The 19 year-old Turkish director Ferit Kilic was awarded the top prize at Transilvania Pitch Stop (TPS) in Romania at the weekend for his debut feature project Dancing Angels, produced by Diloy Gülün of Istanbul-based Karma Films.
TPS is the pitching event of the Transilvania International Film Festival’s RO Days industry programme.
Kilic won the €25,000 prize for post-production services from Chainsaw Europe for his project about a troubled 15 year-old boy who finds solace in dancing.
“It’s based on my own experiences and those of many kids I interviewed, many things I’ve seen in my own school life,” said the director, who started making stop-motion videos aged just six and shot his first short film when was 13.
Ukrainian director Valeria Sochyvets’ feature debut Curtain won the €5,000 TPS development award presented by postproduction house Avanpost. Produced by Inna Lastochkina’s Contemporary Ukrainian Cinema outfit, the film is about a talented violinist at the peak of her career in a tricky relationship with the orchestra’s conductor. France’s Loco Films and Poland’s Lumisenta Film Foundation are on board as co-producers.
This year’s €1,500 cash prize given by the National Centre of Cinematography in Moldova went to Ioana Mischie and Andra MacMasters for their contemporary satire Die, Please. They plan to shoot in English, with an international cast. It is set in a society where everyone has become immortal and dying is a luxury.
The producer is Bucharest-based Studioset Production, which already has secured around a third of the €1.6m budget,
The new Connecting Cottbus cocoLAB: east-west emerging producers award went to Romania’s Irina Enea of Baking Films for the project Kid Hazard. Inea will now participate in the cocoLAB programme to be held in Cottbus at the beginning of November
Enea also received the €500 Villa Kult development award, sponsored by Renate Roginas.
Positive vibe
Participating producers said there was a very positive vibe at this year’s RO Days which offered plenty of networking opportunites.
“We had some very useful one-to-one meetings with potential partners and the producers we met had some really good questions to ask about the project,” said Olena Yershova of Istanbul-based Tatofilm, who was in Cluj to present the first feature project My Happy Family by Alkim Ozme.
“We are looking for a partnership with a third country to join our co-production between Turkey and Germany and have already been in contact with people in Bulgaria and Serbia but we are open to working with other countries as well,” she explained.
“It was my first time in Cluj and in Romania itself and the town reminded me of western Ukraine,” Yershova added. “There is very nice energy here and it’s amazing to see the cinemas are always so full.”
Miguel Angel Govea, Paris-based partner of distribution and production company alief, was also visiting Romania and the festival in Cluj for the very first time. “TIFF and TPS were beyond my expectations,” he said. “After more than 20 festival editions this is a well-oiled machine with an attentive team that goes the extra mile
“The industry guests were a healthy mix of multi-national, regional and national buyers, sellers, filmmakers and directors with a range of projects, from ultra-low budget to six figures with algorithm- friendly cast and provocative themes.”
Govea, who had Tomas Vengris’ Five And A Half Love Stories In An Apartment in Vilnius, Lithuania screening at the festival in the Smart 7 Festival Network competition, said this year’s TPS projects were “very strong”.
“They are on the same wavelength as connecting cottbus,” he suggested. “The Eastern European Gen Z filmmakers rose to the challenge and pitched emotional, relevant and quirky stories, all told with heart.”
He revealed his favourite projects among the 10-title line-up were Curtain (“an elegant co-dependency drama set in the classical music world”), Dancing Angels (“a poignant coming- of- age film”), Die, Please (“A wonderful surprise”) and Kid Hazard (“A YA adventure comedy based on a book trilogy”).
Xavier Henry-Rashid, head of sales at London-based Film Republic, enjoyed the discovery aspect of attending the festival. “Transilvania is always a great crash course in new regional projects and this year offered a chance to connect with some interesting ones from Moldova in particular.”
In addition to attending RO Days, Henry-Rashid was also in Cluj with the Estonian filmmaker Marko Raat to present 8 Views Of Lake Biwa in the Out of Limits section. “The festival programme is also quite upbeat and a good place to pick some out of the blue discoveries.”
Los Angeles-based producer Maya Korn of MHK Productions was back in Cluj for a second time for the pitching sessions during the RO Days.
“The quality of the projects was particularly high,” Korn reported. “I was drawn to the Romanian project Die, Please, a dystopian story with immersive elements, and to the Ukrainian project Curtain about domestic abuse.
“As arts funding is currently non-existent in Ukraine with the war, it was interesting to hear in our one-to-one meeting about the creative ways the team were following to get the project made without the traditional European co-production model.”
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