Leading producers tell Geoffrey Macnab what they hope to achieve at this year’s Production Finance Market

Kim Magnusson, M&M Productions, Denmark

Magnusson has two goals in attending PFM. On the one hand, he is looking for backers for $22.1m (€15m) Second World War epic Brighter Than The Sun, to be directed by Mikael Salomon. On the other, he will be revealing details of his new Copenhagen-based production company, Dansk Film Kompani.
In his days as managing director of Nordisk Film Production, Magnusson attended the PFM as a financier. Now, he is back — but on the other side of the table.

He acknowledges that it is tougher to work with the UK as a co-production partner under the terms of the UK tax credit than in old sale-and-leaseback days. “It might be harder now to get the money, but if you are in place to benefit from the [new] schemes, it’s easier than it was before.”

Maurizio Totti, Colorado Film, Italy

Totti, best known internationally for his films with Gabriele Salvatores, is attending the PFM with $8.9m English-language UK-set horror picture, Moths.
The film is being directed by Stefano Bessoni, who recently enjoyed success in Italy with supernatural thriller Imago Mortis.

Totti will be in London looking for UK co-production partners. He has meetings set up with Aramid, Lionsgate, Wild Bunch, CinemaNX and E1 Entertainment.
”Moths is an independent but not a low-budget movie,” he says. “We’re looking for solid backing. If potential partners like the movie, we can make a great international movie.”

If Moths takes wing, Totti has other potential English-language projects to push, including one for Salvatores.

Lionello Cerri, Lumiere & Co, Italy

Lumiere & Co is bringing two projects to the PFM, Artless And Jobless and Friendly Fire. “I participated last year and the PFM offers a very good organisation and very interesting contacts,” Cerri says.

He welcomes the fact the market takes place during the London Film Festival. The projects the producer is bringing to the PFM are both Italian language. “But we think they have a great international potential because of the universality of plot and subject.”

Friendly Fire is a $4.4m (€3m) Italy-France co-production about Giuliana Sgrena, a reporter working for the Italian newspaper Il Manifesto who was kidnapped in Iraq in 2005, and Nicola Calipari, the Italian secret-service agent who successfully freed her but was subsequently killed at a US checkpoint.

Artless And Jobless is a comedy about unemployed workers who plot to steal a hoard of contemporary art. Cerri aims to find European co-producers for both projects at the PFM.

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