Nine features and three documentary projects from Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Serbia, Russia and Turkey are to be pitched to potential co-producers and financiers at the Directors Across Borders' (DAB) first Regional Co-Production Forum (July 10-12) during next week's Golden Apricot International Film Festival in Yerevan.

The low-budget projects include the coming of age tale Susa by Georgian director Giorgi Chalauri, who participated in the Berlinale Talent Campus this year, Armenian actor-director Mikayel Vatinyan's feature debut Joan And The Voices which already has Cedomir Kolar and Danis Tanovic's Paris-based A.S.A.P. Films onboard as co-producer, Turkish director Ozcan Alper's Autumn's Lament, and a documentary about the people living on the shores of the Black Sea by Georgian filmmaker Artchil Khetagouri who won the Prix Regards Neufs for the best debut at the Nyon International Documentary Film Festival in April for his last documentary Akhmeteli 4.

The 12 projects will be presented to an international audience including producers Els Vandervorst (Isabella Films), Martin Hagemann (zero fiction), and Behrooz Hashemyan (Silkroad Productions), Bianca Taal, head of the Hubert Bals Fund, Nikolai Nikitin, representing the Berlinale World Cinema Fund, and Kim Dong-Ho, president of the Pusan International Film Festival.

According to the DAB's programme director Susanna Harutyunyan, the forum received around 30 projects from producers and directors in Afghanistan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Iran, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Serbia and Turkey wanting to pitch in Yerevan.

At the end of the forum, a jury of the attending producers, experts and funders will be invited to vote for two of the projects to receive a $6,828 (Euros 5,000) towards their project development, one of the grants being provided by Rotterdam's Hubert Bals Fund.

The three-day event will also include workshops on co-production by Cine-Regio's general secretary Charlotte Appelgren and package preparation by Martin Hagemann and a lecture on international trade with arthouse films by veteran marketing and sales expert Christa Saredi in collaboration with the Independent Filmmakers' Association - South Caucasus (IFA-SC).

Topics