Upcoming titles from Lech Majewski and duo Ben Rivers and Ben Russell are among the 12 films to be showcased in the Work in Progess section of the Les Arcs European Film Festival.

On Dec 16, the Work in Progress session – now in its second year – will showcase films that are seeking distributors or sales agents.

Key titles include documentary A Spell to Ward Off the Darkness, written and directed by Ben Russell and Ben Rivers, and produced by Paris-based Rouge International. Set in Norway, it follows a single character at three disparate moments in his life.

Acclaimed Polish director Lech Majewski will present Field of Dogs, his follow up to The Mill and the Cross, which is budgeted at $2m. It centres on a professor who quits to work at a supermarket.

Love Eternal is a drama about a death-fixated young man and is based on Japanese author Kei Oishi’s Loving the Dead.

Directed by Brendan Muldowney, with a budget of $2.8m (€2.2m), it is produced by Ireland’s Fastnet Films, and co-produced by Luxembourg’s Red Lion, Netherlands’ Rinkel Film and Japan’s T.O. Ent.

Last year’s Work in Progress stand featured Baltasar Kormakur’s drama The Deep among others. The shipwreck survivor film has been selected as the Icelandic entry for the Best Foreign Language Oscar.

The Work in Progress session forms part of the wider Les Arcs film festival, which runs from Dec 15-22.

Work in Progress titles

A Spell To Ward Off The Darkness (UK)
Dir: Ben Russell, Ben Rivers
Pro: Julie Gayet - Rouge International

Concrete Night (Finland) 
Dir: Pirjo Honkasalo
Pro: Mark Lwoff - Bufo

Esto es lo que Hay (France)
Dir: Léa Rinaldi
Pro: Léa Rinaldi - Aléa Film

Field of Dogs (Poland)
Dir: Lech Majewski
Pro: Freddy Olsson - Bokomotiv

Love Eternal (Ireland)
Dir: Brendan Muldowney
Pro: Conor Barry - SP Films / Macdara Kelleher - Fastnet Films

Murieron por Encina de sus Posibilidades (Spain)
Dir: Isaki Lacuesta
Pro: Bastien Martin

Ossuaires / Cathedrale (Belgium/Flemmish)
Dir: Bjorn Schmelzer
Pro: Tomas Leyer - Minds Meet

September (Greece)
Dir: Penny Panayotopoulou
Pro: Karathanos Thanassis - Twentytwenty Vision

The Unsaved (Romania)
Dir: Igor Cobileanski
Pro: Daniel Burlac - Elefant Film

Un Coup de Feu dans L’eau (Georgia, France, Germany)
Dir: Nana Ekvtimishvili
Pro: Guillaume de Seille - Arizona Films, Polar Films, Studio 99, Indiz

XL (Iceland)
Dir: Marteinn Throsson
Pro: Marteinn Thorsson - Tenderlee

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