The 2009 Belgrade co-production market chose Georgian director Tamara Sulamanidze's feature debut and second features from Kazakhstan's Nariman Turebayev and Macedonia's Igor Panov as best in group at this year's B2B Belgrade Industry Meetings.
Projects from three areas, the Balkans, Eastern Europe and Euro-Asia were pitched in a public session on February 28 and the group winners were each awarded prizes of $6,300 (Euros 5,000).
European film industry figures including Eurimages' executive secretary Roberto Olla, EAVE CEO Alan Fountain and producers Cedomir Kolar and Markus Halberschmidt were among those judging.
The Balkan group prize was won by Macedonian filmmaker Igor Panov's second feature The Piano Room.
The film will be produced by Skopje Film Studio who previously produced Panov's feature debut Upside Down. The $1.3m (Euros 1m) production has already attracted a grant from the South East European Cinema Network in Thessaloniki and will shoot in March 2010.
Meanwhile, the winning project of the East European group was Georgian director Tamara Sulamanidze's feature debut, the black comedy drama Instructions For Divorce.
Instructions For Divorce is being structured as a Georgian-Russian-French co-production between Tbilisi-based Pilots Ent, Russia's 2Plan2 Productions and French distributor Surreal Films with shooting planned for October 2009. The $630,000 (Euros 500,000) project was also recently selected for the Georgian National Film Centre's annual competition for the funding of debut features.
Finally, Kazakhstan's Nariman Turebayev's urban road movie Macho was the clear winner in the Euro-Asian group.
The $1m (Euros 800,000) production by Almaty-based Pocket Agency already has an agreement with Kazakhfilm National Company for technical equipment and facilities and is scheduled to begin shooting in autumn 2009. Turebayev's previous feature Little Men was screened at the Rotterdam, Locarno, Chicago and Edinburgh festivals among others.
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