New films by da Silva, Coskun, Skafar in Sarajevo's CineLink selection

Sarajevo Film Festival’s co-production market CineLink has announced its selection for the 2011 edition which will take place from July 27 to 30. The 14 projects for CineLink and CineLink Plus were selected from over 70 submissions from Albania, Austria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Greece, Hungary, Macedonia, Malta, Montenegro, Romania, Serbia, Slovenia, Turkey and UNMI Kosovo.

Ten projects selected in the CineLink lineup will participate in the Project Development Workshop organized in collaboration with the Binger Filmlab, where the directors and producers will work on the scripts as well as the financial, legal and marketing aspects of their projects.

The CineLink selection includes Tideaway by Portuguese-born, Vienna-based writer-director Hugo Vieira da Silva and Heidi Wilm; Yozgat Blues by Turkish director Mahmut Fazil Coskun and writer Tarik Tufan, whose previous collaboration Wrong Rosary won a Tiger in Rotterdam in 2009; Mirko’s Gonna Fuck You Up by Bosnian writer-director Sasa Hajdukovic whose first feature film 32nd Of December was a moderate festival hit in Bosnia and Serbia; and 365 New Year’s Eves, the feature debut of the Romanian writer Vlad Trandafir and director Paul Negoescu. Negoescu’s three shorts played in competition of the Berlinale from 2008 to 2010, and Derby and Renovare were nominated for the best short at the EFA in 2011 and 2009, respectively.

Other projects in the CineLink selection are first features: A Happy Man by writer-director Davor Kanjir from Croatia; Humidity by Serbia’s Nikola Ljuca, co-written by Stasa Bajac; Odysseus by Montenegro’s Andro Martinovic, co-written by Andrej Nikolaidis; Spirit Of Dust by director Nesimi Yetik and writer Betul Esener from Turkey; Stage Fright by Yorgos Zois, co-written by Vasilios Kyriakopoulos from Greece; and The Wednesday Child by Hungarian writer-director Lili Horvath.

Four projects selected in the CineLink Plus lineup will be presented directly at the CineLink co-production market, and they include Mother by Slovenia’s Vlado Skafar, a follow-up to his 2010 Venice Critics Week entry Dad; the second feature by Hungary’s Gyula Nemes called Zero, co-written by Tamas Beregi; Touch Me Not, the first fiction feature of Romania’s Adila Pintilie whose documentary Don’t Get Me Wrong won a Golden Dove at DOK Leipzig in 2007; and Virus, the third film of Greece’s Angelos Frantzis, co-written by Spyros Kribalis.

 Projects presented in both line-ups are eligible for CineLink Development Awards totalling $71,913 (Euros 50,000) in cash and services from partners and sponsors ARTE, CNC (Centre national de la cinematographie), Eurimages and Synchro Film and Video.

 Established in 2003, CineLink grew into one of the most successful development and financing platforms in Europe with average conversion rate of its selected projects from development to production of over 60%. Its highlights include Semih Kaplanoglu’s Honey and Florin Serban’s If I Want To Whistle, I Whistle which won Golden and Silver Bears, respectively, at the 2010 Berlinale.