Laurynas Bareisa, winner of the 2021 best film prize at Venice’s Orrizonti section for his debut Pilgrims, is among the directors presenting new projects at the 20th edition of the Sofia Meetings co-production forum (22-26 March).
The Lithuanian director is bringing Drowning Dry to Sofia where it is one of five projects in a section dedicated to second feature films.
The section’s line-up also includes The Last Slap by Italian director Matteo Oleotto whose debut feature Zoran, My Nephew The Idiot premiered in Venice’s Critics Week in 2013.
The Last Slap’s Slovenian-Italian production company Staragara IT already has Italy’s Spok and Croatia’s Propeler Film onboard as partners.
In addition, Montenegrin writer-director Ivan Bakrac takes part in this section with his new fiction project Jugoslava which was previously been pitched at the CineLink co-production forum in Sarajevo last year.
Bakrac’s debut After The Winter was Montenegro’s official entry in the International Feature Film category at last year’s Academy Awards.
The line-up of second features is completed by Turkish director Murat Pay’s Dream Bird, whose debut The Mute had its world premiere in Sarajevo in 2019, and Italian actress-director Giulia Grandinetti’s Jaune et Bleu set in France and with Rome-based Lupin Film onboard as producer.
Projects in the Bank
Elsewhere, UK filmmaker Kate Cragg’s second feature film The Violation has been selected for the Meetings’ “Projects in Bank” section where projects are presented away from the public pitchings in Sofia.
The Violation will mark Cragg’s second collaboration with cinematographer-producer Daniel Landin (Creature, Under The Skin) after her Berlin-set debut feature Atomen, inspired by Arthur Schnitzler’s La Ronde.
Other projects in the “Projects in Bank” include Ukrainian screenwriter Natalka Vorozhbyt’s Potion, Colombian filmmaker Raul Garcia’s Julio’s Vision and local writer-director Yana Lekarska’s Because I Love Bad Weather.
Plus Minus One
Projects from Georgia, Romania and Bulgaria are among 10 debuts and third fiction film projects being pitched in Sofia in the “Plus Minus One” section
The debuts being presented include Worker by Georgia’s Giorgi Kobalia, Resonance by Bulgaria’s Yordan Petkov, and Y by Romanian actress Maria Popistasu and her actor-writer husband Alexandru Baciu, while Bulgarian-born filmmaker Eliza Petkova’s new project Dissonance follows Zhuleika (2016) and A Fish Swimming Upside Down (2020) and will be produced by Veselka Kiryakova’s Red Carpet Films with Germany’s Wood Water Films.
Portuguese director Joao Nuno Pinto will be coming to Sofia with The Last Summer which has also been presented at this year’s editions of When East Meets West and Berlinale Talents’ Script Station. The family drama is currently being structured as a co-production between Portugal’s Wonder Maria Filmes and Brazil’s Grifa Filmes.
First Films First
The Sofia Meetings will also serve as the final stop for the First Films First professional training programme for young Southeast European film directors to develop their first fiction feature film.
The programme for the 2022 intake of First Films First had begun more than nine months ago with a training module during the Transilvania International Film Festival in Cluj.
Eight projects from Serbia, Slovenia, Bulgaria, Montenegro, Greece, Romania, and Cyprus will now be presented as part of the Sofia Meetings’ programme of public pitchings.
The 27th Sofia International Film Festival will be running parallel to the Sofia Meetings and opens on March 16 with a screening of Volker Schlöndorff’s documentary The Forest Maker.
Actress Geraldine Chaplin and director Bille August are among the special guests at this year’s festival.
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