Projects from Spain, Ukraine and Belgium shared the top prizes at this year’s When East Meets West (WEMW) co-production forum, which was held in Trieste from January 22-25.
Spanish filmmaker Enrique Buleo’s Still Life With Ghosts won the €5,000 Center Serbia Award. Produced by Spain’s Quatre Films and France’s Ikki Films, the film tells the story of ghosts and humans who seek to resolve their everyday problems in a small village in rural Spain. Buleo’s short Hell and Such received a Special Jury Mention at the 2019 Clermont-Ferrand festival.
Maryna Stepanska’s Ukraine war documentary It’s Not A Full Picture won the €5,000 Ciclic WEMW Award granted by the French Centre-Val de Loire Region. The film is produced by Ukraine’s JS Films and looks at the daily existence of Ukrainian filmmakers during the war. Stepanska first achieved international success with her 2017 love story Falling, about a young couple trying to find their path in the aftermath of Ukraine’s 2014 Maidan Square revolution.
Belgian director Volkan Uce’s documentary 2m2 received the €5,000 ArteVideo Co-Production Award. Produced by Belgium’s Menuetto Film, it examines the choices made between life and death in two cultures, examining where a Turkish immigrant in Belgium may want to be buried.
The 13th edition of the market featured 22 international projects, comprising 12 feature films and 10 documentaries from 19 countries. Some 750 participants from 50 countries attended both virtually and onsite.
New awards launched this year included the €1,000 EWA Network’s I HAVE A DREAM Award for Equality & Inclusion, which went to Carol Rodríguez Colás’ The Gang, produced by Fasten Films.
Ukrainian producer Julia Sinkevych, of JS Film, who attended with It’s Not a Full Picture, received a scholarship to attend the EAVE Producers Workshop; Armenian director Inna Sahakyan – present at WEMW with Shakespeare Goes Armenian which she directed with Lilit Movsisyan - received the DAE Talent Development prize, in cooperation with the EFM.
Producers Tekla Machavariani, behind Milk and Honey (Nushi Film, Georgia), and Anna Khazaradze and Nino Chichua, of 9 Month Contract (1991 Productions, Georgia) were awarded access to the Cannes Marché du Film Producers’ Network.
Suad Gara, director of Hotel Diana, received the Pop Up Film Residency Award, while documentary (Not) Just a Matter of Time, directed by Daniela Reyes Gutiérrez, received the new #DocsConnect Taskovski Training Award.
The HBO Europe Award, which is part of one of the two WEMW works in progress sections targeting films at the post-production stage and comes with a €1,000 cash prize, went to director Eylem Kaftan’s A Day, 365 hours.
The jury of This is IT, the work in progress section dedicated to films co-produced with Italy or produced by the WEMW spotlight territories, granted LASER Film Award to Igor Bezinović for his Fiume o Morte! project.
Elvin Adigozel’s My Magical World was awarded the TRT Prize worth €5,000, as part of First Cut+, the works in progress targeting feature films that previously took part in a First Cut Lab workshop.
The Italy-Baltic Development Awards for Co-Production, delivered cash awards including €15,000 to Iacopo Di Girolamo’s Altrove – Elsewhere. Linda Olte’s The Child and Saulius Baradinskas’ Concrete Music both received an award worth €7,500 each.
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