Polish animation project Cherub won two of the seven prizes of the CineMart co-production market of International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR).
The winners were selected from 20 projects in development presented at CineMart and six projects nearing completion taking part in the Darkroom work-in-progress programme.
Cherub, by debut feature director Barbara Rupik and produced through Madants, won the Eurimages New Lab Award for Innovation, worth €20,000, and the Wouter Barendrecht Award, worth €5,000.
The Polish animation tells of shape-shifting angelic beings who descend from the sky to a small, forgotten village to claim the soul of a dying girl.
The CineMart jury hailed its “innovative approach in forging an original and inventive artistic practice to weave a narrative intertwining rural folklore with elements of genre, to illustrate a universal tale.”
Elsewhere, the €6,000 ArteKinoi nternational award went to Shengze Zhu’s A Distant House Smokes on the Horizon. The first fiction feature by Tiger award-winning Chinese filmmaker Shengze Zhu, it centres on three troubled teenagers who set out on a reckless plan to escape the confines of their small town. Produced by Burn The Film, it was originally supported by the Hubert Bals Fund for development.
The jury praised “the clarity of the director’s intentions, who is not afraid of tackling a sensitive subject, and fictionalising research material on tragic real events.”
The Filmmore Post-production Award, worth €7,500 worth of in-kind support, went to Swiss filmmaker Andreas Fontana’s Les Diplomates. Fontana previously made 2021 thriller Azor, and his latest sees two diplomatic counterparts from Austria and Switzerland secretly negotiate the contours of history as the Eastern Bloc disintegrates – fueled by a petty personal grudge.
The VIPO Award, worth €3,000 was won by Spanish director Alejandro Telémaco Tarraf’s Alumbre, about a wounded man’s confrontation with pain and belonging. It is produced by Zeitun Films.
CineMart’s most financially valuable prize, the €30,000 Eurimages New Lab Award – Outreach for work-in-progress projects, was won by Lilian Hess’ immersive project Duchampiana, produced by Tchikiboum. The project is based on Duchamp’s famous ’Nude Descending A Staircase’ and enables its protagonist to drastically change her course.
The 4DR Studios Award went to Isobel Knowles and Van Sowerwine’s The World Came Flooding In, an immersive documentary installation that reveals the devastating human impact of flooding and climate emergency.
Head of IFFR Pro (a.i.) Alessia Acone said: “The variety of projects on offer at our co-production market has never been richer, not only in terms of the diversity of stories and their countries of origin, but also in their mediums and production stages. Our immersive media projects have become a vital part of the market, as has Darkroom which returned this year to offer a crucial forum for works-in-progress as they near completion. In the ever-evolving landscape of film and media, IFFR Pro is a platform tuned into the needs of the industry, one that fosters the avant-garde, the visionary and the groundbreaking. We thank all of our partners for their support that allows this to happen.”
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