French CDP takes The Fourth Direction at Paris Project

Paris-based producer Catherine Dussart has sealed a co-production deal for Indian director Gurvinder Singh’s The Fourth Direction during Paris Project.

The film is director Gurvinder Singh’s second feature length production after his debut picture Alms for a Blind Horse, which premiered in Venice last year.

“It’s fantastic to have Catherine on board… she is such an experienced producer,” commented the film’s producer Kartikeya Narayan Singh of Mumbai-based The Film Café.

Dussart’s previous credits include Rithy Panh’s Isabelle Huppert-starrer The Wall and Pavel Lungin’s 2005 feature Poor Relatives.

Confirming the news, Dussart said she plans to present the project to Arte and the TorinoFilmLab and will also apply to the French Cinema Centre’s recently launched World Cinema Fund.

The project set against the backdrop of the Punjab at the height of separatist Sikh uprising in 1980s, aims to show the constant level of fear and mistrust in the region at the time.

The Fourth Direction was one of 26 projects presented at the Paris Project co-production market, aimed at connecting international films with French partners, running July 2-4 within the Paris Cinema Festival.

Other productions drumming up significant interest included Philippines director Khavn De La Cruz’s Ruined Heart, Another Love Story Between a Criminal and a Whore.

The screening of De La Cruz’s Mondomanila at the Rotterdam International Film Festival earlier this year appears has raised the filmmaker’s profile.

“We’ve had a fantastic response here,” said Stephan Holl of German Rapid Eye Movies. ‘We’re looking for an alliance of taste – someone who really falls in love with the project.”

Hall revealed that respected Australian, Asia-based cameraman Christopher Doyle has boarded the film as DOP.

Other popular projects included British-Iranian Babak Jalili’s tale Land, about the tension between an American Indian community and the white population in a nearby town. Italian Asmara Film is producing with American Borderline Films attached as a co-producer

This year the event also invited two Hong Kong projects as part of Paris Cinema’s Hong Kong focus, in the shape of Flora Lau’s drama Bends and Tsang Tsui-Shan’s documentary Flowing Stories, capturing the transformation of a village in the province of Hong Kong.

In other news related to the event, Paris Project’s new head Vanja Kaludjercic announced the creation of an advisory council aimed at strengthening event.

The first members comprise Rotterdam International Film Festival programmer Chinlin Hsieh; Thomas Pibarot, head of acquisitions at Le Pacte; producer Jean des Forêts of Petit Film and Amra Baksic Camo, head of Sarajevo’s CineLink co-production market.

“They will give advice on what we can do to make Paris Project better,” says Kaludjercic “They will not be involved in the selection of the projects. “