Filmmakers from Latvia, Kosovo and Slovenia will be among those presenting projects in development and works in progress at the 26th edition of the East-West co-production market connecting cottbus (coco), taking place during Germany’s FilmFestival Cottbus from November 4-6.
The project line-up includes Latvian director Anna Ansone’s debut feature Summer Blues about two sisters taking a transformative journey amid tense emotions from Germany back to Riga, It is currently structured as a Latvia-Germany co-production between Alise Gelze’s White Pictures and Cologne-based Filmfaust,
Kosovar director Rita Krasniqi will present Vestige, a drama that centres on a town’s hunt for stray dogs that turns lethal when the townsfolk start hunting each other. Krasniqi’s first foray into feature films will see her working again with Kot Productions’ Jon Gojani who had previously produced her 2020 15-minute LBTQ+ short Adelina.
In addition to rising filmmakers, connecting cottbus has selected a range of projects by more established directors. Romania’sBogdan Theodor Olteanu will be at the event with his fourth feature A Long-Awaited Vacation.
There are two projects from Ukrainian filmmakers: Arkadii Nepytaliuk’s feature adaptation of his award-winning short of the same name Golden Leggings, and Anna Buryachkova’s film version of Ivan Bahrianyi’s adventure novel The Hunter And The Hunted.
Meanwhile Czech Republic’s Viktorie Nowotná’s The Main Course will combine a coming- of- age narrative with aspects of horror.
Works in progress
The six works in progress include Turkish director Melik Kuru’s comedy Dump Of Untitled Pieces set in the collapsing art market of Istanbul, and Slovenian filmmaker Ursa Menart’s second feature Everything That’s Wrong With You about loneliness among twentysomethings. The latter has been co-produced by Katja Lenarćić and Danijel Hocebar’s Vertigo with Berlin-based Chromosom Film and Serbia’s Living Pictures.
Several recent international festival titles were pitched at previous editions of connecting cottbus as either projects or works in progress.
This year they have included Roman Bondarchuk’s The Editorial Office (Berlinale), Catalin Rotaru and Gabi Virginia Sarga’s Where Elephants Go (Vilnius), Assel Aushakimova’s award-winning Bikechess (Tribeca) and Pavlo Ostrikov’s U Are The Universe (Toronto).
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