Debut fiction features by Romania’s Cristian Pascariu, Ukraine’s Valeria Sochyvets and Turkey’s Alkim Özmen are among 10 projects selected for Transilvania Pitch Stop (TPS) on June 20-21.
The international co-production platform takes place during the Transilvania International Film Festival in Cluj, Romania, and is part of the industry strand RO Days.
Titles selected include Cristian Pascariu’s A Flower Is Not A Flower about an 11-year-old girl who escapes from a communist Romanian orphanage into the sewers of Bucharest where she has to use her ingenuity to survive. It is a Romanian-Latvia co-production between Point Film and Riga-based Air Productions.
Valeria Sochyvets is attending with her first feature-length project, Curtain, a relationship drama set against a backdrop of violence. It is produced by Contemporary Ukrainian Cinema, the company she co-founded with Philip Sotnychenko (La Palisiada).
Alkim Özmen will be presenting My Happy Family about a 11-year-old boy who secretly makes a film capturing rare moments of joy in his abusive family. It won the award for best project at the Balkan Film Market in Tirana last December.
Producer Velvet Moraru of Icon Production returns with Mihai Dragolea’s Grained. Moraru won the pitching event’s main award last year with Cosmin Nicolae’s debut feature Pyrrhic.
Two other Romanian projects have been selected for this year’s line-up: STUDIOSET’s Die, please from Ioana Mischie, and actor-writer-director Razvan Marinescu’s debut feature Kid Hazard to be produced by Irina Enea of Baking Films.
Moldava will be represented by actor-director Ivan Naniev’s Winemaker’s Daughter, which receiced a special mention at the Heart of Europe Co-Production Forum in Warsaw.
Anna Sípos and Veronika Gál of Budapest-based Stranger Films will be pitching Swedish- born director Ottó Bánovits’ new feature project Divorce Room.
Serbian producer-writer-director Svetislav Dragomirović will be pitching his fiction debut Termites Have Wings of Approximately The Same Length, produced by Nevena Savić’s Cinnamon Films and Dragomirović’s own company Gray Tree Film.
Completing the line-up is Turkish newcomer Ferit Kilic’s directorial feature debut Dancing Angels to be produced by Karma Films, about a 15-year-old boy who is set to make a fresh start at a private school after a failed suicide attempt.
Projects previously pitched at TPS include Maksym Nakonechnyi’s Butterfly Vision and Teodora Ana Mihai’s La Civil, which both debuted in Cannes’ Un Certain Regard, and Mihai Mincan’s To The North, selected for Venice in 2022.
Other RO Days initiatives include Drama Room for drama series and 10 For Film showcasing 10 undiscovered Romanian actors.
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