Companies in attendance included Urban Distribution, Wild Bunch, K5, and Artificial Eye.

US In Progress, the industry event for works-in-progress American indie films to screen in Wroclaw, Poland alongside the American Film Festival, has hosted six projects in its second edition (Nov 14-16).

Two juries of professionals awarded these films:

  • Hide Your Smiling Faces by Daniel Carbone received prost production services from the Warsaw-based VFX studio Platige Image, worth $10,000 and DCP and subtitling services from DCinex and VSIParis/Chinkel $5,000.

  • Bluebird by Lance Edmands received post-production services worth €10,000 from Alvernia Studios – Poland’s biggest private film studio (Edmands is pictured with Kyle Martin).

  • A Song Still Inside by Gregory Collins will get a $10,000-worth soundtrack from the Polish composer, Maciej Zieliński (Soundflower Studio from Warsaw).

  • Matt Porterfield’s filmI Used to be Darker with promotion and distribution support from Europa Distribution and CICAE.

Also, Hide Your Smiling Faces producer Jordan Bailey-Hoover and Milkshake producer Mariko Munro will receive passes for the 2013 Cannes Producers’ Network.

60 professionals attended the event including 20 buyers, such as Urban Distribution, Wild Bunch, K5 International, Artificial Eye, Canal+, Gutek Film, Imagine, Sophie Dulac Distribution, New Europe Film Sales and The Works.

Post-production companies, film funds and programmers from Berlinale Forum, Cannes Semaine de la Critique and Locarno were also in attendance.

US in Progress is organized by the New Horizons Association (organizer of the AFF and the T-Mobile New Horizons International Film Festival) and New York- and Paris-based Black Rabbit Film with the support of City of Wrocław, Poland’s Ministry of Culture and National Heritage and the American Embassy in Poland.

Partners include: Platige Image, Soundflower Studio, Alvernia Studios, DCinex, VSI Paris/Chinsel, Europa Distribution, CICAE, Producers Network, IFP, Wajda Studio and US in Progress Paris.

At the American Film Festival, the audience award for best narrative feature (with $10,000) went to Colin Trevorrow’s Safety Not Guarnateed and the audience award for best documentary feature ($5,000) went to David France for How To Survive A Plague. Jerry Schatzberg received the Indie Star Award.

The festival, which screened 54 films, opened with Moonrise Kingdom and closed Sunday night with the Polish premiere of Argo. The festival sold 17,000 tickets and attendance per screening was up 50% on last year.

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