European Works In Progress presents total prizes worth €140,000

Projects from Peru, Brazil and Nepal were among the 14 prize-winners of European Work in Progress (EWIP) this year, garnering awards with a total worth of €140,000.

This total almost doubled what had been handed out to winners at EWIP’s last edition in Cologne a year ago after five Hamburg-based companies gathered in the Northern Stars Hamburg Film Partners alliance comprised of Loft Tonstudios, Optical Arts, Zeigermann_Audio, Cinegate, and Zeitkostüm and distribution and licensing company OneGate Media. They have all sponsored prizes to the tune of € 62,500.

Spain-based Argentinian director Francisco Marise’s feature documentary Truck Driver, received the €20,000 prize from OneGate Media which acquired the TV rights for Germany and Austria to the project.

Additionally, Loft Tonstudios awarded sound post-production services worth €10,000 to Spanish first-time filmmaker Laura Garcia Alonso’s Runner, about the mental health toll of high-level competition on athletes.

Optical Arts presented a voucher worth € 10.000 for colour grading to Peruvian director Francesca Canepa’s debut feature, the coming of age drama Belén, and Zeigermann_Audio’s award of € 10,000 for sound on set or audio post-production went to Kolkata-based animation director and illustrator Upamanyu Bhattacharyya’s debut animated feature Heirloom. The latter is co-produced by Hamburg-based animation studio Fabian&Fred.

CineGate presented a voucher with € 10,000 for studio and equipment location to Virgil Vernier’s Los Angeles-based drama Hidden Hills and Zeitkostüm gave a voucher worth € 2,500 for costumes to German director Dagmar Knöpfel’s Verdandi, inspired by the true story opf three Faroese women from different generations

Two new sponsors created two new prizes this year: the Post Republic awarded a €30,000 voucher for post-production services to Nepalese writer-director Abinash Bikram Shah’s Elephants In The Fog, a drama about a community of transgender women in a village terrorised by wild elephants.

Meanwhile D-Facto Studios offered €10,000 worth of image/sound post-production services to Brazilian co-directors Enock Carvalho and Matheus Farias’ debut feature Down By The River. 

The studio also awarded a second voucher worth € 5,000 to create an accessibility version of Russian-born Alisa Kolosova’s drama about female friendship and solidarity, Spy With My Little Eye, which is being produced by the emerging Bavarian production outfit Maverick Film.

Returning sponsors included sound post-production house K13 Studios which provided € 10,000 worth of Dolby Atmos mixing for the Norwegian-based, Bangladeshi filmmaker Robiul Alam Robi’s Kill Me Like A Dog, a reimagining of Franz Kafka’s The Trial in contemporary Bangladesh. K13 also presented a second prize of dubbing services worth €5,000 to Romanian-born director Teodora Ana Mihai’s drama Heysel 85, inspired by the tragic real events at the European Cup Final between Juventus and Liverpool in May 1985.

Meanwhile, Berlin-based PR agency mm filmpresse will be coordinating the international festival publicity campaign of Finlay Pretsell’s documentary portrait of the Turner Prize-winning artist Douglas Gordon (Douglas Gordon By Douglas Gordon) to the tune of € 7,500, and Katharina Rivilis’ debut feature I’ll Be Gone In June, based on her experiences as an exchange student in New Mexico, picked up the translation company Way Film’s award of subtitling services worth € 5,000 - up from last year’s € 4,000.

In addition, UK media tech company Gruvi’s award of marketing and technology services worth € 5,000 went to Ethiopian filmmaker Sewmehon Yismaw Sendekie’s romantic drama Guardian Of The Island.

The eighth edition of EWIP took place at Filmfest Hamburg for the first time this year, coinciding with the event’s Industry Days. It moved from Cologne where it has previously taken place.  

The awards were chosen by an international jury comprised of Cannes’ Critics’ Week’s film department head Rémi Bigot, Ethiopian distributor Aaron Kassaye and sales agent Yuan Sui of Picture Tree

•  Germany’s Reynard Films wins €25,000 Hamburg co-pro award for ‘It’s A Sad And Beautiful World’