocoWIP selection will include footage of Czech director Barbora Chalupová’s fiction feature debut Madam about a professional dominatrix’s decision to freeze her eggs, forcing her to question her lifestyle, relationships and desire for motherhood, as well as Slovenian director Jernej Kastelec’s family drama Horses exploring the intergenerational transmission of violence through a father-son relationship.

Projects presented at past editions of connecting cottbus that have recently premiered at major international festivals include Toni Michiali’s Karlovy Vary Crystal Globe competition title The Lion At My Back, Igor Jelenović’s Honey Bunny in Rotterdam’s Bright Future competition, and Yuri Semashko’s The Swan Song Of Fedor Ozerov which had its world premiere in the Berlinale’s Forum section in 2025.

Connecting Cottbus projects 2026 

cocoPITCH projects 2026:

  • Adem And The Others (Turkey) dir: Onur Saylak, prod cos: Ay Yapım, Liman Film
  • Aventura (Romania) dir: Andrei Cretulescu, prod cos: Avanpost Media, Kinosseur Productions
  • Cargo To The South (Croatia) dir: Veno Mušinović, prod co: Wolfgang & Dolly
  • No Place For Me In Heaven (Czech Republic), dir: Viktorie Novotná, prod co: Bratři
  • Purple Sun (Kazakhstan) dir: Dana Alimjanova, prod co: Art East Films
  • Reminiscence (Ukraine) dir: Anastasiia Tykha, prod co: Moon Man
  • Something Wild (Hungary/Ireland) dir: Zsuzsanna Konrad, prod cos: Good Kids, MHK Productions, Poste Restante
  • Svetlana (Estonia) dir: Vera Pirogova, prod co: Stellar Film
  • Teresa (Poland) dir: Jan Bujnowski, prod co: Studio Filmowe Indeks
  • Tongues (Latvia) dir: Tīna Zariņa, prod co: White Picture
  • Virgin Mary (Armenia) dir: Lilit Movsisyan, prod co: Motif Films 
  • White Gypsy (Slovakia/Czech Republic) dir: Katarína Gramatová, prod cos: džanes, DNA Production
  • Wild Gooseberry (Poland/Spain) dir: Agnieszka Zwiefka, prod cos: Chilli Productions, Alba Sotorra

cocoWIP projects:

  • Horses (Slovenia) dir: Jernej Kastelec, prod co: Bela Film
  • Interest (Slovakia/Czech Republic) dir: Hana Hančinová, prod cos: escadra, Cinémotif Films
  • Madam (Czech Republic) dir: Barbora Chalupová, prod co: Helium Film
  • Pivot (Turkey/Greece) dir: Melisa Önel, prod cos: Vigo Film, Graal
  • Switched Stance (Hungary) dir: Dániel Füzes, prod co: CineSuper, Forcodes
  • This Is It, The Apocalypse (Turkey/France) dir: Balahan Gürel, prod cos: Kalavara Film, Collective Cinema, Rename Media

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