Newfeature projects by Ken Loach, Petr Zelenka and Oliver Parker are among sixinternational co-productions supported with a total of $4.1m (Zlotys 12.8m) bythe Polish Film Institute in its latest round of funding.

Loach's These Times, which hasproducer-distributor SPIInternational as its Polish co-producer, received $176,376 (ZL 546,508)production support. The Polish elements of the production include a Polish actor inthe cast and around 50 Polish extras who will beneeded for the day of location shooting planned in Katowice.

Meanwhile,$322,700 (ZL 1m) was awarded to Zelenka's project The Karamazovs (Karamazovi) which was presented at the CentEastpitching forum and will be produced by Prague-based Prvni Verejnopravni with Slovakia's Sisartand Poland's WarsawPact Film Production for shooting at Polish locations next June. Internationalsales are being handled by John Riley's Cinepol International.

Based onthe Dejvicke Theatre production of Dostojevsky's novel which has been runningin Prague for thepast five years, the film will feature leading Czech actor Ivan Trojan as theold Karamazov and actors from the stage production playing a theatre troupefrom Praguerehearsing the play on the eve of a theatre festival in Poland.

The FilmInstitute also backed Oliver Parker's TheLittle White Horse, based on Elizabeth Goudge's children's novel and to beco-produced by producer-distributor Best Film; Hungarian-born Jeno Hodi's VictorHugo adaptation The Hunchback; andthe international animation production TomTom - The Billion Heir which is being directed by Alexander Wieser and Grzegorz Handzlik forPoland's Orange - Studio Reclamy, Austria's Cinecartoon Filmproduction andIreland's Digital Animation Media.

The FilmInstitute's Deputy Director Maciej Karpinski told ScreenDaily.com that the young funding body has been particularlyactive in supporting international co-productions since its founding at the endof last year, with involvement in such films as Hanna A.W. Slak's family film Teah and Peter Greenaway's The Night Watch which continues shootingon location in Wroclaw until the end of the month.

Inaddition, the Film Institute has contributed to internationally financedprojects by local Polish filmmakers such as Dariusz Jablonski's Galician Tales, produced by his AppleFilm with Slovakia's Trigon; Kasia Adamik's GuerillaSoccer, to be produced by Studio Filmowe Tor with France's Mact Productionand - possibly - Germany's Egoli Tossell Film; and Lech Majewski's Beuys, which will be produced by AppleFilm with Germany's Pandora Film.

Two localinternational co-productions with Film Institute backing are currently shootingon location in Poland. RobertGlinski's Benek, a tragicomic storyset in the mining community of Upper Silesia, is being produced by Apple Filmwith Germany's Schmidtz Katze Film and France's Les Films du Poisson, whileAkson Studio brought French producer Margaret Menegoz's Les Films du Losangeonboard for veteran Polish filmmaker Andrzej Wajda's Post Mortem about the murder of 22,000 Polish officers in the woodsnear Katyn, Russia, and Kharkhov, Ukraine in 1940.

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