Berlinale selects 2024 Co-Production Market projects including Sally Potter's ‘Alma’; unveils Berlinale Talent, Forum Special selections

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Sally Potter

Source: Adventure Pictures

Sally Potter

The 2024 Berlinale has selected 34 feature film projects for its Co-Production Market, including Sally Potter’s Alma.

The festival has also chosen 202 Berlinale Talents, and 14 titles for its Forum Special strand.

Scroll down for the full list of Co-Production Market projects

The 34 feature projects in the Co-Production Market hail from 27 countries, and were selected from 318 submissions – a slight increase on 2023.

Potter’s Alma follows a family battling survivor guilt and sibling rivalries while on an expedition to scatter the ashes of an archaeologist. It will be produced by Christopher Sheppard for Potter and Sheppard’s UK company Adventure Pictures, with Rebecca O’Brien for the UK’s Sixteen Films.

It is selected in the Berlinale Directors section of the Market, alongside Babatunde Apalowo’s Londoner, a co-production between Nigeria’s Polymath Pictures, and the UK’s Cato Street Productions and Sixteen Films.

Eighteen of the 34 projects are already partly financed with budgets between €600,000 and €5m. Titles include Screaming Girl by Ukrainian filmmaker Antonio Lukich, whose previous feature Luxembourg, Luxembourg was in Horizons at Venice Film Festival in 2022. Ukraine’s ForeFilms is producing Screaming Girl.

Also selected is Kateryna Gornostai’s Antonivka, produced by Ukraine’s Moon Man and Lithuania’s Just a Moment. Gornostai’s Stop-Zemlia won the Crystal Bear for best film in Berlin’s Generation 14plus section in 2021.

The selection includes My Hands, the debut feature of Irish filmmaker Eoin Heaney, produced by Ireland’s Feline Films.

“Powerfully, and on a new level, these projects echo the issues that currently occupy people’s minds: home and migration, parenthood and the fear of commitment, political and social conflicts – many topics are reflected in a number of projects with diverse approaches. Current political conflicts are sometimes examined through the lens of the past or alternatively, in visions of the future,” said Martina Bleis, head of the Co-Production Market.

The Market will organise over 1,500 one-to-one meetings during the Berlinale, to expand the projects’ co-production, sales and funding possibilities.

Talents

The festival has also selected 202 filmmakers for its Berlinale Talents development programme, running from February 17-22. The 202 filmmakers come from 68 countries, and were chosen from a record 3,832 applicants from 131 countries.

Selected filmmakers include Estonia’s Anna Hints, whose Smoke Sauna Sisterhood won the European Documentary prize at last year’s European Film Awards.

116 of the Talents are women, with 76 men and 10 non-binary people. The theme of this year’s Talents is ‘Common Tongues – Speaking Out in the Language of Cinema’.

The festival has also renewed its partnership with Mastercard for a further three years to support Berlinale Talents.

The 14 repertory titles in the Forum Special strand are predominantly documentary films, programmed around what the festival calls ‘playful approaches to resisting slence and forgetting’. 10 of the films are by the late Austrian filmmaker Maria Lassnig, ranging from her 1970 feature Encounter, to 1992’s The Ballad Of Maria Lassnig, made with Hubert Sielecki.

The 2024 Berlinale runs from February 15-25.

Berlinale Co-Production Market 2024 projects

The Side Effects Of Trusting Life (Leb) dir. Ahmad Ghossein
A Woman Builds (Sing-Jap-Tai) dirs. Huang Ji, Ryuji Otsuka
Next Apparition (Arg-Uru) dir. Julieta Amalric
My Hands (Ire) dir. Eoin Heaney
Screaming Girl (Ukr) dir. Antonio Lukich
To The Wedding (Can) dir. Andrea Pallaoro
Idda’s Breath (It) dir. Irene Dionisio
Divorce During The War (Lith) dir. Andrius Blazevicius
Last Trip (Ger) dir. Ziad Kalthoum
Antonivka (Ukr-Lith) dir. Kateryna Gornostai
Marriage By Abduction (Ger) dir. Sophia Mocorrea
Ich bin Marika (Hun) dir. Hajni Kis
To Die On Your Feet (Chile) dir. Maria Paz Gonzalez
Remains Of Life (Bul) dir. Sevda Shishmanova
Folk Play (Ser) dir. Mirjana Karanovic
Fragments Of This Beauty (Tur) dir. Burak Cevik
Burnings (Swe) dir. Jerry Carlsson
The Girl With The Leica (It) dir. Alina Marazzi

Berlinale Directors Projects

Alma (UK) dir. Sally Potter
Twist The Rabbit (Cze-Slovakia) dir. Mira Fornay
Londoner (Nig-UK) dir. Babatunde Apalowo

World Cinema Market Project

Zone | Myths (Ger) dir. Daria Yurkevich

Rotterdam-Berlinale Express

The Diplomats (Switz) dir. Andreas Fontana
Hold Time For Me (Ger) dir. Fradique

Talent Project Market projects, Producer Talents

Eau de Colony (It) dir. Veronica Spedicati; producer: Giorgio Gucci
So The Lovers Could Come Out Again (Leb) dir. George Peter Barbari; producer: Christelle Younes
Silence Sometimes (US-Sp) dir. Alvaro Robles; producer: Mireia Vilanova
Bad Gays (Switz) dir. Loic Hobi; producer Michael Graf
Pogana (Cro) dir. David Kapac; producer Rea Rajcic
The Numbered Days (Arg-Sp) dir. Agustina San Martin; producer: Maximiliano Monzon
Uptight Ass (Ser) dir. Matija Gluscevic; producer: Carna Vucinic
Astana Internet Stars (Kaz) dir. Assel Aushakimova; producer: Assel Aushakimova
More Than A Hug (Swe) dir. Christian Zetterberg; producer: Liselotte Persson
Little Lying Wild (US-Bel) dir. Samantha Aldana; producer: Valerie Steinberg