Barcelona-born, Beirut-based Irene Bartolomé’s experimental feature Dream Of Another Summer won the top prize in Locarno Pro’s First Look section which this year focused on works-in-progress from Spain.
Bartolomé, who has worked for the past 10 years as a film editor, received the Antaviana Films First Look Award, covering services towards the completion of films in post-production up to the value of €50,000.
The international First Look jury, comprising Istanbul Film Festival director Kerem Ayan, Venice Critics’ Week artistic director Beatrice Fiorentino and Rotterdam programmer Mercedes Martínez-Abarca, described the co-production between Colibrí Studio, I.B. Films and The Attic Productions as “a poetic and rigorous project that elaborates on collective trauma by rewriting the topography of a city wounded many times by history”.
Meanwhile, Victor Diago’s debut feature Río Abajo, Un Tigre, won two new awards, the Music Library & SFX/Acorde Award offering €45,000 in music supervision services and the Laserfilm Cine y Vídeo Award of €5,000 to be spent on services such as subtitling, transcription or a DCP.
Río Abajo, Un Tigre is produced by Barcelona-based Boogaloo Films and shot on location in the UK.
Director-producer Ariadna Seuba’s second feature documentary Mares, produced by Polar Star Films, received the Jannuzzi Smith award, covering the design of an international poster worth €10,000 (an increase in €1,500 over the amount given last year), while the €5,600, award presented by Le Film Français, went to La Mancha-born writer-director Enrique Buleo for his debut feature Bodegón Con Fantasmas. It is being produced by Valencia-based Quatre Films Audiovisuales.
Alliance winners
Meanwhile, Bourgeois Paranoia, to be directed by Lukas Nathrath and produced by Linus Günther of Hamburg-based Klinkerfilm Production, won the €3,500 Alphapanda market breakout award of the three-day co-development platform Alliance 4 Development (A4D) for projects from Austria, France, Germany, Italy and Switzerland.
Michale Boganim’s 6 Months 6 Days received DreamAgo’s script consultancy residency, sponsored by the Valais Film Commission and including script doctoring by Christopher Hampton. The France-Germany co-production between Mathilde Leite’s Vilanova Productions and Dorothe Beinemeier’s Hamburg-based Red Balloon Film is based on Karine Tuil’s eponymous historical novel exploring generational silences around the Holocaust.
The MIDPOINT Consulting Award for an online script consultancy went to Moroccan-born feature debutant Hakim Mao’s thriller Atlantic Mirage, to be produced by France’s Furyo Films.
Italian writer-director Alessandro Grande’s coming of age drama Ithaca received the Ticino Film Commission residence award of a two-day location scouting worth $4,600 and financial support worth up to $13,800 for the project’s Rome-based production company dispàrte if all or part of the film is shot in the canton of Ticino.
Springboard effect
Two projects selected for AD4 last year have since attracted co-production partners. Felix Schreiber of Germany’s Sommerhaus Filmproduktion, who was one of the participants in this year’s Match Me! informal networking platform, revealed Switzerland’s Hugofilm has boarded feature debutant Michèle Flury’s Pas Ta Maman which was the winner of the Alphapanda Market Breakout Award in 2023.
And Amour Fou’s Alexander Dumreicher-Ivanceanu reported producer Laurence Lescary of Paris-based De L’Autre Coté du Périph’ (DACP) has become the French partner on Hotel Des Thermes, one of the 11 projects in AD4’s 2024 line-up.
The tale of colonial revenge set in Madagascar is to be co-directed by writer-director Maéve Ranaivojaone with Austria’s Georg Tiller. It has received development support from the Austrian Film Institute, Vienna Film Fund, Région Ile de France, CNC and Creative Europe MEDIA.
The two producers met last year when Dumreicher-Ivanceanu was at AD4 to pitch Andrina Mracnikar’s Mila / Marija to potential partners.
This year has also seen the Austrian producer in Locarno for the world premiere of Christoph Hochhäusler’s Death Will Come in the festival’s international competition. It was produced by Germany’s Heimatfilm with Amour Fou Luxembourg and Tarantula Belgium.
The awards ceremony on Sunday afternoon also saw the international jury announcing the winner of the second edition of Locarno’s Heritage Restoration Contest.
Liliana Cavani’s 1969 film The Cannibals, represented by Minerva Pictures, was selected from an open call for projects to receive a full restoration process by the Zurich and Berlin-based film lab Cinegrell.
The restored version of the contemporary retelling of the Greek tragedy Antigone, which had originally premiered in Cannes’ Directors’ Fortnight in 1970, will then screen at Locarno’s 2025 edition in the Histoire(s) du cinéma: Heritage Online section.
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