Paris Project unveils 2012 selection

Upcoming films from Gurvinder Singh [pictured], Khavn De La Cruz and Wang Chao are among the 12 productions due to be presented at this year’s edition of the Paris Project co-production forum.

“It’s not a deliberate move but there is more of an accent on Asian films. Six of the 14 films hail from Asia,” comments Vanja Kaludjercic, who took over as head of the Paris Project this year.

Running July 2-4 within the confines of the Paris Cinema festival, Paris Project aims to connect filmmakers from across the world with French producers and distributors.

Indian filmmaker Singh, whose debut Alms For The Blind Horse premiered in the Orizzonti section of Venice last year and won the Special Jury Prize at Abu Dhabi, is seeking French backers for his second film The Fourth Direction, capturing two ordinary men caught up in the Sikh separatist violence of the 1980s.

Experimental Philippine filmmaker De La Cruz, a Rotterdam regular who screened his Mondomanila there earlier this year, will present Ruined Heart!, an exploration of love and violence set against the backdrop of Manila’s slums.

German producer Stephan Holl of Rapid Eye Movies is already attached to the project alongside De La Cruz’s long-time Philippine producer Achinette Villamor.

“This production is Khavn’s most ambitious to date. It will take him to another level of filmmaking,” says Kaludjercic.

Chinese director Wang Chao will present his road movie Looking For Rohmer, set between Beijing and Tibet, and Paris and Provence. Chao previously worked with French companies on his The Memory of Love, which was distributed by Bac in France last year.

Portuguese producer Luis Urbano, who recently co-produced Miguel Gomes’ Tabu, will bring Ivo Ferreira’s Letters From War, a biopic about focusing on the early years of Portuguese writer Antonio Lobo Antunes, which has already secured half its €1.4 million budget.

Italian producer Marta Donzelli, who past credits productions include Michelangelo Frammartino’s Le Quattro Volte which screened in Directors’ Fortnight in 2010, will present Chiara Malta’s feature I’m Not An American Actress about a Romanian actress living in the US and Rome.

Two of the projects have been selected in partnership with the Hong Kong Asia Finance Forum (HAF): Flora Lau’s Bau’s tragicomedy Bends, about an unexpected friendship between a chauffeur and the affluent housewife, and Jessey Tsang Tsui-Shan’s documentary Flowing Stories capturing dying village traditions in Hong Kong’s new territories.

Paris Project will also present a selection of the projects being developed by the current residents of the Cannes Residence du Festival. They include Good Manners, the second feature from Brazilian director Juliana Rojas whose debut picture Hard Labor screened in UCR last year.

Four Taiwanese produced projects will also be on the table including German director Eicke Bettinga’s Crossing about a young German man who heads to Taiwan when his best friend is killed in a violent assault.

It is Bettinga’s debut feature following several shorts including Gasp, which screened in competition at Cannes this year. Berlin-based Taiwanese Samuel Huang of Flabbergasted Films is producing.

Other industry events taking place during Paris Project include Ateliers du Cinema Européen (ACE) seminar entitled “The Three Ws of European Film Financing: where, what and why?” featuring ACE’s general manager Ronab Girre and consultant Joelle Levie.

European Audiovisual Entrepreneurs (EAVE) training body will also hold a discussion on how to co-produce with France, featuring Agat Ex-Nihilo producer Patrick Sobelman, Janja Kralj of Kinoelectron and Charlotte Uzu of Les Films d’ici.

Full details of the Paris Project line-up will go online this weekend (June 9-10).

The complete list of projects:

Atomic Love by Dror Shaul/ Israël/ Amir Feingold (Feingold Productions)
Bends by Flora Lau / Hong Kong / Melissa Lee (Shadow Puppet Productions)
Flowing Stories by Jessey Tsang Tsui-shan / Hong Kong / Teresa Kwong (River Vision Production)
Forever by Margarita Manda / Greece / Konstantinos Kontrovakis (CL Productions)
Four Colours by Bikas Ranjan Mishra / India / Sanjay Suri (Anticlock Films)
Humidity by Nikola Ljuca / Serbia/ Natasa Damnjanovic (Dart Film & Video)
I’m not an American Actress by Chiara Malta / Italy / Marta Donzelli (Vivo Film)
Land by Babak Jalali / Italy,Iran / Ginevra Elkan (Asmara Films)
Letters from War by Ivo Ferreira / Portugal / Luis Urbano (O Som e a Furia)
Looking for Rohmer by Wang Chao / China / Wang Chao (Wu Tong Film)
Ruined Heart! Another Love Story between a Criminal and a Whore by Khavn De La Cruz / Germany- Philippines / Achinette Villamor (Kamias Road), Stephan Holl (Rapid Eye Movies)
The Fourth Direction by Gurvinder Singh / India/ Kartikeya Narayan Singh (The Film Café)
The Never Born by Hector Ferreiro / Mexico,Bolivia / Victoria Guerreo (Naira Cine and Intento!)
The Tribe by Myroslav Slaboshpytskiy /Ukraine / Igor Savychenko (Pronto Film)