EWIP main winner_Mirjana Karanović's Folk Play_courtesy EWIPJPG[19].

Source: Courtesy of EWIP

‘Folk Play’

Serbian director Mirjana Karanovic’s contemporary love story Folk Play won the top prize of the European Work in Progress programme (EWIP, September 28-30), held for the second time during FilmFest Hamburg’s Industry Days following its move from Cologne. 

The €30,000 award for post-production services was sponsored for the second year by The Post Republic.

Indian-based filmmaker Suman Sen’s debut feature Eka received €10,000 worth of Dolby Atmos mixing from German sound post-production house K13 Studios, which also gave dubbing services worth €5,000 to New York-based, Latvian animator Signe Baumane for the black comedy Karmic Knot.

German documentary filmmaker Friederike Güssefeld’s fiction debut Spross received €10,000 worth of sound post-production services from Hamburg-based facilities house Loft Tonstudios.

Meanwhile, Barcelona-born Cordelia Alegre’s semi-autobiographical drama La Unión received €10,000 worth of colour grading from Optical Arts.

Karmic Knot

Source: EWIP

Karmic Knot

Kazakh filmmaker Adikhan Yerzhanov’s horror drama Witch, won the €10,000 prize for sound on set or audio post-production services from Zeigermann_Audio, and German director Robert Thalheim received a €2,500 voucher for costumes from Zeitkostüm for his neo-Western Don’t Be A Stranger.

Paris-based Iranian filmmaker Lily Mousavi’s debut feature A House On The Waves picked up the translation company Way Film’s award of subtitling services worth €5,000, the UK media tech company Gruvi’s award of marketing and technology services worth €5,000 went to Czech director Václav Kadrnka’s historical drama Panna Sophia / Comenius, and €15,000 for post-production services sponsored by Cine Complete, was won by Spanish playwright and theatre director Clàudia Cedó’s feature directorial debut Mother Of Sugar.

The EWIP jury was composed of CICAE president Christian Bräuer, Venice selection committee member Paolo Bertolin and sales agent Valeska Neu of Films Boutique.

“17 excellent meetings” 

The location of EWIP and IDFS in Hamburg during the FilmFest Industry’s Days for the second year was well received by attendees, both EWIP veterans and first-timers. 

German co-producer Peter Obrist of Good Karma Fiction Films said “the response was really amazing” for Afghan director Aboozar Amini’s body horror drama Tahmina. ”We had 17 excellent 1:1 meetings with 15 world sales agents and three festival representatives. Their reactions were way more than we could expect and they all want to watch the edit of Tahmina as soon as possible.”

“We spoke with a number of sales agents, distributors and a handful of festivals and I was personally most excited by what the festivals had to say, “ said Josh Leong of the reactions to his €2m drama Lost Boys, which he co-directed with emerging Ethiopian filmmaker Abel Engedayehu earlier this summer in Addis Ababa. It is based on the director’s own experiences of growing up in an orphanage in the Ethiopian capital.

Meanwhile, one of EWIP’s regulars, Nicole Gerhards of Berlin-based Niko Film, said she and the Norwegian-based Bangladeshi filmmaker Robiuli Alam Robi had “very fruitful meetings” with world sales companies after the first presentation of footage from his first theatrical feature, psychological drama Suraiya, which was shot on location in Dhaka this June and July.

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