First Moscow Business Square deals announced

Moscow Business Square’s Latin American focus has already borne its first fruits less than a week after the event closed.

Speaking exclusively to ScreenDaily, consultant Diana Karklin revealed that Russian producer Vlad Ketkovich will serve as the executive producer on the Mexican documentary Torre about the tragic story of Mexico’s greatest ever chess player Carlos Torre, which was pitched in Moscow by director Juan Obregon and co-director/producer Roberto Garza.

In addition, Mexico’s facilities house Studio 5 de mayo plans to finance the post-production of Maria Gavrilova´s Brazilian-Russian documentary project Close Your Eyes by Marx Films, as well as for the Colombian project Revolution which was pitched at MBS by the producer-director-screenwriter team of Camilo Molano Parra, Felipe Cano Ibanez and Santiago Ardilla Reyes.

Karklin also noted that In Films We Trust, the distribution arm of Studio 5 de mayo, will buy a package of eight Russian films from Timur Bekmambetov’s Bazelevs for distribution in Mexico.

Chilean producer Felipe Aichele reportedly had “very good talks” in Moscow for the sci-fi romance Incarnation by André Arancibia, with Finland’s Toni Valla of Post Control apparently interested in being involved on the post-production.

Meanwhile, the last day of this year’s Business Square saw a delegation of Brazilian producers, led by Ancine’s Eduardo Valente, visiting the Russian Federation’s Ministry of Culture to discuss the prospects for a co-production agreement being signed in the future between the two countries.

The Brazilian delegation, which included Rio-based producer Alessandra Brites, Sao Paulo-based producer-director Christiano Sensi, Cinema do Brasil’s Marika Kozlovska, producers Vania Catani and Elaine Ferreira and director Helvecio Marins, met with senior civil servants involved with film policy including Vyacheslav Telnov.

Brites also told ScreenDaily that in addition to pitching Davi de Oliveira Pinheiro’s historical drama Defeat (A Derrota) set during Napoleon’s Russian campaign at MBS, she was also in Moscow to meet with Russian film-maker to present her plans for a Russian Contemporary Film Festival in Brazil.

Development fund casts net wider

The St Petersburg-based Point of View Film Fund (POV) is casting its net wider in its second year to support a Russian-produced project participating in the B’EST training programme.

Privately financed, Russia’s only development fund was launched in 2013 and awarded €95,000 in loans to five projects in its first year.

These have included the project Svetlana about Stalin’s daughter’s love affair with an Indian raj, which will shoot in English in Moscow with Germany’s Rohfilm as a production partner and has an Indian film-maker in discussion as director, and Anna Sarukhanova In The City which, producer Julia Mishkiniene of Vita Aktiva says, will begin shooting in Tbilisi in spring 2015.

This year, financial support - as conditionally repayable loans - will be distributed among four to five projects selected by POV’s expert council of Russian producers Sergey Selyanov (CTB Film Company) and Artem Vasiliev (Metrafilms), CineMart’s Konstantinos Kontovrakis and Baltic Event’s Riina Sildos as well as Films Boutique’s Jean-Christophe Simon.

POV’s project manager Natalia Drozhd confirmed to ScreenDaily that the Russian B’EST participant selected for development funding would be announced at the Baltic Event in Tallinn at the end of November 2014.

The other winners of the summer contest - applications open from July 1 - will be announced in early September, with the winter contest launched in December and the winners unveiled in February 2015.

Third Pitch forum for debutants

Moscow International Film Festival again provided the setting for the third year running of a pitching forum for short film projects as well as TV series and feature films by young directors as part of the Russian Programme

Last year, the venue in Moscow’s Dom Kino was filled to capacity as a panel of experts including producers Sergey Selyanov and Igor Tolstunov, VGIK Film School professor Sergey Lazaruk and Rossfilm director-general Tatyana Voronetskaya heard the 20 pitches.

This year’s line-up included Kamill Akhmetov’s biopic-docudrama about the Russian space programme technician Vladimir Syromiyatnikov, Evgeny Korchigan’s omnibus film Zhili Byli featuring appearances by stars from the former Soviet Union, and co-directors Ivan Shakhnazarov and Ivan Zavaruev’s fourth collaboration Rok about three budding rock musicians.