Les Arcs Coproduction Village sets Lina Soualem, Lisa Brühlmann and Mar Coll projects among 2025 lineup

New features from Lina Soualem, Lisa Brühlmann and Mar Coll are among the 18 European projects selected for the Coproduction Village of the Les Arcs Film Festival in France.

The 17th edition of the showcase that aims to connect projects in various stages of development with co-producers, sales agents, distributors and other co-financing partners will be held during Les Arcs Industry Village, running from December 13-16 alongside the festival.

Soualem follows her Venice and Toronto-playing Bye Bye Tiberias with her first fiction feature, set to star her sister Mouna Soualem as a Franco-Algerian photographer on an existential journey that brings her to Spain. It is produced by France’s Easy Riders Films.

Bruhlmann’s The Tigress, produced by Switzerland’s tellfilm and the UK’s Tempesta Film, is about a customs officer who locks eyes with a tigress during an animal transport inspection and, convinced that she is the reincarnation of his late wife, embarks on a dangerous journey where the boundaries between reality and fantasy blur. Bruhlmann’s debut feature Blue My Mind won three Swiss Film awards, and she is also behind 2024 release When We Were Sisters.

Goya-winning director Coll, known for 2024 Locarno premiere Salve Maria, heads to Les Arcs with Dasha, produced by Spain’s Fasten Films and Germany’s Yellow Blackbird. Set in Costa Brava in the early 2000s, the film follows a washed-up former physiotherapist for the USSR Olympic team who worms her way into the Russian mafia, laundering money and massaging gangsters who spill their secrets as she risks losing everything.

In feature debuts, Spanish director Herrera López’s entry Since You’ve Been Gone, about a woman facing the next stage of her life after the death of her mother, has already won two major awards at the ECAM Forum international co-production market in Madrid in June.

Greek writer-director Nicolas Kolovos’ The Hermit, produced by Greece’s Homemade Films and Sweden’s Kakadua Filmproduktion, is about a hermit living a quiet life in a Greek forest who begins to doubt his life choice when an ornithologist shows up and turns his life upside down. The film has already received support from Creative Europe Media.

In recent years, Les Arcs Coproduction Village has showcased a slew of films that have gone on secure festival slots and awards, including Gints Zilbalodis’ Oscar-winning Flow, Maura Delpero’s Vermiglio and Halfdan Ullmann Tøndel’s Camera d’Or-winner Armand.

The selected projects will compete for the Eurimages Co-production Development Award worth €20,000 and the ArteKino International Award worth €6,000. Nine of the projects are directed by female filmmakers, two by a female-male duo and seven by men. The organisers said 41% of the 391 total submissions were directed by women.

Eleven of the projects are first fiction features, one is a second feature and six are from more established filmmakers. Three of the projects hail from Greece, part of the festival’s focus on the country at the 2025 event.

Les Arcs Coproduction Village 2025 selection:

Alicante dir. Lina Soualem, prod. Easy Riders Films (Fr)
Confirmation dir. Maciej Jankowski, prod. Rozbrat Films (Pol)
Dasha dir. Mar Coll, prod. Fasten Films (Sp) and Yellow Blackbird (Ger)
Disqualifié dir. Dimitris Zouras, prod. NEDA Film (Gr)
Elsewhere dir. Adelina Borets, prod. Toy Cinema (Ukr) and Koskino (Pol)
Friends, Birthdays, Murder, Etc. dir. Lida Vartzioti and Dimitris Tsakaleas, prod. Atalante Productions (Gr)
Hard Copy dir. Marleen Valien, prod. Sommerhaus Filmproduktion (Ger)
I Will Drink With The Bees dir. Léa Triboulet, prod. La Belle Affaire Productions (Fr)
In The Name Of Pleasure dir. Lisa Clarkson, prod. Story Horse Pictures (UK)
Inner Warrior dir. Nicolai G.H. Johansen, prod. Sub Rosa Pictures (Den)
Invasion dir. Jerry Carlsson, produced by Verket Produktion (Swe)
Love In the Time Of Communism dir. Kristina Grozeva & Petar Valchanov, prod. Abraxas Film (Bul) & Graal (Gr)
One Hand Jesus dir. Bogdan Mirică, prod. deFilm (Rom)
Pantano De Aves dir. Karen Vázquez Guadarrama, prod. Mirage (Bel)
Riot/Girl dir. Arman T. Riahi, prod. Golden Girls Filmproduktion (Aus) & Les Contes Modernes (Fr)
Since You’ve Been Gone dir. María Herrera López, prod. Avalon (Sp)
The Hermit dir. Nicolas Kolovos, prod. Homemade Films (Gr) & Kakadua Filmproduktion (Sw)
The Tigress dir. Lisa Brühlmann, prod. tellfilm GmbH (Switz) & tempesta film UK (UK)

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