New projects by Peter Greenaway, Pavel Lungin and Valeria Gai Germanika are among 18 feature films selected to be pitched at the fifth edition of Moscow Business Square’s Co-Production Forum.

This will be the second time that Greenaway is at the Forum after presenting his project Food Of Love, based on Thomas Mann’s novella Death In Venice, there last year. His pitch then won him the $40,000 (€30,000) Best Pitch award sponsored by the new Moscow production complex Glavkino.

This time the Welsh-born director will be introducing Eisenstein In Guanajuato, which recounts the time the 33-year-old Russian director fell briefly, but intensely in love in a small Mexican town while researching for the never completed picture Que viva México! in Mexico between 1929-1931.

At last year’s Odessa International Film Festival, Greenaway told ScreenDaily that “99% of the financing” was in place for this project and he hoped at the time to shoot in Mexico at the end of 2012.

Meanwhile, veteran Russian director Lungin will be presenting his contemporary reworking of Alexander Pushkin’s short story Queen Of Spades, which is to be produced by Fyodor Bondarchuk’s Art Pictures, and Germanika, whose All Will Die, But I Will Remain screened in Cannes in 2008, will be at the Forum with her new project The Dream-God.

Some of the projects in Moscow were previously introduced to potential co-producers or financiers at some of the Co-Production Forum’s partner pitching markets.

Thus, Georgian director Nana Djanelidze’s Another Paradise was pitched at this Sofia Meetings this March, and Kyrgyz film-maker Marat Alykulov’s comedy Lenin?! featured in the lineups of last autumn’s Busan Asian Project Market and Germany’s Connecting Cottbus.  

Stefan Tolz’s German-Georgian project Fizz – Little Shop Of Soda, to be produced by ma.ja.de’s Heino Deckert and Nana Djorjadze, was presented at the When East Meets West co-production forum in Trieste in January, and St Petersburg-based producer Vitaly Eroshenya is coming from this month’s pitching session in Sochi with Dito Tsintsadze’s road movie Van’ka.

Full line-up

  • Another Paradise, Nana Djanelidze (Georgia)
  • City Of Birds, Alena Alova (Russia)
  • Eisenstein In Guanajuato, Peter Greenaway (Netherlands)
  • Fizz – Little Shop Of Soda, Stefan Tolz (Germany-Georgia)
  • For Four Hands, Evgeny Izrailit (France-Russia-Belgium)
  • From Death To Morning, Dmitry Mamulia (Russia-India)
  • Lenin?!, Marat Alykulov (Kyrgyzstan-UK-France)
  • Light Breeze, Andrey Tarkovsky (Russia)
  • Moscow Dream, Sherwood Hu (China-Russia)
  • Northbound, Ru Hasanov (Azerbaijan)
  • Passing Clouds, Tatiana Korol (UK)
  • Play Me, Kusturica!, Uros Tomic (Serbia)
  • Queen Of Spades, Pavel Lungin (Russia)
  • Stepne, Marina Vroda (Ukraine)
  • The Dream-God, Valeria Gai Germanika (Russia)
  • The Florist, Maria Saakyan (Russia)
  • Van’ka, Dito Tsintsadze (Russia)
  • You Are My Mama, Leonid Rybakov (Russia-China)

Documentary projects

  • 180 Beat, Olga Darfy (Russia-France)
  • Give Me Jupiter!, Vlasta Arno (Russia)
  • Luckus, Giedre Zickyte (Lithuania)
  • Riding Into History, Ian White (China-Russia-Germany)
  • The Forest In Me, Rebecca Marshall (UK)
  • The Shelter, Mari Gulbiani (Georgia)
  • Where The Paradise Is, Arutyun Khachatryan (Armenia)

The 18 feature and seven documentary projects were selected by a committee of  international experts comprising Laurent Danielou (Rezo Films International), Mira Staleva (Sofia Meetings), producers Guillaume de Seille (Arizona Films) and Julia Mishkinene (Vita Aktiva), Simone Baumann (German Films) and Signe Zeilich-Jensen (Holland Film Meeting).

In addition, three projects by participants from previous editions of GenerationCampus will be pitched during the Forum.

Moscow Business Square’s programme will include a presentation by ANICA of the benefits of shooting in Italy, case studies of co-productions and a roundtable with producers and distributors from CIS, the Baltic states and Georgia.

The 2013 edition will also have a special focus on the film industries in Chinas and South Korea, with discussion centring on public film policy in Korea and China and on the opportunities for co-production with Russia.

Moreover, the most successful recent Korean films will be placed in the spotlight along with a presentation of Hong Kong action director Dante Lam’s cop drama Moscow’s Mission.

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