VENICE GAP-FINANCING MARKET VENICE 4—6.09.2020 2 VENICE GAP-FINANCING MARKET 04.09 – 06.09.2020 LABIENNALE.ORG VENICEPRODUCTIONBRIDGE.ORG

VENICE BOOK OF PROJECTS FICTION AND DOCUMENTARY GAP-FINANCING FEATURE FILMS AND VR IMMERSIVE MARKET STORY PROJECTS 77. Mostra Internazionale d’Arte Cinematografica

La Biennale di Venezia Venice Gap-Financing Market La Biennale di Venezia Director General Fiction and Documentary and its collaborators for Andrea Del Mercato Feature Films and VR Immersive Book of Projects Story Projects Valentina Bellomo Artistic Director Erika Giorgianni of the Cinema Department Consultants Lara González Lobo Alberto Barbera Eva Morsch Kihn Jacopo Fabris Lucas Rosant Mariachiara Manci Venice Production Bridge Michel Reilhac Chiara Marin Pascal Diot Liz Rosenthal Alessandro Mezzalira Savina Neirotti Nikolas Montaldi Collaborators [email protected] Violetta Bava labiennale.org Francesco Giai Via veniceproductionbridge.org Naomi Roth

Main Broadcaster

Thanks to Db Logic S.r.l. Festival Scope

The Book of Projects for 2020 has been edited using the information assembled by July 20th, 2020. The Venice Production Bridge may not be held responsible for possible errors. THE VENICE PRODUCTION BRIDGE WELCOMES THE 55 SELECTED TEAMS AND THEIR PROJECTS TO THE 7TH EDITION OF THE VENICE GAP-FINANCING MARKET.

Needless to say that 2020 has been a very difficult year due to the global Covid-19 pandemic. Our industry belongs to the ones which have been deeply touched by this disaster and we stand in support with everyone who has been personally affected. The Venice Gap-Financing Market (VGFM) has been constantly adjusting itself to follow the evolution of the industry with the long-term aim of enabling producers and directors to complete their projects. This year it has a special role to contribute to the restart of cinema and VR worlds. The VGFM is proud to present this year 28 Fiction and Documentary Projects and 12 VR Immersive Story Projects. In addition to these 40 selected projects and by working closely with the Festival and La Biennale di Venezia’s training activities – Biennale College Cinema & Virtual Reality – we are honored to welcome the 12 VR Projects developed this year by the 4th edition of the Biennale College Cinema VR and the 3 Fiction projects developed by the 8thedition of the Biennale College Cinema. We are thus particularly proud to highlight some of the projects from our previous editions, which have been selected for the 77th Venice International Film Festival, Quo Vadis, Aida by Jasmila Zbanic (Venezia 77), La Nuit De Rois by Philippe Lacôte and Guerra e Pace by Massimo D’Anolfi and Martina Parenti (both Orizzonti), Spaccapietre by Gianluca and Massimiliano De Serio and Saint Narcisse by Bruce LaBruce (both in Giornate Degli Autori). During Berlinale 2020 the following, former VGFM projects were presented, El Profugo by Natalia Meta (competition), Charlatan by Agnieszka Holland (Special Gala), Semina il vento by Danilo Caputo (Panorama) and Death of Nintendo by Raya Martin (Generation). Since the beginning it has been our constant wish to open the VGFM to all genres, to first-time directors as well as to established auteurs, to projects reflecting diverse stories and different budgets coming from all over the world. With this edition we are happy to welcome the new fiction, animation and documentary projects of notable filmmakers such as Steve McQueen, Emily Atef, Giulio Ricciarelli, Anita Rocha da Silveira, Clement Virgo, Marian Mathias, Natalia López, Ena Sendijarević, Pia Marais, Malek Bensmaïl, Myrsini Aristidou, Andrei Cretulescu and Lotfy Nathan to name but a few. Among the VR Immersive Story Projects, which will be this year presented online, we are excited to have the new projects of creators such as Erfan Saadati, Zhi-Zhong Tang, Ioana Mischie, Amer Shomali, Hanna Västinsalo, Abdalsalam Alhaj, amongst many others. We would like to express our deepest gratitude to Creative Europe and its MEDIA programme, for the continuous support they have been giving to the VGFM for 6 years now.

Pascal Diot Savina Neirotti Head of the Venice Production Bridge VPB Content Curator

FICTION VIRTUAL REALITY AND DOCUMENTARY IMMERSIVE STORY PROJECTS PROJECTS 10 A BEAUTIFUL IMPERFECTION 68 ALONE AT NIGHT 12 A GIRL’S ROOM 70 BANKSY: THE WALLED 14 A PICTURE BOOK OFF HOTEL VR 16 AMATE SPONDE 72 BIRDIE LONG GONE 18 BOUAZIZI 74 GULLIVER’S PUTSCH 20 BROTHER 76 LET GO 22 CAPTAIN VOLKONOGOV 78 NÉPHÉLÉ ESCAPED 80 NIGHT SHIFT 24 CONVENIENCE STORE 82 PROJECT DASTAAN: 26 THE FAUN CHILD OF EMPIRE 28 IL LEGIONARIO 84 TANGIBLE UTOPIAS 30 IRIS 86 THE GARDEN 32 JEUX SANS FRONTIERES 88 THE GREATEST WAIT 34 LA GUARDIA AFTER THE LAST SKY 36 L’ETÀ DELL’INNOCENZA 90 THE SICK ROSE 38 MEDUSA 40 MEURSAULT CONTRE ENQUETE BIENNALE COLLEGE 42 MORE THAN EVER (MISTER) CINEMA - VIRTUAL 44 OCCUPIED CITY REALITY PROJECTS 46 PICCOLO CORPO 94 A VOCAL LANDSCAPE 48 RUNNER 96 CHROMA 11 50 SHIRIN EBADI: 98 DANCING LETTERS UNTIL WE ARE FREE 100 JAMIE & JAMIE 52 SUMMERLIGHT 102 NOWHERE LEFT TO GO AND THEN COMES THE NIGHT 104 MONO 54 SUPERNOVA 106 OPEN THE DOOR 56 SWEET DREAMS 108 PUPPET TROUBLE 58 THINGS THAT YOU KILL 110 THE PUB 60 TRANSAMAZONIA 112 THE WOLF AND THE LAMB 62 WHY WE FIGHT 114 TICKET TO NOWHERE 64 WIR WAREN KUMPEL 116 TOUCHED

BIENNALE COLLEGE CINEMA PROJECTS 120 BABADO 122 GOOD DEAL 124 THE PLANT UNDER THE WILD LAND 8 VENICE GAP-FINANCING MARKET FICTION AND DOCUMENTARY PROJECTS THE NETHERLANDS, BELGIUM, ITALY A BEAUTIFUL IMPERFECTION MICHIEL VAN ERP

DIRECTORS BIOGRAPHIES SYNOPSIS Michiel van Erp is an acclaimed and Amsterdam, 1758. Lucia, a renowned veiled award-winning documentary filmmaker, who courtesan known as Galathée, recognizes a more recently started directing fiction. His TV diplomat as her first love Giacomo Casanova. series Ramses (2014), received the Prix Without revealing her true identity and face, Europa and an Emmy Award. In 2018, his first she learns how he distrusts women because feature filmNiemand in de Stad (Open Seas) he was betrayed and abandoned by his first received two Dutch Golden Calfs at the love – Lucia. Netherlands Film Festival. Italy, 1742. Lucia and Giacomo meet at an Creative director is renowned photographer estate in Pasiano and fall in love instantly. Erwin Olaf. His bold and provocative work has When one side of Lucia’s face is completely earned commissions from institutions as Louis deformed by smallpox, she decides to leave Vuitton, Vogue and the Rijksmuseum. His the estate and Giacomo - who is on his way to work, including short films and multimedia marry her - since she believes her projects, were screened in exhibitions all disfigurement would be a too heavy burden around the world. for both their love and his career. As an outcast in the Italian countryside, Lucia reinvents herself through the ‘femmes savants’ LOG-LINE and socialite Venice. In the narrow-minded Based on true facts, A Beautiful Imperfection and secular Amsterdam, she rises to one of tells the empowering story of Lucia, Giacomo the most renowned courtesans, using her Casanova’s first and greatest love, who leaves deformity to her advantage. Italy for Amsterdam, after her face has been Amsterdam, 1758. Lucia reveals herself to disfigured by smallpox. 16 years later, when Giacomo to let him understand her true she has reinvented herself as a veiled reason for leaving him and more importantly, courtesan known by the name of Galathée, to start the next chapter of her life by they meet again. Without revealing her true embracing her body and face and turning her identity and face, Lucia and Giacomo become weakness into a strength. She does so and lovers once again. Does Lucia dare to unveil leaves for America, unveiled, with her patron herself and turn her weakness into her Jamieson and Giacomo’s unborn child. strength so she can be truly free in the face of her great love?

10 VENICE GAP-FINANCING MARKET GOALS AT GAP- MAIN PRODUCTION COMPANY DELEGATE PRODUCTION FINANCING MARKET Kaap Holland Film COMPANY To meet in person with potential distributors, CO-PRODUCTION COMPANIES Kaap Holland Film television-broadcasters and international Eyeworks Film & TV Drama, Kino Produzioni MAIN CONTACT PERSON sales agents in order to close the financing Maarten Swart later this year PARTNERS ATTACHED Netherlands Filmfund, CoBO Fund ADDRESS PROJECT TYPE AVROTROS (Dutch tv-broadcaster) Krom Boomssloot 22 Fiction Paradiso Films (Benelux distributor), 1011 GW Amsterdam, BASED ON Flanders Audiovisual Fund (VAF) The Netherlands by Arthur Japin In Lucia’s Eyes CURRENT STATUS OF PROJECT EMAIL FORMAT / RUNTIME Financing ​[email protected] ​HD / 120' CREATIVE TEAM PHONE LANGUAGE / LOCATION Michiel van Erp, Director +31 208545977 English / Veneto region, Venice, Erwin Olaf, Creative Director WEBSITE Amsterdam and Dutch countryside Arthur Japin, Writer kaaphollandfilm.nl BUDGET / FINANCING IN PLACE Maarten Swart, Producer € 4.952.296 / € 3.777.296

DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT PRODUCTION COMPANY PROFILE Never once in our personal lives, nor during Kaap Holland Film is an independent Dutch our careers as photographer/filmmaker, have production company founded by producer we been quite as captivated by both the Maarten Swart and consists of a team of subject matter and the overwhelming visual passionate professionals that strive to bring approach of a book. ‘In Lucia’s Eyes’ high quality and daring projects to wide encompasses everything we feel that a film audiences. Kaap Holland Film has a solid should express and visualize. The passionate track-record for genre films and crossover history of the life and love of a main character films with international appeal. We work very Michiel van Erp, who is the exception to the rule. A woman, closely together with a great deal of Director who literally gets damaged and turns into a experienced and emerging talents – both on pariah. But who then manages to turn her and off screen – in various structures and deformity into an advantage and fights her collaborations in order to do what we love way up. It fascinates us and we are moved by best: to create and produce films for this bittersweet love story in which one, after audiences in The Netherlands and around the many years, is reunited with the love of their world. life, but ultimately chooses peace and security, because the reality of the great love would be too heavy and unmanageable. I MAIN FILMOGRAPHY think it’s sad, but also a sign of wisdom. OF PRODUCER Visuality and sensuality will be very important 2020 Zee van Tijd (Sea of Time) by Theu Erwin Olaf, elements in this film. We consider ourselves Boermans (in post-production) Creative Director lucky that we can work on this film together. 2019 The Goldfinch by John Crowley We share a fascination for people who deviate (co-producer) from the norm, the underdog. Erwin will give 2018 Bon Bini Holland 2 by Jon Karthaus the film a unique visual style, while Michiel will 2017 Ron Goossens, Low Budget be focussing on authentic acting. We will be a Stuntman by Steffen Haars and Flip van der perfect team together! Kuil 2017 Le Fidèle by Michaël Roskam (co-producer) 2017 Dunkirk by Christopher Nolan (co-producer)

Maarten Swart, Producer PREVIOUS WORK BY DIRECTOR ON FESTIVAL SCOPE PRO Niemand in de Stad (Open Seas)

11 A Beautiful Imperfection FRANCE, FINLAND, GERMANY A GIRL’S ROOM AINO SUNI

DIRECTOR’S BIOGRAPHY SYNOPSIS Aino Suni is one of the most promising Elina, a 17-year old aspiring rapper, is forced Scandinavian directors of her generation. Her to leave her home country of Finland and short filmsTurnaround and Wolf Carver were move to the South of France when her mother selected in major film festivals such as finds a French boyfriend. She is immediately Clermont-Ferrand and Sarajevo and were drawn to her new stepsister Sofia, 18, a broadcasted on Canal+, RTI and YLE. Her charismatic ballet dancer who leads a double documentary filmNever Again, about the life full of boys and drugs. Soon, Elina and female rap artist Mercedes Bentso, premiered Sofia’s friendship turns into a power game in 2018. The same year, her debut feature film with toxic consequences... project A Girl’s Room was selected at EAVE and received the Eurimages coproduction development award at Baltic Event. Aino is a Berlinale Talents alumni. She’s also a member of the European Women’s Audiovisual Network (EWA).

LOG-LINE A Girl’s Room is a psychological thriller about a Nordic hip-hop teen who enters into a power game with her new stepsister, a charismatic French ballet dancer.

12 VENICE GAP-FINANCING MARKET GOALS AT GAP- MAIN PRODUCTION COMPANY DELEGATE PRODUCTION FINANCING MARKET Adastra Films COMPANY Main territories still open. Willing to meet TV Adastra Films CO-PRODUCTION COMPANIES buyers, sales agents, French and foreign Oma Inge Film, MADE MAIN CONTACT PERSON distributors. Also considering equity to close Tigrane Minassian our financing. CURRENT STATUS OF PROJECT Shooting in September 2020 ADDRESS PROJECT TYPE 11 Avenue Maurice Chevalier, Fiction CREATIVE TEAM Aino Suni, Director and Writer Bât. CréACannes, FORMAT / RUNTIME Carmen Kassovitz, Camille, Mehdi Nebbou, 06150 Cannes 4K / 110' Chilla, Juliette Gernez, Elsi Sloan, Julia France BASED ON Strowski, Samuel Le Bihan, Main Cast EMAIL Original Idea Sébastien Aubert, Frauke Kolbmüller, [email protected] , LANGUAGE / LOCATION Ilona Tolmunen Producers CELL PHONE French / Nice, Cannes, Helsinki, Hamburg Kerttu Hakkarainen, DoP +33 619434051 Carlotta Kittel, Editor BUDGET / FINANCING IN PLACE Marine Galliano, Costume Designer WEBSITE € 2.200.000 / € 1.700.000 JB Dunckel (AIR), Composer adastra-films.com

DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT PRODUCTION COMPANY PROFILE It feels as if friendship between girls is the Founded in 2008 by Sébastien Aubert and most intimate, dependent relationship there is: David Guiraud, Adastra Films is a French it’s like a marriage. Sometimes the line production company based in Cannes. It between friendship and romantic love even produced the French-Georgian drama Brides gets blurry. I’ve had such intense friendships (awarded at Berlinale 2014), the US thriller The where one has all the power and the other has Strange Ones (awarded at SXSW 2017) and none. I’ve been the underdog, the one who 16 short films, including 4 selections at bargains for affection and tries to please. But Sundance and a program of shorts Aino Suni, I’ve also been the one who holds all the cards broadcasted on Netflix. As of today, Adastra Director and Writer and used my position in a cruel way. Films has received over 300 awards Elements of danger will hold the audience’s worldwide, including “Best Emerging breath. How far will Elina go? Like trapped in a Producer” by France Televisions. spider’s web, Elina falls in a spiral of It is also part of the “Future Leaders in th obsession, from which she is not able to Production” of Screen Daily during the 68 escape. This thriller links together different Cannes Film Festival. worlds, seemingly contradictory: the hip-hop street vibe contrasts with Sofia’s bourgeois MAIN FILMOGRAPHY lifestyle, while classical ballet, with its rigorous OF PRODUCER approach, is opposed to a seedy and dangerous night life. 2020 Domingo by Raul L. Echeverria (in post-production) Tigrane Minassian, My cinematic approach is strongly based on Producer by Michael Covino (Line Elina’s point of view. We hear and see the 2019 The Climb Producer) world through her emotions, but Sofia quickly by Christopher becomes her sole focus and reason to live. 2017 The Strange Ones Radcliff and Lauren Wolkstein We are invited on a journey into Sofia’s by Tinatin Kajrishvili mysterious world, juxtaposed with the 2014 Brides (Short) by Chris immaculate daytime universe of ballet. 2014 Jonathan’s Chest Radcliff 2011 Deux Inconnus (Short) by Christopher Radcliff and Lauren Wolkstein

PREVIOUS WORK BY DIRECTOR Sébastien Aubert, Producer ON FESTIVAL SCOPE PRO Turnaround Wolf Carver

13 A GIRL’S ROOM JAPAN, GERMANY A PICTURE BOOK ​TOMOKO KANA

DIRECTOR’S BIOGRAPHY SYNOPSIS Born in Tokyo, she appeared in a TV Satoko is a 32-year-old mother living in a small documentary by Hirokazu Koreeda at the age town. Every night she reads her 4- year-old of 19 and decided to pursue a career in film daughter a picture book, “Nina’s Apple Tree”. world. After working as a news director at Satoko’s peaceful life changes after a strong Japan’s TV broadcaster NHK, she became earthquake and a nuclear accident. Soon independent. In 2007 her first narrative after giving birth to her second child, she finds screenplay Two by the River won Sundance/ out her breast milk is contaminated with NHK International Filmmakers Award at radiation. Sundance Film Festival. In 2009 she won the She secretly tells her grandmother about her Asia Cinema Fund Asian Network of worries but she passes away the following Documentary Award at Busan International month. She leaves Satoko a letter. “I was also Film Festival for her third filmBeautiful Islands exposed to radiation in Nagasaki when I was (Executive producer Koreeda Hirokazu). In a child. I haven’t told this to anyone. If you 2016 A Lullaby Under the Nuclear Sky want to protect your children, do all you can participated numerous film festivals and do.” Satoko later learns that “Nina’s Apple opened in theaters through out Japan. The Tree” is based on a true story about the Two Directors: A Flame in Silence was world Chernobyl accident. Satoko and her journalist th premiered as part of BIFF 20 anniversary friend Yuki travel to Germany to meet Nina. special series. Nina recovered from thyroid cancer. She then moved to Germany and started working for a LOG-LINE natural energy company founded by mothers who were concerned about children’s health ​A miraculous true story of women whose lives after the nuclear accident. At the end of her changed forever after the Fukushima and trip, Nina takes Satoko and Yuki to Chernobyl incidents. “My daughter’s picture Wunderland Kalkar – an amusement park book pushed my back.”, after learning the true which was originally a nuclear power site but story behind a picture book and the girl in the was never completed. Satoko gains courage, book who lives in Germany, Satoko’s journey and makes a big decision before returning to begins with an ending she never imagined. Japan.

14 VENICE GAP-FINANCING MARKET GOALS AT GAP- MAIN PRODUCTION COMPANY DELEGATE PRODUCTION FINANCING MARKET Horizon Features Co., Ltd. COMPANY To find a co-producer and financiers in EU CURRENT STATUS OF PROJECT Horizon Features Co., Ltd. nations to fill in the production budget gap, as Development MAIN CONTACT PERSON well as expanding the creative input. CREATIVE TEAM Mari Mukai

PROJECT TYPE Tomoko Kana, Director and Writer ADDRESS Fiction Mari Mukai, Producer Hase 8 Bldg 3F-314, Oomandokoro-cho 680- FORMAT / RUNTIME 1, Shimogyo-ku Kyoto, Kyoto, 6008413 HD / 90' Japan BASED ON EMAIL True Story [email protected] LANGUAGE / LOCATION PHONE / CELL PHONE ​Japanese, German, English / +81 753656100 Japan, Germany +81 8033659985 BUDGET / FINANCING IN PLACE WEBSITE € 447.200​ / €​ 313.040 kanatomoko.jp/en/apb/

DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT PRODUCTION COMPANY PROFILE ​I’ve been searching for light. Ever since that Horizon Features Co., Ltd. was founded in moment of the Fukushima nuclear accident. 2006 and has been producing and creating Not knowing I was pregnant, I went into the award winning feature documentary films and coverage of the site because I happened to TV programs. The company has sold films to be born on the same day as the Fukushima many territories including China’s CCTV. In Nuclear Power Plant, and felt I had a 2009 Beautiful Islands (Executive Producer responsibility to face the accident. I can’t Hirokazu Koreeda) won Asian Cinema Fund forget what I saw there. Since that day, I have AND Award at BIFF and opened in theaters in Tomoko Kana, been looking for a light that will lead me to a USA, Korea and Japan. International Director and Writer real closure. The first part of the story is based co-production with Korea’s KBS, The Two on stories told by more than 200 mothers I Directors: A Flame in Silence was world interviewed. To protect children, they stepped premiered at BIFF 2015 as part of the festival’s forward with the determination to give up their 20th anniversary special series The Power of job, hometown, and even their husbands. The Asian Cinema. main character Satoko is drawn with profiles of all the mothers I met. The style of the work will be a mixture of documentary and drama, with MAIN FILMOGRAPHY casting of real life people and actors. The OF PRODUCER lighting is controlled impressively in two parts. 2019 A Story on the Shore by Tomoko Kana In the first half of the series, I will emphasize 2014 A Lullaby Under the Nuclear Sky by Mari Mukai, the shading to symbolize the Japanese Tomoko Kana Producer people at the time of the loss of electricity and 2015 The Two Directors: A Flame in prosperity, and in the German part, I will Silence by Tomoko Kana induce the light of salvation. 2009 Beautiful Islands by Kana Tomoko

PREVIOUS WORK BY DIRECTOR ON FESTIVAL SCOPE PRO Beautiful Islands

15 A Picture Book ​ITALY AMATE SPONDE BELOVED SHORES EGIDIO ERONICO

DIRECTOR’S BIOGRAPHY SYNOPSIS Born in Rome in 1955, Egidio Eronico worked ​Amate Sponde is a survey of our country, Italy, as an architect until 1994. He made his debut through images and music only. From in 1982 as director and over the years he geography and environment to economy and participated with his films in numerous industry, from housing and demography to festivals, including Turin, Locarno, Pesaro, anthropology and culture. The film displays a Annecy, Venice, Berlinale, Moscow and many domestic atlas of much loved, yet lost, others around the globe. Egidio has directed wonders and places. The daily life of people more than 15 features and documentaries caught in between the glorious past, and the during his career. Among them Nessuno mi apparent stagnation of the present. In a troverà - Majorana Memorandum and My narrative structure composed solely of images Father - Rua Alguem, 5555. and music, without words and apparently also without a plot, the film returns to the nature of cinema itself by focusing on the expressive LOG-LINE powers of photography in motion and Amate Sponde is a visual poem about Italy. montage. It is a Grand Tour for modern times: The film casts a glance on the life of the from the Alps to Sicily, examining scenery, country, from cultural and environmental activities, people and stories to reftect on the heritage to economy and industry. Images geographical, social and cultural identity of a and music proceed in a continuum, where the nation. From the dizzying height of the sky to alternation of extremely diverse scenes the closeness of a portrait, from the exploding represent the possible biography of a nation. energy of an orchestra to the chords of a solo piano, Amate Sponde catches Italy as it looks nowadays. A country, in spite of everything, in continuous transformation, suspended between the old and the new and the increasingly arduous intent to safeguard its own éthos.

16 VENICE GAP-FINANCING MARKET GOALS AT GAP- MAIN PRODUCTION COMPANY DELEGATE PRODUCTION FINANCING MARKET EiE film COMPANY To secure gap finance through international CO-PRODUCTION COMPANIES EiE film co-productions, international pre-sales. Schicchera Production MAIN CONTACT PERSON Engage new financiers in the distribution Alessandro Carroli strategy. PARTNERS ATTACHED Istituto​ Luce-Cinecittà ADDRESS PROJECT TYPE ​Corso Vittorio Emanuele II 108 Documentary CURRENT STATUS OF PROJECT Pre-production 10121 Torino FORMAT / RUNTIME Italy 4K HDR / 80' CREATIVE TEAM Egidio Eronico, Director EMAIL BASED ON Alessandro Carroli, Leonardo Baraldi, [email protected] Original Idea Producers CELL PHONE LANGUAGE / LOCATION Sara Purgatorio, DoP +39 3311642205 ​Italian / The film is shot in 18 regions Vittorio Cosma, Composer WEBSITE throughout Italy eiefilm.com BUDGET / FINANCING IN PLACE € 844.561.46​ / €​ 595.754.03

DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT PRODUCTION COMPANY PROFILE Amate Sponde’s idea comes from the desire Established in 2007, EiE film is an and the need to use cinematographic images independent company based in Turin, Italy, to describe the current physiognomy of Italy. always oriented towards the international The role of the music can be considered market. For the first seven years of its activity, central or, even better, symbiotic, as it is the company has been mainly devoted to the closely connected to the act of creating field of creative documentary, developing a images. The film structure could be compared strong network of worldwide partners and a to a musical suite. It begins naturally, with a specific expertise in co-production Egidio Eronico, prelude followed by a series of different mechanisms. With the new acquisition, in Director movements. From the natural and January 2015, the horizon of EiE film was morphological features of the territory to widely expanded opening to the production of industrial and manufacturing activities. From serial content for television. agricultural districts to great urban centres. From land consumption and exploitation of the environment to projects intended to safeguard MAIN FILMOGRAPHY the country’s ecosystems. From the most OF PRODUCER advanced frontiers of research to the old and 2019 Umberto B. by Francesco Amato new experiences of collective living. Our (co-producer) objective, or ambition, is to reclaim a civil 2016 Funne. Sea Dreaming Girls identity that is not separated from the physical by Katia Bernardi (co-producer) Alessandro Carroli, environment which has generated and 2016 Hold me Tight(s) by Nicola Contini Producer shaped it over time. The important thing is not (co-producer) really trying to understand but trying to feel who we are, where we are and what we don’t want to lose. PREVIOUS WORK BY DIRECTOR ON FESTIVAL SCOPE PRO Nessuno mi troverà - Majorana Memorandum

Leonardo Baraldi, Producer

17 Amate Sponde FRANCE, GERMANY, TUNISIA ​BOUAZIZI LOTFY NATHAN

DIRECTOR’S BIOGRAPHY SYNOPSIS Lotfy Nathan’s first feature film, the ​Mohamed Tarek Bouazizi, a young 25-year documentary 12 O’Clock Boys, for which he old Tunisian, only aspires to live a simple life. was awarded the HBO Prize ‘Emerging He sells fruits on markets to provide for his Artists’, has been selected in more than 50 family, whose survival rests on his shoulders. international festivals, including SXSW and Every day he is in the streets selling fruits, an Sundance LA. 12 O’Clock Boys has been ordeal that is punctuated by the optioned by Will Smith’s company, Oberbrook hide-and-seek game with corrupt and violent Entrertainement, for a fiction film adaptation. police officers. In 2015, Lotfy Nathan was a member of the Hopeful for a better future, Tarek works hard, Cinereach Foundation’s residency program for and invests his savings in a van that will allow directors. He currently works on developing him to improve his lot. His efforts, however, will his first fiction feature film,Bouazizi , for which only result in his gradual abasement at the he took part in the 2016 Sundance Institute hands of rotten institutions and of an Screenwriters Lab. indifferent society. In background, the clamor of the rebellion LOG-LINE against the state’s oppression is resonating. Activists are mobilizing against the corruption Bouazizi’s story is a portrait of the fall of a of the regime. Under the influence of his man. His tragedy is inevitable-it lies in his friends, Tarek becomes aware of society’s naive hope, pitted against the corruption and failings, and realizes the injustice of his destitution that surrounds him. His act of powerlessness. self-immolation, born out of personal despair, becomes the ultimate political catalyst. Faced with the inescapable reality of the denial of his existence, Bouazizi takes the momentous decision to immolate himself in front of the Governorate. There was born the Arab Spring, and the wave of political change it heralds, which will prove to bring hope as well as disappointment and despair in Northern Africa and in the Middle East.

18 VENICE GAP-FINANCING MARKET GOALS AT GAP- MAIN PRODUCTION COMPANY DELEGATE PRODUCTION FINANCING MARKET Cinenovo COMPANY To find additional partners, eg. coproducers, CO-PRODUCTION COMPANIES Cinenovo distributors for pre-sales, or foreign national Detail Film, Cinetelefilms, Anonymous MAIN CONTACT PERSON funds. Content, Spacemakers, Summertime, MacPac Julie Viez Entertainment PROJECT TYPE ADDRESS Fiction PARTNERS ATTACHED ​89 Rue de l’Église FORMAT / RUNTIME Film Constellation, Arte / ZDF, Cinereach 75015 Paris, 35 mm / 90' CURRENT STATUS OF PROJECT France BASED ON Pre-production EMAIL Original Idea CREATIVE TEAM [email protected] LANGUAGE / LOCATION Lotfy Nathan, Director and Writer CELL PHONE ​Arabic / Tunisia Julie Viez, Main Producer +33 663812048 BUDGET / FINANCING IN PLACE € 1.005.195 / €​ 740.360,37

DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT PRODUCTION COMPANY PROFILE Bouazizi’s story is a simple, tragic parable. Cinenovo was created in 2012 by Julie Viez. My aim is to present a character who is not Driven by a commitment to high- quality heroic; he was an everyman, a relatively art-house cinema, Cinenovo aims to discover obscure, apolitical person. But, in his new international talent whose cinema character, we have an incredible, transcends cultural boundaries and whose contemporary picture, full of humanity and stories speak to a global audience. Hailing irony, of an individual who becomes from a rich background in international and politicized, and embodies the intangible independent film production, Julie believes Lotfy Nathan matter that spurs revolution. His story reveals talent shouldn’t be bounded by borders. Last Writer-Director the human, existential conflict that is born out year, Cinenovo shot La Salamandre, the debut of the wrongs of society and which grows and feature of Alex Carvalho. festers in an individual, and yielded events that were massive in scope. There is a core existential struggle here that we can convey in MAIN FILMOGRAPHY Tarek’s story which is paralleled all over the OF PRODUCER world. This anti-hero is one that today’s 2020 La Salamandre by Alex Carvalho audience understands, and in Tarek’s story 2018 M by Yolande Zauberman we have it in a real-life character with an 2018 Knife+Heart by Yann Gonzalez incredibly unique setting. The vérité, 2018 Long Day’s Journey into Night by Bi immersive approach here is what will make Gan 2017 Kings by Deniz Gamze Ergüven Julie Viez this startlingly real and powerful. Producer PREVIOUS WORK BY DIRECTOR ON FESTIVAL SCOPE PRO 12 O’Clock Boys

19 Bouazizi ​CANADA ​BROTHER CLEMENT VIRGO

DIRECTOR’S BIOGRAPHY SYNOPSIS Clement Virgo is one of Canada’s foremost Brother crafts a heartbreaking story about the film directors. TV directing credits include profound love that exists between brothers, Empire, The Wire and OWN network series and the senseless loss of lives cut short with Greenleaf (2017), where he also served as the shot of a gun. Michael and Francis are Executive Producer with Oprah Winfrey. In Trinidadian immigrants raised by their single 2015, he directed and co- wrote the miniseries mother, Ruth, who works triple shifts to keep adaptation of Lawrence Hill’s The Book of them going. She raised her boys so that they Negroes. Virgo’s features Poor Boy’s Game might fulfill the elusive promise of success of (2007) and Lie with Me (2005) each their adopted home. Coming of age in The premiered at top tier festivals and sold in over Park, a cluster of concrete towers on the edge 30 territories. His debut film,Rude , premiered of Toronto, Francis is a rambunctious, at Cannes, was named Best Canadian extroverted, loving son. Michael is younger, Feature Film at TIFF 1995 and was a part of sensitive and internal. As they mature they Locarno’s 2019 Black Light Retrospective. battle careless prejudices, society’s low expectations, and the confticting high hopes of Ruth. Fed up with constraints, Francis LOG-LINE moves out leaving Ruth devastated and Propelled by the pulsing beats of Toronto’s thrusting reticent Michael into a role of distinct hip hop scene, Brother is the leadership at home. But the bright hopes of compelling story of Francis and Michael as Francis, Michael and their friend, Aisha, are they mature into young men. Francis dreams irrevocably thwarted by a tragic shooting. of a future in music. Michael’s dreams are of Suffocating police suspicion follows, leaving Aisha, the smartest girl in their school whose Ruth emotionally gutted, broken down and own eyes are firmly set on a life elsewhere. empty. When the death of her father prompts But their bright hopes are irrevocably thwarted Aisha to return to The Park 10 years later, she by a tragic shooting. Suffocating suspicions reconnects with Michael and they re-enter the follow in the aftermath leaving their protective tragic moment when life changed for all of mother, Ruth, emotionally gutted. But the them. hopes of the brothers are kept alive in the music that emerges from the tragedy.

20 VENICE GAP-FINANCING MARKET GOALS AT GAP- MAIN PRODUCTION COMPANY DELEGATE PRODUCTION FINANCING MARKET ​Conquering Lion Pictures COMPANY To connect with creative and financial CO-PRODUCTION COMPANIES Conquering Lion Pictures partners to solidify the final financing; Hawkeye Pictures MAIN CONTACT PERSON to identify European broadcasters Damon D’Oliveira and distributors. PARTNERS ATTACHED BRON Studios, Elevation Pictures, ADDRESS PROJECT TYPE Telefilm Canada, ON Creates ​31 Gore Vale Avenue Fiction CURRENT STATUS OF PROJECT M6J2R5 Toronto, FORMAT / RUNTIME Pre-production Canada ​HD Digital / 100' CREATIVE TEAM EMAIL BASED ON Clement Virgo, Writer and Director [email protected] by David Chariandy Brother Damon D’Oliveira, Main Producer PHONE / CELL PHONE LANGUAGE / LOCATION Aeschylus Poulos, Producer +1 4169671055 ​English / Canada (Toronto) Sonya Di Rienzo, Producer +1 4162094745 BUDGET / FINANCING IN PLACE WEBSITE € 4.502.021​ / €3.227.514​ conqueringlionpictures.com

DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT PRODUCTION COMPANY PROFILE Brother is a poignant story of immigrant Conquering Lion Pictures is a dynamic struggle highlighting the universal desire for production company under the leadership of social mobility. The story of Michael and Damon D’Oliveira and Clement Virgo. In 2015, Francis takes place in a West Indian CLP produced the award-winning miniseries, immigrant household in a low-income housing The Book Of Negroes, which was nominated complex in Scarborough in the early 90’s. for 2 U.S. Critics Choice Television Awards Having grown up a decade earlier and a few and was a finalist for the 2016 Peabody miles away, it was easy for me to identify with Awards. Their feature films have premiered at Clement Virgo, these young men and their world. top tier festivals, including Cannes, Berlin and Writer and Director Like Michael and Francis, I was raised by a TIFF. CLP is currently financing their next disciplinarian single mom who spent most of feature and have a number of innovative TV her waking hours working menial jobs in far projects in development with HBO, ITV/Circle corners of the city. And like them, I came of of Confusion and Higher Ground Productions. age in a world where young black masculinity is seen as an offense. I grew up questioning MAIN FILMOGRAPHY how you come to understand yourself, when OF PRODUCER the world expects you to be a criminal just because you’re black? How do you come to 2019 The Rest of Us by Aisling Chin-Yee know your own emotions, when you’re (feature) expected to have none? How do you 2018 The Grizzlies by Miranda de Pencier Damon D’Oliveira, transcend the prejudices and expectations (feature) Producer that confront you daily? 2015 The Book of Negroes by Clement Virgo (mini-series) The themes in Brother look at growing up with by Maxime a certain gaze upon you, and being made to 2014 Ce Qu’on a/What we Have Desmons (feature) feel uncomfortable in the city in which you’ve by Clement Virgo (feature) always lived. These are themes not only of 2005 Lie with Me by Clement Virgo (feature) decades past, but of today, and not only ones 1995 Rude that relate to young black men, but to all of us. PREVIOUS WORK BY DIRECTOR ON FESTIVAL SCOPE PRO Rude

21 Brother RUSSIA КАПИТАН ВОЛКОНОГОВ БЕЖАЛ CAPTAIN VOLKONOGOV ESCAPED NATASHA MERKULOVA, ALEKSEY CHUPOV

DIRECTORS BIOGRAPHIES SYNOPSIS Natasha Merkulova and Aleksey Chupov are Leningrad, USSR, 1938: the era of political an extraordinary writing/directing tandem. persecutions and absolute fear. The Captain Their first joint film,Intimate Parts, received the of the National Security Service Fedor Best Debut award at the Kinotavr Festival Volkonogov (32) is famous for successes in 2013. The second feature filmThe Man Who getting confessions from the innocent Surprised Everyone, was selected for the “enemies of the State” through tortures with Orizzonti Competition of the 75th Venice subsequent execution. But the moment International Film Festival and won the Best comes for the system to turn the eye on its Actress Award. Together they co-wrote box soldiers. Volkonogov’s supervisor commits office and award- winning hits: fantasy project suicide. Fedor foresees his own arrest and Gogol and the space blockbuster Salyut-7. In flees, thus becoming “the enemy” hunted by 2020, the new project of the writing/directing the colleagues. Lucky to receive regular tandem, the game-changing action thriller clothes, the Captain is looking to shelter in series Call Center. town. At night, hungry and scared, Fedor is stricken by the insight that he has one day to live followed by eternal torments. But if the LOG-LINE Captain is to repent and one innocent soul is Fedor Volkonogov, NKVD Captain infamous to forgive him, the executioner will be blessed for torturing innocent people in Stalin-era with the chance of redemption. Fedor steals USSR, foresees that he is about to be the file with the names of his victims and sets persecuted by colleagues. During the attempt on the mission to find their relatives and ask to flee he is stricken by the redemption insight for forgiveness. The Captain visits a chain of to be fulfilled before his hunters get him not to scared families who have renounced their become the prey themselves. loved ones, trust no one and are not ready to listen to Volkonogov. This route becomes the pre-death repentance for the executor, the attempt to redeem his sins and the chance to make a good deed.

22 VENICE GAP-FINANCING MARKET GOALS AT GAP- MAIN PRODUCTION COMPANY DELEGATE PRODUCTION FINANCING MARKET ​Lookfilm COMPANY To find co-producers for post-production, CURRENT STATUS OF PROJECT ​Lookfilm world-sales agent, partners in pre- Pre-production MAIN CONTACT PERSON sales including distributors, platforms, Nadia​ Zaionchkovska broadcasters. CREATIVE TEAM Natasha Merkulova, Aleksey Chupov, ADDRESS PROJECT TYPE Directors and writers Pravda str., Building 24-2 Fiction Yuriy Borisov, Timofey Tribuntsev, 127137 Moscow, FORMAT / RUNTIME Aleksandr Yatsenko, Main Cast Russia ​Digital / 105' Valeriy Fedorovich, Evgeniy Nikishov, EMAIL BASED ON Aleksandr Plotnikov, Producers ​[email protected] Original Idea Nadezhda Zaionchkovska, Co-Production Excecutive CELL PHONE LANGUAGE / LOCATION Mart Taniel, DoP +380 67 4054015 Russian / Russia​ (Saint Petersburg, Moscow) Sergey Fevralev, Production designer WEBSITE BUDGET / FINANCING IN PLACE Nadezhda Vasilieva, Costume designer look-film.tv/en/ € 1.627.349 / €1.137.500 Stanislav Krechkov, Sound

DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT PRODUCTION COMPANY PROFILE The main message of the film is that even a Lookfilm is a Russian film company that repentant executioner has no place in produces series, feature and short films. Heaven. In Russia several generations have The company was founded in 2014 and has been traumatized by fear after decades of successfully cooperated with the biggest repressions with the bloodiest period of Russian TV channels. More than twenty TV 1937-1938. Our parents remembered it, series, five feature films and 10 short films passed on the fear, but we do not want to live were produced by the studio. The projects ​Natasha Merkulova, Aleksey Chupov, with it. We are telling a story of two worlds: the were awarded by Russian and international Directors first world focuses on the authorities (NKVD) festivals including The Hope Factory by and the second as a mirror centers on the Natalia Meshchaninova (Rotterdam 2014), families of repressed victims. The line General, The Dejan Stanic by Bakur between two worlds is almost invisible: the Bakuradze (Locarno 2017) An Ordinary idea is to shoot the NKVD episodes as a Woman by Boris Khlebnikov (Best Actress paradise full of sunlight and to convey the Prize at Séries Mania International Festival fragility of the mirror world through the artistic 2018). means. This is not a historical movie; we would like to create a special world. The year of the Great Terror 1938 will be indicated only MAIN FILMOGRAPHY Valeriy Fedorovich, Evgeniy Nikishov, on gigantic blimp that travels from scene to OF PRODUCER Producers scene and explodes at the climax. We do not 2018 An Ordinary Woman by Boris want to dress people exclusively in 30’s Khlebnikov fashion. In creating our world, we want to 2016 Sticky Notes by Amanda Sharp emphasize the universality of dictatorship, 2016 Dream Fish by Anton Bilzho violence and pressure. The strong Captain 2015 General, The | Dejan Stanic by Bakur realizes he is not untouchable, feels fragile, Bakuradze scared and repents. This is a story of a 2014 The Hope Factory by Nataliya repentant executioner on the mission to earn Meshchaninova access to eternal paradise. 2013 Intimate Parts by Aleksey Chupov and Natasha Merkulova Aleksandr Plotnikov, Producer PREVIOUS WORK BY DIRECTOR ON FESTIVAL SCOPE PRO The Man Who Surprised Everyone

Nadezhda Zaionchkovska, Co-Production Excecutive

23 CAPTAIN VOLKONOGOV ESCAPED RUSSIA, SLOVENIA, TURKEY ПРОДУКТЫ 24 CONVENIENCE STORE MICHAEL BORODIN

DIRECTOR’S BIOGRAPHY SYNOPSIS Michael Borodin was born in a town near What could be more natural than dropping by Tashkent in 1987. After graduating from a local convenience store after work? There university, he moved to Moscow where at first, are plenty of them in Moscow suburbia — tiny he led the life of an illegal immigrant. He spaces, hidden in the basements of ugly worked as a delivery guy and an odd-job concrete buildings. Almost all the employees worker, but finally got the chance to pursue there are illegal immigrants from Central Asia. his passion in film and entered the film school Busy local residents never really know and of Alexander Mitta in Moscow. Michael then hardly care what kind of life those people continued to produce and direct commercials have. Conveniece Store is a story about and music videos and opened his own modern slavery exposed to thousands of production company Sneg. In 2018 his short indifferent witnesses. Its main character, Normal was selected for the main competition Mukhabbat, lives and struggles in a typical of La Semaine de la Critique - Cannes Film around-the-clock shop. Along with the others Festival. she has to work unpaid, is not allowed to step outside and suffers from unceasing cruelty. Mukhabbat rebels when the owner of the store LOG-LINE takes her newborn son from her. Overcoming Conveniece Store is a personal, intimate story despair and fear Mukhabbat wins back her about being a mother and a woman under freedom, but because of this, she has to leave unbearable circumstance of modern slavery. Russia. Back home in Uzbekistan, Mukhabbat starts fighting to get her child back at any cost. Along her way she faces dramatic challenges dealing with pain, loss and horrible compromises.

24 VENICE GAP-FINANCING MARKET GOALS AT GAP- MAIN PRODUCTION COMPANY DELEGATE PRODUCTION FINANCING MARKET Metrafilms (Russia) COMPANY To find co-production partners and sales CO-PRODUCTION COMPANIES Metrafilms agents. Perfo (Slovenia), Karma Film (Turkey) MAIN CONTACT PERSON

PROJECT TYPE PARTNERS ATTACHED Asya Pavlovskaya Fiction Project supported by the Ministry ADDRESS FORMAT / RUNTIME of Culture of Russia Krymsky Val street, 8, ft. 1, ​4:3 / approx. 120' CURRENT STATUS OF PROJECT premises IV, room 9 BASED ON Pre-production 119049 Moscow, True​ story Russia CREATIVE TEAM LANGUAGE / LOCATION Michael Borodin, Director EMAIL Russia, Uzbek / Russia,​ Uzbekistan Artem Vasilyev, Asya Pavlovskaya, ​[email protected] BUDGET / FINANCING IN PLACE Julia Shaginurova, Producers PHONE / CELL PHONE € 600.000 / € 490.000 Ales Pavlin, Andrej Stritof, +7 4956498329 Diloy Gulun, Co-Producers +7 9257807295 Zukhara Naruzbayeva, Saule Zhaksylykkyzy, WEBSITE Tolibzhon Suleimanov, Main Cast metrafilms.ru Katya Smolina, DoP Vlad Ogay, Production Designer Olga Chelyapova, Costumes Igor Glaydkiy, Sound

DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT PRODUCTION COMPANY PROFILE The story of Mukhabbat takes us into the hell Metrafilms was founded in 1993 by Artem of modern slavery. We see the circumstances Vasilyev. Today Metrafilms is one of Russia’s that force people to become slaves and look top independent film companies, specializing in the eyes of those who consider themselves in development and production of entitled to own others. The body is one of the independent feature films, author-driven main themes of the film. This is a delicate series and documentaries. Films produced by topic that requires a subtle approach, so many Metrafilms have received numerous awards at moments will remain behind the scenes or will the most prestigious international film festivals ​Michael Borodin, be shown through other heroes. The and have been distributed in Russian and Director contemplative nature of a camera that worldwide by key distributors. dispassionately follows the heroes will contrast with a bright and rich, almost decorative background and create a hybrid of MAIN FILMOGRAPHY fiction and fact. The 4:3 format will create a OF PRODUCER claustrophobic feeling and add to our 2020 The Dorm by Roman Vasyanov concentration on the main character. I will 2018 The Humorist by Michael Idov, deliberately break the genre in the middle of 2018 Dovlatov by Alexey German Jr. the film to reftect the freedom gained by the 2018 Anna’s War by Aleksey Fedorchenko heroine through the imaginary road movie in 2015 Under Electric Clouds by Alexey her homeland — which is as imaginary as the German Jr. Artem Vasilyev, genre substitution. Though the film speaks 2008 Paper Soldier by Alexey German Jr. Producer about contemporary global issues, it is a personal, intimate story about a woman, a mother, about justice and dreams. Since this PREVIOUS WORK BY DIRECTOR story is based on true events, it is important ON FESTIVAL SCOPE PRO for me to convey an honest narrative and to The Registration fully experience this world together with the Normal audience.

Asya Pavlovskaya, Producer

25 CONVENIENCE STORE ROMANIA, FRANCE FAUNUL THE FAUN AUGUSTO ZANOVELLO

DIRECTOR’S BIOGRAPHY SYNOPSIS Augusto Zanovello has been working in The story unfolds mostly in Paris, away from different animation studios as animator, layout the front, and is about ballet dance, twinning, and story-boarder. He made several series transsexuality and crime established as a and short films includingWomen’s Letters in daily outcome during wartime. It brings in real 2013, who won more than 30 awards & was characters like Landru, the ladies’ killer, and selected in 105 festivals. He is also a Nijinski the dancer and choreographer, in a screenwriter for film and television and historical fiction. André’s character is loosely regularly works at the Gobelins. In June 2015 based on Paul Grappe, a travestite deserter he set up with Joachim Hérissé a company during WW1. Fernande is loosely based on - Komadoli Studio -, an animation company Fernande Segret, Landru’s mistress, the only specializing in stop-motion animation & woman besides his wife that he was seeing on production company. a regular basis with no intention of robbing or killing her. Soldier André Musil desers from the front to search for Fernande, his vanished twin LOG-LINE sister. He’s in love with her. In order to hide ​1918, French trench line. Soldier Andre Musil from the police and to be able to really start desserts to search for his beloved twin sister looking for her, he takes her identity, her Fernande, who suddenly stopped writing. clothes and appearance. After his She’s a dancer at Les Ballets Russes. But investigation’s events and encounters, he when Andre arrives in Paris, he finds out she’s ends up replacing her for good, including in vanished after crossing paths with a man her job as a ballerina. When he finally finds named Lucien Guillet, aka Landru. out she’s been murdered, he totally gives up his maleness to embody her definitely, so that she lives on.

26 VENICE GAP-FINANCING MARKET GOALS AT GAP- MAIN PRODUCTION COMPANY DELEGATE PRODUCTION FINANCING MARKET Aparte Film COMPANY To find third co-producer partner, world sales CO-PRODUCTION COMPANIES Aparte Film agent, other financing sources such as music Komadoli​ Studio MAIN CONTACT PERSON and cross-media funds PARTNERS ATTACHED Anca​ Damian

PROJECT TYPE Romanian CNC, Media Development ADDRESS Fiction CURRENT STATUS OF PROJECT Jean Monnet Street No 5b, Ap. 1 FORMAT / RUNTIME Final stage of development 011955 Bucharest Stop motion, 3D, archive footage / 78' Romania CREATIVE TEAM BASED ON Augusto Zanovello, Director​ and Writer EMAIL Original Idea Jean-Charles Finck, Writer ​[email protected] LANGUAGE / LOCATION Anca Damian, Main Producer PHONE ​French / Romania, France +40 744204437 BUDGET / FINANCING IN PLACE WEBSITE € 719.473,68 / €519.473,68​ apartefilm.net

DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT PRODUCTION COMPANY PROFILE Encouraged by the success of our short film Aparte was created as an art-film company. Women’s Letters (many awards from juries of Aparte’s stated goal is to bring important professionals and from the public, large themes & stories to the attention of the broadcasting on international festivals and on audience in a provocative & appealing way France 2 channel, illustrated book release, from the artistic point of view. We consider exhibition of the film’s puppets at the Ministère that our goal has been accomplished so far, de la Culture in Paris, contribution to “Entre les considering that all our productions have had lignes” exhibition at Musée des Lettres et an international festival circuit, being ​Augusto Zanovello, Manuscrits organized by Jean-Pierre Guéno premiered in A class film festivals & having Director who wrote “Paroles de Poilus”), we’d like to been distributed worldwide. Another main prolong the adventure and develop more focus of our company’s activity is making widely the universe we created. We planned successful co- productions. right from the beginning that the short would be a kind of rehearsal for a full length feature film, also a technical test, that thanks to the MAIN FILMOGRAPHY working team was conclusive. A short seemed OF PRODUCER the right format to set out the poetic idea of 2019 Marona’s Fantastic Tale by Anca the letters that heal, but beyond that idea we Damian already thought that the universe deserved to 2018 The Call by Anca Damian unfold on a larger format. We actually still have 2018 Moon Hotel Kabul by Anca Damian Anca Damian, ​ many things we want to express on the 2015 The Magic Mountain by Anca Damian Producer subject, the era and through the plastic and 2011 Crulic - The Path To Beyond by Anca narrative process of the stop- motion Damian animation of a cardboard and paper universe. PREVIOUS WORK BY DIRECTOR ON FESTIVAL SCOPE PRO Women’s Letters

27 FAUNUL ​ITALY, FRANCE ​IL LEGIONARIO THE LEGIONNAIRE HLEB PAPOU

DIRECTOR’S BIOGRAPHY SYNOPSIS Hleb Papou was born in Belarus in 1991 and You may choose to ignore it, but right now in has lived in Italy since 2003. In 2013 his first Rome, there’s a battle raging. Thousands of film shortThe Red Forest was chosen at the desperate people are forced to occupy empty Short Film Corner in Cannes. His graduation buildings in order to have a roof over their short filmThe Legionnaire was chosen by the heads. The police are entrusted with the Venice Film Festival International Film Critics’ responsibility of upholding the law and Week in 2017 and by Karlovy Vary Film stopping this from happening. Daniel, born in Festival Future Frames section in 2018. In Rome of African parents, grew up in an 2017 along with his two co-writers, he won the occupied building. Many years ago, he Mutti Prize promoted by Cineteca di Bologna decided to leave and make a life for himself with his short film subjectThe Interpreter. The but now he is forced to go back only this time, Legionnaire is his debut feature film. as a policeman with the mobile task force. His job is to evict the building where his mother, Hope, and his brother, Jamal, still live. In fact, LOG-LINE his brother has become the leader of the Daniel is a policeman of African origin with the occupiers and Daniel, a cop among mobile task force in Rome. He has to evict 150 occupiers or an occupier among cops, must families from a building they occupied. One of choose: remain faithful to his police corps or them is his own. save his family from eviction.

28 VENICE GAP-FINANCING MARKET GOALS AT GAP- MAIN PRODUCTION COMPANY DELEGATE PRODUCTION FINANCING MARKET Clemart COMPANY To find partners interested to co-finance CO-PRODUCTION COMPANIES Clemart through distribution deals, specifically Mact​ Productions MAIN CONTACT PERSON distributors, sales agents, Daniela Masciale broadcasters. PARTNERS ATTACHED ​Italian Ministry of Culture, ADDRESS PROJECT TYPE Lazio Region, Rai Cinema Via Ovidio 20 Fiction CURRENT STATUS OF PROJECT 00193 Rome FORMAT / RUNTIME Pre-production Italy ​HD / 100' CREATIVE TEAM EMAIL BASED ON Hleb Papou, Director [email protected] The Legionnaire (short) by the same team Giuseppe Brigante, Emanuele Mochi, [email protected] LANGUAGE / LOCATION Hleb Papou, Writers PHONE ​Italian / Rome,​ Lazio Gabriella Buontempo, Massimo Martino, Main +39 0668806524

BUDGET / FINANCING IN PLACE Producers WEBSITE € 1.380.031/​ €​ 1.018.079 Antoine de Clermont-Tonnerre, Co-producer clemart.it Daniela Masciale, Development Producer Germano Gentile, Francesco Acquaroli, Main Cast Giuseppe Maio, DoP

DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT PRODUCTION COMPANY PROFILE The film originates from a very strong need: to Clemart was founded in 1997. It originally tell about today’s multicultural Italy and the began as an advertising company and then generation of new Italians, children of got into production of television and film immigrants born and raised in the country. My projects. Producers Massimo Martino and goal is to explore this theme through two Gabriella Buontempo joined forces coming brothers who are second generation Italians from different and complementary of African origin. On one hand there’s Daniel, backgrounds. Massimo Martino is an a policeman at the First Squad Department of executive producer with well-established ​Hleb Papou, Rome, on the other there’s his brother Jamal, experience in television and film; Gabriella Director an occupant fighting for the right to have a Buontempo is a producer with high artistic roof over his head. The idea came from an and literary culture, gained while studying at image that occurred to me back in 2014: a the Tisch School of the Arts, New York. black Italian policeman in one of the toughest departments of the police, a young man who claims the right to be a cop, against all MAIN FILMOGRAPHY stereotypes. Starting from this image the film OF PRODUCER evolves and tells a further story: the ancient TV series: question of the housing emergency in Rome, 2020 Il Commissario Ricciardi little known but very controversial. The by Alessandro D’Alatri Legionnaire is a dramatic and action film, 2018 I bastardi di Pizzofalcone 2 Gabriella Buontempo,, aiming to tell the open wounds of today’s Italy. by Alessandro D’Alatri Co-producer I am not interested in Italy of postcards or 2017 I bastardi di Pizzofalcone 1 crime, already widely narrated. What I would by Carlo Carlei like to tell is a country full of contradictions, feature films: where more than 800.000 children of 2011 The Missing Piece by Giovanni immigrants represent a new chapter of Piperno self-determination and rights. 2008 Amore che vieni, amore che vai by Daniele Costantini

PREVIOUS WORK BY DIRECTOR ON FESTIVAL SCOPE PRO Daniela Masciale, The Legionnaire Development Producer

29 Il Legionario ​CYPRUS, GREECE, FRANCE, GERMANY IRIS MYRSINI ARISTIDOU

DIRECTOR’S BIOGRAPHY SYNOPSIS Born and raised in Limassol, Cyprus, Myrsini ​It’s right before Christmas in Limassol, Aristidou graduated with an MFA in Film Cyprus, and with her mother away for work, Directing from NYU Tisch School of the Arts in Iris (13) spends most of her days with her best 2017, and holds a BFA in Film and History of friend Danae (17), skipping school or hanging Art from Pratt Institute in New York. Her latest out with the boys at the forgotten shipyard. short filmAria (2017) premiered at the 74th When she gets caught skipping school and Venice FF, while her previous short film the headmaster cannot reach her mother, he Semele (2015) won multiple awards calls her estranged father, who claims the kid worldwide, including the Berlinale Generation isn’t his problem. Shaken, Iris decides to go Kplus Special Jury Prize. Myrsini was a Spring find him. Aris, a private detective, has long 2017 fellow in the Cannes Cinéfondation avoided to have anything to do with her, but Residence and has also received support he seems to appreciate her help in the through the TIFF Talent Lab, Berlinale Talents, adultery case he is currently working on. As and the Torino Script Lab. they follow a man around town, Iris begins to question the complexity of love and family. Day by day, especially after she records a LOG-LINE video likely to help Aris wrap his case, her ​When Iris gets caught skipping school and expectations grow and she is confident that the headmaster can’t reach her mother, away he will attend her parent- teacher meeting at for work, he calls her estranged father. As Aris school. But when Aris doesn’t show up, Iris claims the kid isn’t his problem, Iris, shaken, realizes she’d better not rely on anyone else decides to go find him. than herself.

30 VENICE GAP-FINANCING MARKET GOALS AT GAP- MAIN PRODUCTION COMPANY DELEGATE PRODUCTION FINANCING MARKET Filmblades​ Ltd. COMPANY To meet sales agents, distributors and equity CO-PRODUCTION COMPANIES The Living financiers. Financing to be closed by June 1.61 Films, The Living, MAIN CONTACT PERSON 2021 for shooting end of 2021. Graal S.A.,Road Movies GmbH Nathalie​ Dennes

PROJECT TYPE PARTNERS ATTACHED ADDRESS Fiction ​Cypriot Ministry of Education 49 rue du Faubourg Saint-Martin FORMAT / RUNTIME and Culture, CNC 75010 Paris ​HD / 90' CURRENT STATUS OF PROJECT France LANGUAGE / LOCATION Financing​ EMAIL Greek​ / Cyprus​ CREATIVE TEAM [email protected] BUDGET / FINANCING IN PLACE Myrsini​ Aristidou, Director CELL PHONE €1.156.188/ €​ 502.080​ Pepe Avila del Pino, DoP +33 674390271 Monica Nicolaidou, Konstantina Stavrianou, WEBSITE Léa Germain, Producers theliving.fr

DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT PRODUCTION COMPANY PROFILE As human beings, we are all in a constant The Living is a Paris-based production search for something or someone to believe company founded in 2017 by Nathalie in, especially in today’s world, witnessing the Dennes, who previously managed fragility of our planet and becoming even productions for mk2 and CG Cinema. Due more aware of our own destruction, we beg West by Alice Douard, the first short film for that ‘unknown’ to save us, incapable to see produced by the company, was awarded the that we are the only ones to save ourselves. Unifrance 2019 Special Jury Prize and the When Iris’ estranged father avoids all company currently develops a slate of ​Myrsini Aristidou, responsibility towards his daughter, Iris is projects across all genres and formats, Director suddenly confronted with this long-hidden including Iris by Myrsini Aristidou that was reality of abandonment, and the profound awarded a Special Mention of the Jury at human need to feel ‘looked out for’. Beyond a Thessaloniki’s 2019 IFF. Nathalie is an parent and child relationship, I am interested associate producer of The Truth, by Hirokazu in the relationship of love between two souls. Kore-Eda, a member of the EAVE network Using the archetypes of a father and a and a Berlinale Talents alumni 2020. daughter, I seek to explore the emotional needs that inevitably appear in any adult romantic relationship, and I would like to MAIN FILMOGRAPHY question what it is to care. There are certain OF PRODUCER feelings and behaviors between the two 2010 The Truth by Hirokazu Kore-Eda Nathalie Dennes, characters that are universal : Iris’ desire to 2019 Due West by Alice Douard Producer feel acknowledged and loved by her father - her determination to understand his behavior; Aris’ own frustration, being PREVIOUS WORK BY DIRECTOR incapable to provide for her and express his ON FESTIVAL SCOPE PRO feelings - while simultaneously for the first time Semele becoming aware of his daughter’s needs, and Aria acting like a father.

31 IRIS ROMANIA JEUX SANS FRONTIERES GAMES WITHOUT FRONTIERS ANDREI CRETULESCU

DIRECTOR’S BIOGRAPHY SYNOPSIS Born in 1974 in Romania, Andrei Cretulescu is Jeux Sans Frontieres is the story of ten a former film critic and creative producer for longtime friends spending a weekend up in HBO Romania. After launching Kinosseur the mountains, at a remote cabin in the Productions in 2011, he directed several short woods, during a heavy snowstorm. The year is films includingKowalski (2014), a 17-minute 2000. Their holiday is, in fact, a game of short film with continuous dialogue and a zero recreating a retro holiday from more than two camera movement, shot in one take, and decades ago, when their lives didn’t revolve Ramona (2015), which won the Canal+ award around jobs and kids and they didn’t in Cannes, a Gothic, choreographic, completely depend on technology. However, seventies-inspired genre film without dialogue, unbeknownst to nine of them, one member of led by an explosive blond heroine. His first the group has decided to turn their amiable feature film,Charleston (2017), premiered in gathering into a game of cat and mouse: left Locarno’s Main Competition and was without food (someone has taken everything presented in many other film festivals. they had) and without heat (someone has tampered with the stove) and unable to reach the outside world, the group soon drops all LOG-LINE pretense of civility. It is just a matter of time A traditional annual holiday among ten friends before some of them are the victims of weird turns deadly when they become prisoners in a accidents or they turn against each other in remote cabin, during a terrible snow storm, search of the unknown saboteur. And, to make and the possible victims of a saboteur. matters even worse, the storm outside grows bigger and bigger and there’s a pack of wolves roaming nearby. It becomes evident that they are now playing a different kind of game and that by the end of the weekend, there will be blood. In a game without frontiers, no one stands a chance.

32 VENICE GAP-FINANCING MARKET GOALS AT GAP- MAIN PRODUCTION COMPANY DELEGATE PRODUCTION FINANCING MARKET Kinosseur COMPANY To find co-producers and financial partners, Digital Cube CO-PRODUCTION COMPANIES as well as a sales agent. Digital Cube MAIN CONTACT PERSON Cristian Nicolescu PROJECT TYPE CURRENT STATUS OF PROJECT Fiction nd 2 draft script, casting and location scouting ADDRESS FORMAT / RUNTIME CREATIVE TEAM Parangului, 76 16mm & digital / 90' Andrei Cretulescu, Director and Writer 012328 Bucharest LANGUAGE / LOCATION Serban Pavlu, Emilian Oprea, Romania Romanian, English / Romania Ana Ularu Rodica Lazar, Main cast EMAIL Codruta Cretulescu, BUDGET / FINANCING IN PLACE [email protected] Cristian Nicolescu, € 900.000 / €​ 630.000 Producers CELL PHONE Andrei Butica, DoP +40 746339335 Catalin Cristutiu, Editing Malina Ionescu, Production and Costume Designer Marius Leftarache, Sound

DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT PRODUCTION COMPANY PROFILE ”Eternally victorious in a struggle in which the Kinosseur Productions is a Bucharest based winners are the ones who lose.” The last production company founded by Andrei sentence of the first chapter of a book that Cretulescu and Codruta Cretulescu in 2011. marked me in the 80’s — “The Magus,” by They have produced a series of short films John Fowles. And one of the possible starting including Bad Penny (2013) and Kowalski points for this nostalgic, violent story, which I (2014), winner of the Best Short Award in have been thinking of for years, and which I Zagreb Film Festival and Ramona (2015), have finally transformed into a screenplay. Of which won the Canal+ award in Cannes, and Andrei Cretulescu, course, there are other more or less obvious played in more than 30 of the most prestigious Director and Writer cinematic and literary inftuences, as well, from international film festivals, including New York, Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None Telluride, Chicago, Namur, Sarajevo, etc. In to a Romanian cult classic by novelist 2017, the company served as associate Constantin Chirita, Ciresarii (The Kids on producer on Andrei Cretulescu’s first feature, Cherry-tree Street), from John Carpenter to Charleston (2017), which premiered in Lars Von Trier, and from the Nordic films to the Locarno. South Korean thrillers, in which it rarely happens what you would expect to happen. Built as a half whodunit-slasher, half MAIN FILMOGRAPHY psychological thriller- survival story, Jeux Sans OF PRODUCER Frontieres invites you on a journey into the Cristian Nicolescu, producer: Cristian Nicolescu, heart of darkness, a journey that paints a 2021 Quo Vadis, Aida? by Jasmila Zbanic Producer rather somber picture of human nature, much 2021 Nowhere Special by Uberto Pasolini in accordance with the dark times we are 2019 Jesus Shows You the Way to the living in today. Highway by Miguel Llanso 2018 A Shelter among the Clouds by Robert Budina 2018 Donbass by Sergei Loznitsa 2017 Charleston by Andrei Cretulescu

PREVIOUS WORK BY DIRECTOR ON FESTIVAL SCOPE PRO Ramona Kowalski

33 Jeux sans frontieres ITALY, GERMANY LA GUARDIA THE GUARD GIULIO RICCIARELLI

DIRECTOR’S BIOGRAPHY SYNOPSIS Giulio Ricciarelli was born in Milan in 1965 Sara (37) became a policewoman almost by and began his career as a stage actor. He accident. Her real love was playing basketball, also starred in many TV roles and in feature and becoming a cop was just a way of making films. it possible, but over time she ended up In 2000 he founded the Naked Eye wearing the uniform for real. Her peace of film-production. Next to his activity as mind is shattered when she is transferred producer, Ricciarelli also works as a director. somewhere she’d never have gone by choice: After three awarded shortfilms, he directed the Turin CPR (ex CIE), a special prison for The Labyrinth of Lies, his feature film debut as illegal immigrants. In the CPR, her racism director and scriptwriter, nominated for EFA intensifies, and her reaction is to turn a blind and representing Germany at the Oscars. La eye to the abuses she witnesses. Sara feels Guardia will be his second feature film. trapped at home and at work, imprisoned in an existence she no longer recognises. Until her prejudices collide with something she’d LOG-LINE never have imagined: the generosity of A tale of female solidarity and complicity that Nadira, a young Syrian inmate who saves her goes beyond prejudices. life. The unexpected and secret complicity that develops between them leads to Sara becoming the custodian of a secret, and after Nadira’s violent death, Sara is the only one upon whom Amina – Nadira’s 7-year-old daughter - can count. To save Amina, Sara must find the courage to break the law and undertake a dangerous journey to Germany with the little girl.

34 VENICE GAP-FINANCING MARKET GOALS AT GAP- MAIN PRODUCTION COMPANY DELEGATE PRODUCTION FINANCING MARKET La Sarraz Pictures Srl COMPANY To close the gap-financing of 25% of the total CO-PRODUCTION COMPANIES La Sarraz Pictures Srl budget. Equities, private investors and a third Heimat Film MAIN CONTACT PERSON co-producer. PARTNERS ATTACHED Alessandro Borrelli

PROJECT TYPE Rai Cinema, Idm, Film Commission Torino ADDRESS Fiction Piemonte, Ffa, Mibact piazza Guido Gozzano, 15 FORMAT / RUNTIME CURRENT STATUS OF PROJECT 10132 Turin HD / 100' Pre-production Italy BASED ON CREATIVE TEAM EMAIL Original Idea Giulio Ricciarelli, Director and Co-Writer [email protected] LANGUAGE / LOCATION Alessandro Borrelli, Producer PHONE / CELL PHONE Italian, German / Torino, South Tirol, Berlin Fabrizio Bozzetti, Writer +39 0115534260 BUDGET / FINANCING IN PLACE Bettina Brokemper, Producer +39 3475439092 Jasmine Trinca and Julia Jentsch, € 1.910.000 / €​ 1.440.000 WEBSITE Main Cast lasarraz.com Giorgio Barullo, Production designer Andrea Martens, Editor

DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT PRODUCTION COMPANY PROFILE I’ve always been attracted to stories of La Sarraz Pictures was set up in 2004 by migration and how they affect everyone’s lives Alessandro Borrelli. In 16 years the film – in part because of my personal background, company produced 23 feature films (19 having being born in Milan but growing up in creative documentaries and 4 fiction) and 4 Germany, an Italian for the Germans and a animated short films. Alessandro Borrelli is a German for the Italians. This is also why I had member of European Film Promotion for some time been searching for a story which (“Producer on the move”, Cannes 2012) and would allow me to combine Germany and Italy. EFA voting member. He was also ACE alumni Giulio Ricciarelli, The Guard seemed perfect to me. in 2011. Since 2010, the company started the Director and Co-Writer A path linking Italy and Germany, a change in branch of distribution with the name La Sarraz nation which is almost a genre trespass - from Distribuzione. Last two feature produced are a prison drama to a road movie. A shift which The Stonebreaker (fiction) andThe Moment Of will also be emphasised in the direction. Sara Transition (documentary). will take a journey first of all for herself, as a reaction and a refusal to just sit and watch with indifference. A journey which will be MAIN FILMOGRAPHY developed, as regards to the direction, by OF PRODUCER creating the utmost empathy between this 2020 Spaccapietre (Una Promessa) character and the audience, who will thus be by Gianluca De Serio and Massimiliano De called to question their own beliefs and to take Serio Alessandro Borrelli, sides, just like her. An empathy which I believe 2020 Il momento di passaggio Producer to be essential, to ensure the full success of the (The Moment Of Transition) by Chiara film and make it powerful, appealing and Marotta (doc.) moving for a wide international audience. 2019 At The Matiné by Giangiacomo De Stefano (doc) 2019 Dimmi chi sono (Sarita) by Sergio Basso 2018 La nostra storia (Our story) by Lorenzo Latrofa

PREVIOUS WORK BY DIRECTOR ON FESTIVAL SCOPE PRO The Labyrinth Of Lies

35 LA GUARDIA ITALY, SWITZERLAND L’ETÀ DELL’INNOCENZA THE AGE OF INNOCENCE ENRICO MAISTO

DIRECTOR’S BIOGRAPHY SYNOPSIS Enrico Maisto was born in Milan in 1988. The courtroom is deserted. In the distance, a In 2014 his first feature documentary film, tiny character is trying to line up symmetrically Comandante, was selected for the Milan Film the huge chairs. It’s President Anna Conforti. Festival where it won the Premio Aprile. It has been a few days since she pronounced In 2015 he won the Premio Solinas for the last verdict of her life as a judge. Anna is documentaries with The Call, written with my mother. Since I was a child, the feeling that Valentina Cicogna. This was produced by there was no little secret that “the president of Start and Rai Cinema. The Call was selected the court” would not have discovered, has led in competition at IDFA, it won the prize “Best me to deny her any access to my emotions. Mid- Length Documentary” at HotDocs 2018 Everything she has ever known about me, she and the Audience Award at 58th Festival dei had to guess it from the movies I’ve started Popoli. making since I was a little kid. Now that she’s retiring the fear of my mother getting old without ever really knowing anything about LOG-LINE me, pushes me to film her. But an unexpected The Age of Innocence is the story of a event disrupts the balance. My mother sentimental education: a son facing the undergoes surgery for breast cancer. Her parting from his mother and trying to build a wish to know me, to know that I am capable of path to adulthood. In an age of eternally being happy, gets stronger, and so does my adolescent children and aging parents, the need to fulfill it. The beginning of my first director digs into his own intimacy and important relationship is the chance to try and rethinks the bond with his mother. open up, coming out from that comfort zone behind the camera where I’ve been hiding since I was a child. The Age of Innocence is the story of a sentimental education told through my subjective camera.

36 VENICE GAP-FINANCING MARKET GOALS AT GAP- MAIN PRODUCTION COMPANY DELEGATE PRODUCTION FINANCING MARKET Start COMPANY To find European co-production partners, CO-PRODUCTION COMPANIES Start broadcasters interested in pre-sale of rights, Ventura Film MAIN CONTACT PERSON financiers willing to fund the film (hard Riccardo Annoni money). PARTNERS ATTACHED Rai Cinema, Taskovski Films ADDRESS PROJECT TYPE via Giusti 28 Documentary CURRENT STATUS OF PROJECT Completed principal photography, editing 20154 Milan FORMAT / RUNTIME Italy Digital, colour / 90' CREATIVE TEAM Enrico Maisto, Director EMAIL BASED ON Enrico Maisto, Chiara Brambilla, Writers [email protected] Original Idea Riccardo Annoni, Main Producer PHONE / CELL PHONE LANGUAGE / LOCATION Elda Guidinetti, Producer +39 0234537698 Italian / Italy, Canada, USA, UK, Cuba Davide Minotti, Editing +39 3356472165 Sara Fgaier, BUDGET / FINANCING IN PLACE Editing supervisor WEBSITE € 218.388 / €​ 159.500 Massimo Mariani, Sound start.mi.it Thierry Garrel, Production Consultant

DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT PRODUCTION COMPANY PROFILE Starting with the purpose of documenting my Start is an independent production company mother’s last trial, soon I realize that my filmic founded in Milan by Riccardo Annoni. Start desire is driven by something else. Filming my has been collaborating for years with a group mother in this transitional phase marked by of young authors, constantly supporting their her retirement, implies my own need to projects at every stage of the work, from process the shock of the time that passes by, development to distribution. The aim of our suddenly affecting some moments of our company is to support those filmmakers that lives. My mother’s retirement and her are willing to create fiction and non-fiction Enrico Maisto, condition are showing me sheer evidence: projects with a unique and personal point of Director she is getting older and I am drifting away view, going beyond boundaries and mixing from her, although our relationship has never styles and formats. grown and I never let her really know me. Since I was a kid, my parents have had to get used to cinema in the house. This generates a MAIN FILMOGRAPHY unique effect of full transparency of the OF PRODUCER medium, also from the viewer’s perspective. I 2018 De Sancto Ambrosio by Antonio Di will try to film my mother like she’s a ghost, Biase turning her into memory ahead of time, with 2017 The call by Enrico Maisto the consistency of a mirage, to both exorcise 2017 Chaco by Daniele Incalcaterra her demise and capture her presence. As if, and Fausta Quattrini Riccardo Annoni, by ftirting with the fear of my parents getting Main Producer old, with the ghost of disease and death, I tried to lean out over the abyss, to try to find PREVIOUS WORK BY DIRECTOR my own way to adulthood. ON FESTIVAL SCOPE PRO The Call

Elda Guidinetti, Producer

37 L’ età dell’ innocenza BRASIL MEDUSA ANITA ROCHA DA SILVEIRA

DIRECTOR’S BIOGRAPHY SYNOPSIS Anita Rocha da Silveira lives in Rio de Janeiro. In the evening, a group of 8 young women She wrote and directed 3 short-films:The marches in synchronized steps. They put on Noon Vampire (2008), Handball (2010, white masks and follow an 18-year-old girl. As FIPRESCI Award) and The Living Dead (2012, they surround the girl, they beat her up and Directors’ Fortnight - Cannes Film Festival). yell about her sins. They are the Treasures of Kill me Please (2015) is her first feature and the Altar, the female youth squad of a premiered at Venice Film Festival (Orizzonti). Christian Church, and their mission is to It was awarded with the Bisato d’Oro for Best pursue and punish all women who don’t Group Performance, Best Director and Best behave properly, that is, who are not modest, Actress at Rio IFF, Best Film at Cali IFF, and feminine and submissive to men. One of the was presented at New Directors/New Films, Treasures is Mariana, 21, a black nursing SXSW, IndieLisboa, Filmfest München, technician, raised to be just one more in the Gotebörg FF, Cartagena IFF, La white male dominant logic. One day, during a Roche-sur- Yon IFF, among others. frustrated attack against a “promiscuous” girl, Mari is slashed in her face. Now bearing a scar, she loses her job at a beauty clinic and LOG-LINE goes to work at a nursing home for comatose Many, many years ago, the beautiful Medusa patients. There she will find, in an almost was severely punished by Athena, the virgin inaccessible room, Melissa - the victim of an goddess, for the loss of her purity. Today, extremely violent attack from many years Mariana belongs to a world where she must before that became the Treasures’ founding do her utmost to keep up the appearance myth. With her face entirely deformed by of a perfect woman. In order not to fall into burns, a look and a scream are enough for temptation, she tries hard to control everything Mari to be affected forever. Mari can no longer and everyone around her. However, the day control her desires and impulses: could she will come when the urge to scream will be be possessed? She tries hard to disguise, but stronger than it has ever been. the urge to dance, touch and scream is inevitable.

38 VENICE GAP-FINANCING MARKET GOALS AT GAP- MAIN PRODUCTION COMPANY DELEGATE PRODUCTION FINANCING MARKET Bananeira Filmes COMPANY To find sales agent. PARTNERS ATTACHED Bananeira Filmes PROJECT TYPE Ancine, FSA, BRDE, Telecine, Canal Brasil MAIN CONTACT PERSON Fiction CURRENT STATUS OF PROJECT Vania Catani FORMAT / RUNTIME Post-production ADDRESS Digital Anamorphic 2.8K / 127' th ftoor CREATIVE TEAM Rua da Glória, 366/12 RJ, 20241180 Rio de Janeiro BASED ON Anita Rocha da Silveira, Director and Original Idea WriterMariana Oliveira, Lara Trémouroux, Brasil LANGUAGE / LOCATION Felipe Frazão, Joana Medeiros, Main Cast EMAIL Portuguese / Rio de Janeiro, Brazil Vania Catani, Production [email protected] João Atala, DoP PHONE / CELL PHONE BUDGET / FINANCING IN PLACE Marília Moraes, Editing € 588.256/ € 467.256 +21 22256552 Dina Sales Levy, Production Designer +21 996368881 Paula Stroher, Costume Designer Bernardo Uzeda, Evandro Lima, Sound WEBSITE bananeirafilmes.com.br

DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT PRODUCTION COMPANY PROFILE One of my favorite Greek myths is Medusa’s, Founded in 2000 by Vania Catani. narrated by Ovid: she was a beautiful In over 20 years, Bananeira has produced priestess at Athena’s temple, but gave in to and co-produced several short films and Poseidon’s advances. This enraged Athena, more than 25 features, that have been the virgin goddess, who transformed screened at more than 500 festivals such as Medusa’s hair into serpents and made her Cannes, Venice, Rotterdam, in more than 60 face so horrible that onlookers would turn to countries and won over 250 awards. stone. Medusa was punished for her sexuality Bananeira is now finishing the following films Anita Rocha da Silveira, and desire, for being “impure”. This brings me Serial Kelly by René Guerra, featuring singer Director and Writer to contemporary Brazil, where part of the Gaby Amarantos; O Baile dos 41 by David population claims the comeback of a model of Pablos, in co-pro with Canana Films (Mexico) demure and submissive women – as femicide and Manny Films (France); and Fogaréu by rates rise, violence among women, often used Flávia Neves, in co-pro with Blue Monday as a form of control, is continuously reiterated (France), selected by CNC Aide Aux Cinémas in our society. I feel the urge to discuss what du Monde. we’re going through now: the rise of the ultra-right, the exponential growth of neo-Pentecostal Churches, and mainly the MAIN FILMOGRAPHY advance of hatred and intolerance. I plan to OF PRODUCER build a narrative set in an alternative universe, 2017 Every Paulo In The World - Portraits Vania Catani, yet guided by facts I witness today. I feel that of Paulo José by Rodrigo Oliveira and Producer women, especially black women, are the most Gustavo Ribeiro affected by the conservative rise, having their 2017 The Movie Of My Life by Selton Melo rights denied. And the counterpoint I offer is a 2017 Zama by Lucrecia Martel fantastic universe - full of fantasy, horror, and 2016 Kill Me Please by Anita Rocha da humor - where the revolution will be feminine. Silveira 2016 Whirlpool by José Luiz Vilamarim 2014 El Ardor by Pablo Fendrik

PREVIOUS WORK BY DIRECTOR ON FESTIVAL SCOPE PRO Kill me Please

39 MEDUSA ALGERIA, FRANCE MEURSAULT CONTRE-ENQUÊTE THE MEURSAULT INVESTIGATION MALEK BENSMAIL

DIRECTOR’S BIOGRAPHY SYNOPSIS Malek Bensmaïl is one of the great Haroun is an old bachelor who lives in Oran. documentary filmmakers of the Arab and Retired civil servant, he leads the life of a African world. Through his films, he attempts recluse until the day he meets Kamel in a bar, to draw the contours of a complex humanity: a journalist to whom he tells an incredible nationalism, democracy, religion, modernity story that dates back to 1942. He maintains he and tradition, language, identity, and society. is the brother of the “Arab” killed in The His film work is meant to be a lasting chronicle Stranger by Albert Camus. Through anger, of our times, and a thought- provoking attempt assertions, details and confiding, Haroun at democracy. as his first fiction feature, Malek mollifies the reluctant journalist, skeptical Bensmaïl is adapting Kamel Daoud’s about the man’s unlikely tale. His confession is best-selling novel The Meursault Investigation. a cry for freedom, a cry of distress, but most of all, of rebellion: against an abusive mother and a country that flunked its independence, LOG-LINE against a book, a famous writer, against the Haroun is an old bachelor who has been living injustice Haroun suffered from his people and in Oran for a few years. A retired civil servant, the one inflicted on Moussa by the writer who he leads the life of a recluse until the day he “killed” and ignored him. Sustained by liquor meets Kamel in a bar, a journalist to whom he and crosswords, Haroun unveils an enigmatic, tells an incredible story that dates back to powerful, cunning and fascinating character 1942. He maintains he is the brother of the behind the stories, his own mother, “still alive”, “Arab” killed in a story reported by one of the with her abusive love and masterful most famous novels of the 20th century, The manipulative power. The tale mixes up Stranger, written by Albert Camus. An “Arab” Meursault and his creator, past and present, with a blotted out name, “Moussa”… rebellion against the mother and rebellion against God.

40 VENICE GAP-FINANCING MARKET GOALS AT GAP- MAIN PRODUCTION COMPANY DELEGATE PRODUCTION FINANCING MARKET Hikayet Films COMPANY To finalize of the film’s financing: sales CO-PRODUCTION COMPANIES Hikayet Films agents, distributors, financers, broadcasters, Archipel 35 MAIN CONTACT PERSON post-production companies and funds. PARTNERS ATTACHED Hachemi Zertal

PROJECT TYPE Imago Films ADDRESS Fiction CURRENT STATUS OF PROJECT Villa Samaï FORMAT / RUNTIME Financing 10 rue Bourefrouf, 8K / 120' 25 000 Constantine CREATIVE TEAM Algeria BASED ON Malek Bensmail, Director and Co-Writer The Meursault Investigation Jacques Fieschi, Writer EMAIL by Kamel Daoud Hachemi Zertal, Producer [email protected] LANGUAGE / LOCATION Denis Freyd, Associate Producer PHONE / CELL PHONE Arabic, French / Algeria +213 555752933 BUDGET / FINANCING IN PLACE +33 688658894 € 2.045.696 / €​ 1.455.696 WEBSITE malekbensmail.com

DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT PRODUCTION COMPANY PROFILE When I came to this world, Algeria had been Hikayet Films is a company founded in 2010 fully Algerian for four years. Ever since the by Hachemi Zertal & Malek Bensmaïl to independence and throughout my childhood produce and co-produce his films: and school days, it was essential to reconnect documentary and fiction alike. Its with “the mother of the world”; you had to headquarters are in Constantine, the quickly “reintegrate” the Arab nation, its filmmaker’s hometown. Hachemi Zertal, language, culture, religion after a century and producer and distributor for Cirta Films, a half of French colonization and seven years joined the company as producer and Malek Bensmail, of war. This quest for high-speed manager. Hachemi Zertal is also a partner Director decolonization, when I first read Daoud’s with the US major Warner Bros for Algeria as novel The Meursault Investigation, I felt a well as Misr International Films and Euromed strong urge for images and a strong and Cinemas Support Programme for the original tale, that would equally play on the Distribution and Exhibition of Mediterranean artifices of fiction and on reality. Through this and European films. novel, Daoud purports to give a name back to the “Arab” killed by Meursault, the main character in Camus’s The Stranger. In Daoud’s MAIN FILMOGRAPHY book, almost as a confession, a character, the OF PRODUCER Arab’s brother, also speaks of his country’s 2017 The Battle of Algiers, a film within tragedy, as of a haunted house. Through his history by Malek Bensmail Hachemi Zertal, work, Camus challenged his century in its 2016 Choosing at Twenty by Villi Hermann Producer suffering, intelligence, genius and valor. 2016 Chronicle of my Village by Karim Daoud’s novel writes the following Traidia presentation: “a tribute in counterpoint to 2015 Checks and Balances by Malek Camus’s The Stranger, The Meursault Bensmail Investigation by Kamel Daoud shows 2012 Fidaï by Damien Ounouri vertiginous use of doubles and subterfuges to 2010 China Is Still Far Away by Malek raise the question of identity. Bensmail 2004 Alienations by Malek Bensmail 2003 The Suspects by Kamel Dehane

PREVIOUS WORK BY DIRECTOR ON FESTIVAL SCOPE PRO China Is Still Far Away

41 MEURSAULT CONTRE-ENQUÊTE FRANCE, GERMANY, LUXEMBOURG, NORWAY

MORE THAN EVER previously Mister EMILY ATEF

DIRECTOR’S BIOGRAPHY SYNOPSIS Emily Atef is French-Iranian, and was born in Hélène, a young Parisian woman, has lived Berlin. At 13 her family moved to France and happily in a relationship for many years with later she left for London to work in the theater. Mathieu. Their lives are turned upside down Emily finally settled in Berlin, where she when Hélène is diagnosed with rare lung studied directing at the DFFB (German Film disease. The pressure of city life as well as the Academy). Recently she directed 3 Days in precautions and the constant over-attention of Quiberon which won 7 Lolas at the German those around her oppress her. In search of Film Academy Awards and premiered in answers, Hélène comes across the site of a Official Competition at the Berlinale 2018. Her Norwegian blogger who signs under the second filmThe Stranger In Me was selected name of Mister. Himself sick, he uses his blog at the Critic’s Week in Cannes 2008. All her like a logbook, between sincerity and quirky films discuss existential journeys from a humor. Reading the blog, she discovers those feminist point of view. incredible Norwegian landscapes. She decides to contact Mister. It’s the beginning of a decisive encounter; suddenly she feels LOG-LINE capable of formulating what she is Hélène has been diagnosed with a rare lung experiencing. Despite her difficulty in leaving disease. After meeting a Norwegian blogger Mathieu in Paris, Hélène follows her instinct named Mister who is seriously ill, she decides and crosses Europe to Norway alone, in to travel across Europe to join him in order to search of a new path. The striking beauty of be able to find her way amid the Norwegians these spaces and this unusual friendship with fjords. Mister do her good. In the heart of the fjords and under the bright light of the North, Hélène feels she can finally catch a new breath. Mathieu goes to Norway to help her return to Paris. Despite all their love, Hélène understands that she will have to take the new her path alone.

42 VENICE GAP-FINANCING MARKET GOALS AT GAP- MAIN PRODUCTION COMPANY DELEGATE PRODUCTION FINANCING MARKET Eaux Vives Productions COMPANY To find private funds and banks, TV, regional CO-PRODUCTION COMPANIES Eaux Vives Productions funds and technical in-kind participation. Niko Film, Samsa Film, Mer Film MAIN CONTACT PERSON

PROJECT TYPE PARTNERS ATTACHED Xénia Maingot Fiction The Match Factory, Jour2fête, Arte Grand ADDRESS FORMAT / RUNTIME Accord, Pandora, FFA, CNC, Région Nouvelle 17 rue Henry Monnier Numérique 4K / 100' Aquitaine, Zefyr Region Bergen,Cinéventure 75009 Paris LANGUAGE / LOCATION CURRENT STATUS OF PROJECT France French (majority), English, Norwegian / Financing EMAIL France, Norway, Luxembourg CREATIVE TEAM [email protected] BUDGET / FINANCING IN PLACE Emily Atef, Director and Writer CELL PHONE € 4.811.046 / €​ 3.981.046 Lars Hubrich, Writer +33 661497837 Vicky Krieps, Gaspard Ulliel, WEBSITE Jesper Christensen, Liv Ullmann, Main Cast eauxvivesproductions.com Xénia Maingot, Producer Yves Cape, Hansjörg Weissbrich, Silke Fischer, Anais Romand, Nicolas Cantin, Artistic-Technical Team

DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT PRODUCTION COMPANY PROFILE «With More Than Ever, I want to make an Eaux Vives is a production company for emotional and existential drama, both realistic features films and documentaries founded in and playing with the surreal (otherworldly 2008 by Xénia Maingot. Eaux Vives seeks for VFX), about a serious theme that will touch us stories about people, journeys, personal all. Because of the dark topic it tackles, this quests, and topics related to the future, story requires intensity on every level. Yet, introducing reftection and debate, never light is the key; whether for cinematography, to though provocation. Bringing forward young capture the Norwegian sun and unique filmmakers open to others who have their own Emily Atef, atmosphere or with the actors, to convey the way of looking at the world is an enduring Director light sense of humor within the dialogues I inspiration of Eaux Vives Productions’. Xénia value so much. Maingot as an expert of European and To avoid unnecessary pathos, I want to find international coproduction has been initiating the right balance between light and dark for or participating in projects shot in France and the audience to be sincerely moved. I will use abroad. a film score with jazz inftuences (Manfred Eicher ECM)». MAIN FILMOGRAPHY OF PRODUCER 2015 Babai by Visar Morina 2015 The Curve by Rifqi Assaf Xénia Maingot, 2014 Day of the miner by Gael Mocaer Delegate Producer 2014 Hungry Man by Philip Martin

PREVIOUS WORK BY DIRECTOR ON FESTIVAL SCOPE PRO 3 Days in Quiberon

43 MORE THAN EVER THE NETHERLANDS, UNITED KINGDOM DE BEZETTE STAD OCCUPIED CITY STEVE MCQUEEN

DIRECTOR’S BIOGRAPHY SYNOPSIS Steve McQueen is a British artist and Occupied City is based on Bianca Stigter’s filmmaker. He has directed four feature films: book Atlas of an Occupied City – Amsterdam Hunger (2008), Shame (2011), 12 Years a 1940-1945. Stigter selected almost 3.000 Slave (2014) and Widows (2018). He won the addresses that together tell the story of Caméra d’Or for Hunger and an Oscar for 12 Amsterdam during WWII in such detail that Years a Slave. McQueen’s upcoming Small the past will become almost overwhelming. Axe is a five-part anthology series for the WWII has devastated Amsterdam. Almost the BBC. McQueen is the recipient of many entire Jewish population was isolated, accolades for his work as a visual artist. In deported and murdered. The Nazi’s tried to 2016 he won the Johannes Vermeer Award. In impose their culture onto the city by forbidding that same year, the British Film Institute books and music. The last winter, called the awarded McQueen with a Fellowship. He won Hunger winter, changed Amsterdam into a the Turner Prize in 1999. His artwork is held in cold, dark place where people were starving major museums around the world. in the streets. Apart from monuments, the war is not visually present in the city anymore. Most locations are now forgotten. This film will LOG-LINE try to restore the past in the present and bring ​Living in Amsterdam is like living with ghosts. the now hidden history of Amsterdam to the It seems there are two parallel narratives fore. The film will solely consist of images of occurring. The past is always present. Amsterdam and its residents, filmed in the present. A choir of voice-overs will tell what happened between 1940 and 1945. Every building harbours a story; behind every door there are tales of love and loss, courage or cruelty, amazing luck or paralysing tragedy. Occupied City will be a portrait of Amsterdam in two different periods, presented as one.

44 VENICE GAP-FINANCING MARKET GOALS AT GAP- MAIN PRODUCTION COMPANY DELEGATE PRODUCTION FINANCING MARKET Family Affair Films COMPANY 72% of finance is confirmed and 14% is CO-PRODUCTION COMPANIES Family Affair Films pending. We are aiming to close the last 14% Lammas​ Park MAIN CONTACT PERSON (700.000 euros) with private funding or equity. PARTNERS ATTACHED Floor Onrust

PROJECT TYPE Netherlands Film Fund, Film4, VPRO ADDRESS Documentary CURRENT STATUS OF PROJECT Entrepotdok 77a FORMAT / RUNTIME Financing 1018 AD Amsterdam ​35 mm / 120' The Netherlands CREATIVE TEAM BASED ON Steve McQueen, Director and Co-producer EMAIL Atlas van een Bezette Stad, Amsterdam 1940- Bianca Stigter, Writer [email protected] by Bianca Stigter 1945 Floor Onrust, Producer PHONE / CELL PHONE LANGUAGE / LOCATION Lennert Hillege, DoP +31 207071713 Dutch and English / Amsterdam​ Jan Schermer, Sound +31 22661612 BUDGET / FINANCING IN PLACE WEBSITE € 5.067.430 / €​ 3.654.430​ familyaffairfilms.nl

DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT PRODUCTION COMPANY PROFILE ​The American writer James Baldwin once said Family Affair Films is an Amsterdam based ‘History is not the past, it is the present. We film production company founded by Floor carry our history with us. We are our history.’ Onrust, specializing in contemporary fiction of Amsterdam is and always has been a city in high artistic quality with strong author driven flux, made up of old-timers and newcomers, visions. Their features have been selected for enriched by immigrants and refugees from festivals such as Berlinale, Cannes, Locarno, different parts of the globe. The story of the Rotterdam, San Sebastian, Sundance and city in 1940-1945 will have a powerful Toronto. Their first creative documentary Steve McQueen, resonance with the city of today. We can see Three Minutes, a Lengthening by Bianca Director and Co-producer where racism and opportunism led, how Stigter will premier later this year. people resigned to or resisted the ordeals of their times, that are in some ways similar to the ordeals we face now. With Brexit on the MAIN FILMOGRAPHY horizon it seems that the first cracks in the OF PRODUCER structure that was built after the war are 2020 Three Minutes, a Lengthening appearing. What we are attempting to do with by Bianca Stigter this film is to reflect on the recent past, to use 2019 Bloody Marie by Guido van Driel this enterprise as a tool to acknowledge the and Lennert Hillege dangers of our current climate. 2019 Binti by Frederik Mignon 2018 Light as Feathers by Rosanne Pel Floor Onrust, 2017 Beyond Words by Urszula Antoniak Producer 2016 History’s Future by Fiona Tan

45 De Bezette Stad ITALY, FRANCE, SLOVENIA PICCOLO CORPO SMALL BODY LAURA SAMANI

DIRECTOR’S BIOGRAPHY SYNOPSIS Laura Samani was born in 1989 in Trieste. She In the early 1900s, in a lagoon in northeast studied at CSC. Her graduation short, The Italy, Agata is a young woman who gives birth Sleeping Saint, premiered at Cannes for the first time. Her child is stillborn. Infants Cinéfondation in 2016. Since then, it has born dead cannot be baptized. Their souls are gained wide acclaim and awards in several condemned to Limbo, nameless and without international festivals. She is currently working peace. And yet, the young woman hears on her first feature:Small Body, a raw fairytale, about a place in the mountains of the north, a produced by Nefertiti Film with Rai Cinema sanctuary where wise women are able to (IT), Tomsa Films (FR) and Vertigo (SI). Small bring babies back to life for the space of one Body is supported by Eurimages, Creative breath so that they can be baptized. Agata Europe and the national fund of Italy, France secretly leaves the island and undertakes a and Slovenia. In 2018 the project received the dangerous journey to the sanctuary, carrying Production Award at TorinoFilmLab- the small body of her infant in a box. She FeatureLab. doesn’t know the way and she’s never seen snow but she meets Lynx, a feral little thief, solitary and suspicious, who does know the LOG-LINE territory. Despite their mutual distrust, they Would you be willing to let go of the most end up traveling together. Lynx sleeps next to important part of yourself if it meant you would the box every night, yearning to find out what be saved? Say goodbye to everything you its mysterious contents could be, while Agata, love, all that makes you who you are, accept too, has no idea that the boy has a secret of the inevitable, accept change? Small Body is his own. an ode to incompleteness.

46 VENICE GAP-FINANCING MARKET GOALS AT GAP- MAIN PRODUCTION COMPANY DELEGATE PRODUCTION FINANCING MARKET Nefertiti Film COMPANY To find a sales agent and/or other financial CO-PRODUCTION COMPANIES Nefertiti Film resources to cover the extra budget caused Tomsa Films, Vertigo MAIN CONTACT PERSON by the stop of shooting due of Covid19. PARTNERS ATTACHED Nadia Trevisan

PROJECT TYPE Rai Cinema, Eurimages, MiBACT, Friuli ADDRESS Fiction Venezia Giulia Audiovisual Fund, Friuli Via P. Amalteo, 68/b FORMAT / RUNTIME Venezia Giulia Film Commission, Re-Act, San Vito al Tagliamento, 4K / 100' Creative Europe - Media, CNC Aide aux 33078 Pordenone LANGUAGE / LOCATION Cinémas du Monde, Slovenian Film Centre; Italy Film Studio Viba Film, ARTE Cofinova (Sofica), Italian, Friulan / Friuli Venezia Giulia (Italy) EMAIL TorinoFilmLab, When East Meets West. BUDGET / FINANCING IN PLACE [email protected] € 2.191.368 / €​ 2.041.368 CURRENT STATUS OF PROJECT CELL PHONE Production +39 3389429241 CREATIVE TEAM WEBSITE Laura Samani, Director and Writer nefertitifilm.it Marco Borromei, Elisa Dondi, Writers Nadia Trevisan, Main Producer Thomas Lambert, Danijel Hočevar, Co-Producers Mitja Ličen, DoP

DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT PRODUCTION COMPANY PROFILE If things don’t have a name, they don’t exist. Nefertiti Film is an independent production Agata rebels against the accepted order of company, located in the north-east of Italy, her day. She faces a journey far beyond what which operates at both national and she knows, abandoning her roots and risking international level. It creates research projects to loose herself and her life. She embodies with a strong authorial orientation for film, but both life and death: as a mother she has not only, all based on an ‘artisan’ philosophy. experienced the power of biological creation Nefertiti Film has already participated in a that is part of nature, but she is determined to number of international film festivals, being Laura Samani, subvert the natural order of things, fight often praised and awarded. Director against her fate and challenge divine law. Agata does not change, she doesn’t overcome her internal, self-destructive voice. MAIN FILMOGRAPHY On the contrary she abandons herself to it. OF PRODUCER Her fierce desire is to give her daughter a 2018 Menocchio by Alberto Fasulo name in order to be able to let her go when 2018 History of Love by Sonja Prosenc they have become two separate beings. But (co-producer) in reality this journey is a way to prolong the 2015 Parents by Alberto Fasulo connection she has had with her daughter for months. The belly is metaphorically transferred to her back, becoming a weight PREVIOUS WORK BY DIRECTOR Nadia Trevisan, she carries on her shoulders. Agata’s journey ON FESTIVAL SCOPE PRO Producer to the sanctuary is a progressive descent to The Sleeping Saint the underworld, a path that leads her to the surprising discovery that there is a thin and indescribable borderline between life and death, reality and magic, the possibilities we hope for and the time we have left.

47 Piccolo Corpo UNITED STATES, FRANCE, GERMANY RUNNER MARIAN MATHIAS

DIRECTOR’S BIOGRAPHY SYNOPSIS Marian Mathias graduated with an MFA from Runner follows Haas, an eighteen-year-old girl NYU Tisch School of the Arts as a raised by a single father in Missouri. When her Departmental Fellow. Marian is a recipient of father suddenly dies she is left to bury him the Hollywood Foreign Press Award, the Sara alone. In order to meet the terms of his will, Driver Production Award, and two awards in she must bring him to the town where he was Fine Art. Her thesis filmGive Up The Ghost born along the Mississippi River, a community premiered as an Official Selection at the battling both the stresses of climate and (2017) Cannes Film Festival (Cinéfondation). economy. Due to an upcoming storm her Her films have premiered worldwide in father’s burial is postponed and with nowhere countries such as Egypt, Poland, and Nepal. else to go she stays at an inn belonging to a Runner, her first feature project, has been lonely cinephile named Baggy. Though a selected for the 2018 Cannes Cinéfondation hermit himself, Baggy encourages others to Residence and the Torino FeatureLab, where go out and see the world: a view very much it won the Creative Media Co-Production restricted from this town. And it is during her Prize. extended, unexpected time here when she meets Will. Will is in the region working to support his mother whose eyesight is failing LOG-LINE her. Will has an artistic soul, but one tethered After the sudden death of her father, Haas to the harsh reality of his circumstances. Will meets Will. A story of two strangers finding, teaches Haas to live and Haas teaches Will to changing, and ultimately leaving one another. feel. It is in their friendship, their shared expression of living, where Haas’ understanding of love and loss begins to take shape.

48 VENICE GAP-FINANCING MARKET GOALS AT GAP- MAIN PRODUCTION COMPANY DELEGATE PRODUCTION FINANCING MARKET Killjoy Films COMPANY To find partners who provide both strategic CO-PRODUCTION COMPANIES Killjoy Films insight, as well as fiscal support for the film. Easy Riders, Man Alive MAIN CONTACT PERSON

PROJECT TYPE CURRENT STATUS OF PROJECT Joy Jorgensen Fiction Pre-production ADDRESS FORMAT / RUNTIME CREATIVE TEAM Spenerstr. 25a Digital / 100' Marian Mathias, Director and Writer 10557 Berlin LANGUAGE / LOCATION Joy Jorgensen, Producer Germany English and German / Missouri and Illinois, Omar El Kadi and Nadia Turincev, EMAIL USA Co-Producers [email protected] Jomo Fray, BUDGET / FINANCING IN PLACE DoP CELL PHONE € 464.800 / €​ 326.000 Blair McClendon, Editor +49 15119671145 WEBSITE killjoyfilms.de

DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT PRODUCTION COMPANY PROFILE Runner is my first feature and it is also the Killjoy was founded in New York in 2014 and story of first love. It is a story of two young moved to Berlin in 2016. We produce short people, both in times of great trial, who find and feature narrative projects with a focus on and reinforce one another. The characters in new voices and emerging directors from focus are those who possess both fragility around the globe. We think a story can and and strength. Haas, in her quietude, her should contain the complexity of what it is to connectedness with people and environment, be human and we strive for content that is has enormous power. Will, a young man who daring and undeterred by fear of perception. Marian Mathias, possesses the same, is ridiculed for his Many of our films exist in the tension between Director sensitivity. I am drawn to the vast and often joy and heartbreak, between the generosity of neglected scenes of the American Midwest. I our better natures and the twinge of petty want to narratively ask the question, “how can selfishness. you be close, when you are so far apart?” and to visualize it. My aim is to put large emotional and physical gaps between characters and MAIN FILMOGRAPHY for those gaps to eventually close with the OF PRODUCER basic will of a young person to connect. 2020 Homebody by Joseph Sackett Throughout the film there is a constant push 2019 Bambirak by Zamarin Wahdat and pull between dark and light, death and 2018 Destete by Inés Gowland life. I will be looking to use joy as a means of 2018 Blue Christmas by Charlotte Wells Joy Jorgensen, investigating sorrow and vice versa, and for 2017 Laps by Charlotte Wells Producer love to grow somewhere in between. PREVIOUS WORK BY DIRECTOR ON FESTIVAL SCOPE PRO Give Up the Ghost

49 Runner NETHERLANDS, SPAIN SHIRIN EBADI: UNTIL WE ARE FREE DAWN GIFFORD ENGLE

DIRECTOR’S BIOGRAPHY SYNOPSIS Dawn Gifford Engle is an activist, filmmaker The first Muslim woman to ever receive the and Co-Founder of the The PeaceJam Nobel Peace Prize, Shirin Ebadi has inspired Foundation, a nonprofit organization led by millions around the globe through her work as fourteen Nobel Peace Laureates. She has a human rights lawyer defending women and been nominated 17 times for the Nobel Peace children against a brutal regime in Iran. Now Prize. She directed and wrote the the film,Until We Are Free, tells her story of award-winning documentary films,Desmond courage and defiance in the face of a Tutu: Children of the Light, Rigoberta Menchu: government out to destroy her, her family, and Daughter of the Maya, Adolfo Perez Esquivel: her mission: to bring justice to the people and Rivers of Hope, Oscar Arias: Without a Shot the country she loves. The Iranian government Fired, Betty Williams: Contagious Courage, would end up taking everything from Shirin and The Dalai Lama – Scientist. She has won Ebadi – her marriage, her home, even her more than 20 “Best Director” awards for her Nobel Prize medallion – but the one thing it efforts. could never steal was her spirit to fight for justice and a better future for the women of Iran. LOG-LINE The Struggle for Women’s Rights in Iran.

50 VENICE GAP-FINANCING MARKET GOALS AT GAP- MAIN PRODUCTION COMPANY DELEGATE PRODUCTION FINANCING MARKET Stichting PeaceJam Europe Foundation COMPANY To secure financing and distribution. A rough CO-PRODUCTION COMPANIES Stichting PeaceJam Europe Foundation cut of our film will be ready for viewing during Post-production MAIN CONTACT PERSON the Venice Production Bridge program. CURRENT STATUS OF PROJECT Dawn Gifford Engle

PROJECT TYPE Rough Cut completed ADDRESS Documentary CREATIVE TEAM Herenweg 131 FORMAT / RUNTIME Dawn Gifford Engle, Director, 2105 MG Heemstede HD / 78' Writer and Producer The Netherlands LANGUAGE / LOCATION Shirin Ebadi, Cast EMAIL English / Iran, UK, US, France, Belgium, India Laurel Harris, Narrator [email protected] Ivan Suvanjieff, BUDGET / FINANCING IN PLACE Executive Producer PHONE / CELL PHONE € 965.000 / €​ 700.000 +34 690155537 WEBSITE peacejam.org/films

DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT PRODUCTION COMPANY PROFILE Ever since I met Shirin Ebadi, the first Muslim Stichting PeaceJam Europe was created to woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize, I have coordinate, strengthen, and expand been fascinated by her courage in taking on PeaceJam programming throughout Europe. one of the most repressive regimes in the The mission of the PeaceJam Europe world – the hard line theocracy known as Iran. Foundation is to create a new generation of Shirin Ebadi lives under constant death young leaders in Europe who are committed threats. She is spied upon and followed. She to transforming themselves, their communities was thrown into prison, and when that did not and the world. An essential component of the Dawn Gifford Engle, break her, they imprisoned her daughter, her work of the Stichting PeaceJam Europe Director, Writer and Producer sister, her husband, and took from her every Foundation is the production of feature length single thing that she owned, including her documentary films which capture the ability to return to her beloved country without essence, inspiration, and cutting edge work of being tossed into prison for life. But they could leading Nobel Peace Prize winners who are not take away her fierce conviction that her alive in the world today. people would one day be free – and that it will, indeed, be the women of Iran who will finally bring about an end to this brutal regime. For MAIN FILMOGRAPHY more than fifteen years, as I have worked OF PRODUCER alongside Shirin Ebadi, I have been thinking 2019 The Dalai Lama: Scientist by Dawn about making this film. But when I heard that Gifford Engle Ivan Suvanjieff, she was planning to call for a constitutional 2018 Betty Williams: Contagious Courage Executive Producer referendum in Iran overseen by the United by Dawn Gifford Engle Nations, to finally allow her people to vote 2017 Oscar Arias: Without a Shot Fired by freely and to choose their own future path, for Dawn Gifford Engle themselves, I knew that the time was now. 2016 Rigoberta Menchu: Daughter of the Maya by Dawn Gifford Engle 2015 Adolfo Perez Esquivel: Rivers of Hope by Dawn Gifford Engle 2014 Desmond Tutu: Children of the Light by Dawn Gifford Engle

PREVIOUS WORK BY DIRECTOR ON FESTIVAL SCOPE PRO Desmond Tutu: Children Light

51 Shirin Ebadi: Until We Are Free ICELAND, BELGIUM, SWEDEN SUMARLJÓS OG SVO KEMUR NÓTTIN SUMMERLIGHT AND THEN COMES THE NIGHT ELFAR ADALSTEINS

DIRECTOR’S BIOGRAPHY SYNOPSIS Elfar Adalsteins studied filmmaking at the Met We hover above a small Icelandic seaside Film School at Ealing Studios (London). He village, as it speaks directly to us: «It feels began his career as a producer, working on good to wake up early around here, take a Icelandic and international features alike, deep breath, look out at the ocean stirring before shifting his focus to writing and under a mass gathering of grey clouds. No directing. His short film,Sailcloth , starring the need to think... just be... Living here is pretty renowned John Hurt, was shortlisted for the good, although life of course isn’t always great. 2012 Academy Awards and BAFTAS. His We probably won’t have time to visit every directorial feature debut, End of Sentence, an house, to tell you every story, but we’ll tell you English language father-son road movie the things that matter: stories of coincidence starring John Hawkes and Logan Lerman was and chance, of dreams that turn worlds upside met with critical acclaim. down, of things that exceed our comprehension, we’ll tell you about human lust that melts together night and day and of LOG-LINE course we’ll tell you about the pitch black night The Village is brimming with stories and if you that pulls its power from deep outer space». As listen carefully it might tell you a few... we descend on the village we are introduced to the main characters of our stories: The Astronomer, who used to run the knitting factory, his musical son David and his amazingly beautiful wife Hrefna, to Hannes the colossal Policeman and his wafer thin son Jonas, to Benedikt who operates every kind of heavy machinery and Thuridur the doctor’s assistant, to Kjartan the cheerful farmer and his determined wife Asdis, to Elisabet who loves to cook and her sister Solrun who runs the school and the whole village through her husband, Magistrate Gudmundur. We attend informed lectures at the Community Hall, get a boxing workout in the highlands, we get sweaty after a spin at a country dance. But life isn’t always rosy as the thread between joy and sorrow, life and death, is wafer thin and can suddenly snap in two. 52 VENICE GAP-FINANCING MARKET GOALS AT GAP- MAIN PRODUCTION COMPANY DELEGATE PRODUCTION FINANCING MARKET Berserk Films COMPANY To introduce the project to potential sales CO-PRODUCTION COMPANIES Berserk Films agents, raise awareness amongst festival Polar Bear, Film Vilda Bomben MAIN CONTACT PERSON programmers as well as meet with financiers Heather Millard to close the gap. PARTNERS ATTACHED Icelandic Film Centre, Nordisk Film & TV ADDRESS PROJECT TYPE Fond, Swedish Film Institute, Screen Flanders, Skogahlid 12 Fiction Tax Shelter Belgium, Tax Incentive Iceland, RVK, 105 Reykjavik FORMAT / RUNTIME Thingeyri regional fund (Iceland), SENA Iceland 4K / 110' (distributor Iceland), Scanbox (distributor EMAIL BASED ON Nordics), Sýn (broadcaster Iceland) [email protected] Sumarljós og svo kemur nóttin CURRENT STATUS OF PROJECT PHONE / CELL PHONE by Jón Kalman Stefánsson Pre-production +354 6935698 LANGUAGE / LOCATION CREATIVE TEAM WEBSITE Icelandic / Iceland Elfar Adalsteins, Writer and Director berserkfilms.com BUDGET / FINANCING IN PLACE Ólafur Darri Ólafsson, Sveinn Ólafur € 2.512.625 / €2.031.663 Gunnarsson, Sara Ásgeirsdóttir, Main Cast Heather Millard, Main Producer David Williamson, DoP

DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT PRODUCTION COMPANY PROFILE Few books have moved me as magnificently Founded by filmmaker Elfar Adalsteins in as Jón Kalman Stefánsson’s masterful novel 2007, Berserk Films is an independent content Summerlight and Then Comes the Night. It development company focused on creating was as if the omniscient voice of The Village compelling stories for cinema and television. was speaking directly to me, entrusting me In the past we have collaborated with with stories from a microcosmos. Summerlight international producers and agencies in is woven by bittersweet anecdotes of people bringing indie film projects to life and recently fighting ordinary everyday battles in an released our first in-house developed feature Elfar Adalsteins, extraordinary community, on the verge of film,End Of Sentence, starring renowned Director social sustainability. We follow four stories in a actors John Hawkes, Logan Lerman and gallery of personas that converge into the Sarah Bolger, now in pre-production with our theme of ‘united we stand, divided we fall’. It is second feature Summerlight And Then Comes an ensemble piece, in the vein of Federico The Night. Fellini’s Amarcord and Robert Altman’s Short Cuts, where the conflicting elements of life, love and death melt into the collective MAIN FILMOGRAPHY heartbeat of our storyteller, The Village, which OF PRODUCER sees all and hears all. It is a story of contrasts, 2020 Beast Slayer by Thorey Mjallhvit of the bright summer light followed by the long 2019 The Seen and the Unseen by Sara dark Nordic winter and how we as humans Dosa (Co-Producer) Heather Millard, deal with such clashing forces. 2018 Let Me Fall by Baldvin Z. Producer (Exec. Producer) 2017 Eat, Grow, Love by Thordur Jonsson 2016 Yarn by Una Lorenzen 2013 Of Good Report by Jahmil X.T.Qubeka (Co-Producer)

PREVIOUS WORK BY DIRECTOR ON FESTIVAL SCOPE PRO End of Sentence

53 SUMMERLIGHT AND THEN COMES THE NIGHT MEXICO, ARGENTINA SUPERNOVA NATALIA LÓPEZ

DIRECTOR’S BIOGRAPHY SYNOPSIS Natalia López is a Mexican director, editor and Isabel, a woman from the city in the midst of a post-producer. She directed the short film,En divorce, settles down with her two children at el cielo como en la tierra, which was a countryhouse abandoned by her family. As presented at the 2007 Semaine de la Critique she gets involved with María and her family in Cannes, and also obtained the award for and their search for a missing relative, Isabel Best Experimental Short Film at the 2006 is torn by an unusual guilt of social origin. To Morelia IFF and for Best Fiction Short Film at expiate it, she embodies the path of the the Short Shorts Film Festival. She has been missing young woman, who, giving in to an nominated for an Ariel Award for her work as unrestrained life of violence, faced an untimely editor in Silent Light by Carlos Reygadas, and mortal destiny. for the Ibero-American Fénix Film Award for her participation in both Jauja by Lisandro Alonso, and Heli by Amat Escalante.

LOG-LINE Is trying to save another person an attempt to free ourselves?

54 VENICE GAP-FINANCING MARKET GOALS AT GAP- MAIN PRODUCTION COMPANY DELEGATE PRODUCTION FINANCING MARKET Lobo en medio de Lobos, Amondo cine COMPANY To complete the gap-funding and start CO-PRODUCTION COMPANIES Amondo cine presenting exclusively the project in its Foprocine, Rei Cine MAIN CONTACT PERSON advanced version to key players of the Fernanda de la Peza industry. CURRENT STATUS OF PROJECT Production, editing ADDRESS PROJECT TYPE Tlaxcala 47, Roma Sur Cuauhtémoc, Fiction CREATIVE TEAM Natalia López, Director 06670 Mexico City FORMAT / RUNTIME Fernanda de la Peza, Mexico Digital 4K / 100' Joaquín del Paso, Main Producers EMAIL LANGUAGE / LOCATION Adrian Durazo, DoP [email protected] Spanish / Tepoztlán - Mexico Nailea Norvind, Aida Roa, PHONE / CELL PHONE BUDGET / FINANCING IN PLACE Antonia Olivares, Main Cast +52 55 3500 0206 € 730.693 / €​ 660.693 Omar Gúzman, Editing Angela Leyton, Art Director Mary Ann Smith, Costume designer Victor Tendler, Sound Guido Berenblum, Sound Design

DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT PRODUCTION COMPANY PROFILE Deaths, disappearances, hidden graves, Lobo en medio de lobos is an independent images of torture, vileness, abandonment, Mexican production company founded in indolence, and other calamities are deeply 2009 by Fernanda de la Peza – Film and and relentlessly rooted in the unconscious of Theatrical Producer – and Natalia López – the Mexican people. A spiritual wound has Film Director, Editor and Post-producer. sprouted that sneakily weaves into our lives Lobo is the sister company of Amondo Cine and our collective imaginary as a country. based in Mexico City, Delhi and Warsaw, In my film, a mother, a sister and a daughter Amondo was founded by a multicultural group Natalia López, from different social universes, struggle in the of filmmakers with the aim of developing Director same playground, but with different reasons; national and international quality feature films Isabel’s actions and her body are a metaphor with a unique and bold vision. for the immense social guilt that we keep hidden inside. The film that I want to make comes from my experience living for eleven MAIN FILMOGRAPHY years in a rural area of Mexico, sharing the OF PRODUCER day to day of people from this place where the 2020 El Hoyo En La Cerca by Joaquín del degradation of the social tissues and the Paso criminalization of society is visible. I think it is 2020 Supernova by Natalia López necessary to continue exploring it through 2016 Maquinaria Panamericana by Joaquín fiction: the psychological dimension is what del Paso Fernanda de la Peza, interests me, the unconscious affectation, the 2016 The Untamed by Amat Escalante Producer re-interpretation of the pain of others, what hurts us and unites us even if we don’t want to see it. And ultimately, share my deep desire that we can reverse this decline.

Joaquin del Paso, Producer

55 Supernova THE NETHERLANDS SWEET DREAMS ENA SENDIJAREVIĆ

DIRECTOR’S BIOGRAPHY SYNOPSIS Ena Sendijarević (1987) is a Dutch-Bosnian 1900. A secluded island full of flora and fauna writer/director. She studied film theory at the in the middle of the Indian Ocean. Amidst yet Universities of Amsterdam and Berlin, before another sugar crisis, Jan (64), dies. Leaving graduating from the Netherlands Film his two women to their own devices: Agathe Academy as a director. Ena made several (65), his Dutch wife, and Indonesian shorts, of which her latest, Import (2016), housemaid Siti (27), who is the mother of his premiered at Cannes’ Directors Fortnight and bastard son Karel (7). The two women bury was the Dutch entry for Live Action Short Film Jan’s body deep in the jungle. Agathe at the Academy Awards. Her debut feature summons her own estranged son Cornelis Take Me Somewhere Nice (2019) premiered at (26), who lives in the Netherlands, to come to the IFFR Tiger Competition, where Ena won her aid and become the new head of the the Special Jury Award. The film traveled on to factory. Cornelis is bankrupt and finds himself Cannes’ ACID sidebar and the Sarajevo Film with no other choice than to cross the ocean Festival, taking home the Grand Prix. together with his very pregnant wife Josefien (22). The two plan to sell the factory as soon as they can to start a more suitable life. Those LOG-LINE plans are blocked when the family notary – 1900. A secluded island full of flora and who is also the local reverend - informs them fauna. Amidst another sugar crisis, Jan, that bastard son Karel is the sole heir to all patriarch and head of a sugar factory, dies. property. Now that the old hierarchies are Leaving his two women to their own devices: turned upside down, it’s every man, woman, Agathe, his wife, and housemaid Siti, the child, plant and animal for themselves. mother of his bastard son. A family reunion follows. When the boy turns out to be the only heir, it’s every man, woman, child, plant and animal for themselves.

56 VENICE GAP-FINANCING MARKET GOALS AT GAP- MAIN PRODUCTION COMPANY DELEGATE PRODUCTION FINANCING MARKET Lemming Film COMPANY To find international partners for the project, CO-PRODUCTION COMPANIES Lemming Film with a focus on a sales agent. A Private View, VPRO MAIN CONTACT PERSON

PROJECT TYPE PARTNERS ATTACHED Erik Glijnis Fiction Gusto Entertainment (Benelux distributor) ADDRESS FORMAT / RUNTIME CURRENT STATUS OF PROJECT Valschermkade 36F T.B.D. / 100' Financing 1059CD Amsterdam The Netherlands LANGUAGE / LOCATION CREATIVE TEAM Dutch, Malay / T.B.D. Ena Sendijarević, Director and Writer EMAIL BUDGET / FINANCING IN PLACE Leontine Petit, Erik Glijnis, Main Producer [email protected] € 2.999.450 / €​ 2.277.182,44 PHONE / CELL PHONE +31 206610424 +31 643895163 WEBSITE lemmingfilm.com

DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT PRODUCTION COMPANY PROFILE We live in a time in which we are becoming Lemming Film is one of the leading film and increasingly critical of the relationship series production companies in The between the West and the rest. The past is Netherlands, with a sister company in being revived and rewritten, especially when it Germany. Since 1995 our aim is to create high comes to the exploitation and oppression of quality productions which reflect other people for the dominant country’s contemporary society. We focus on both the benefit. The same is happening in the national and international market and aim to Netherlands. With Sweet Dreams I want to join work with the best local and international Ena Sendijarević, this movement of looking critically at the past talent to reach a broad audience. Our Director to see how it influences current power productions are regularly financed from relations. At the beginning of the film the several international sources, are owner of the sugar factory and patriarch of award-winning and widely shown at this story dies. Now everyone’s position in the prestigious festivals. Lemming Film is run by pecking order is threatened, male and female, CEO/producer Leontine Petit and producers plant and animal. Chaos reigns. I want to dive Erik Glijnis and Tom van Blommestein. into this schizophrenic state of being and express it cinematically. Czech New Wave filmmakers like Juraj Herz will be my cinematic MAIN FILMOGRAPHY guides to achieve this. Following Billy Wilder’s OF PRODUCER quote, ‘If you’re going to tell people the truth, 2020 Berlin Alexanderplatz by Burhan Leontine Petit, be funny or they’ll kill you,’ I want to avoid Qurbani CEO/Producer getting killed by using humour as a way into 2020 Pleasure by Ninja Thyberg this period of insanity that still has much 2019 Monos by Alejandro Landes influence on how we perceive our world today. 2017 Zama by Lucrecia Martel Sweet Dreams is an absurdist, surrealist film 2015 Full Contact by David Verbeek about the madness of the Dutch colonial era 2015 The Lobster by Yorgos Lanthimos in the 1900 Dutch East Indies. PREVIOUS WORK BY DIRECTOR ON FESTIVAL SCOPE PRO Take Me Somewhere Nice

Erik Glijnis, Producer

57 Sweet Dreams FRANCE, IRAN

THINGS THAT YOU KILL ALIREZA KHATAMI

DIRECTOR’S BIOGRAPHY SYNOPSIS Alireza Khatami is an Iranian filmmaker whose Ali (39) has returned to Iran after years of living trademark is folding fantasy elements into abroad. He struggles between saving his otherwise realistic narratives that address the drying garden and childless marriage. Unable question of memory and identity. His short film to grieve the sudden death of his mother, Ali Mr. Chang’s New Address, premiered at forms a close relationship with an enigmatic Directors’ Fortnight of Cannes Film Festival gardener, Reza (39). When Ali’s sister reveals (2013). His first feature film,Oblivion Verses, that years ago, “dad punched mom so hard premiered at the 74th Venice International Film that she had a brain hemorrhage,” Ali begins to Festival where it received Orizzonti Award for question his mother’s death. Reza encourages Best Screenplay, the FIPRESCI Award, and Ali to avenge. At gunpoint, he kidnaps Ali’s InterFilm Award for Best Debut Film. father, Morteza (65), and orders Ali to bury him alive. After the burial instead of Ali, Reza drives home. Everyone accepts Reza as he is Ali. LOG-LINE Soon Reza learns Morteza had transferred the Haunted by the suspicious death of his ailing house deed to his mother’s name, making sure mother, Ali coerces his enigmatic gardener to she is taken care of after him. He also carry a cold-blooded act of revenge against discovers Morteza was a “loving child,” but his his father. However, soon doubts begin to father used to beat him. Regretful, Reza visits grow if what he did was right. his father’s burial site, but the grave is dug up and empty. Staying at his father’s house one last night, Reza wakes up to a loud knocking. When he goes to open the door, we see it’s Ali again, instead of Reza. Behind the door stands Morteza, half bone, and rotten ftesh. The dead man goes inside and lays down. Another knocking shakes Ali up.

58 VENICE GAP-FINANCING MARKET GOALS AT GAP- MAIN PRODUCTION COMPANY DELEGATE PRODUCTION FINANCING MARKET Fulgurance COMPANY To find partners and financiers, Remora films Fulgurance distribution and sales agent. CO-PRODUCTION COMPANIES Remora films PROJECT TYPE Payman Maadi MAIN CONTACT PERSON Fiction PARTNERS ATTACHED Elisa Sepulveda Ruddoff FORMAT / RUNTIME Arte / Cofinova; Procirep; ADDRESS 4K / 100' Blue Light Project 15 rue des halles BASED ON CURRENT STATUS OF PROJECT 75001 Paris Original Idea Financing France LANGUAGE / LOCATION CREATIVE TEAM EMAIL Farsi, English / Iran Alireza Khatami, Director and Writer [email protected] BUDGET / FINANCING IN PLACE Peyman Maadi, Main Cast PHONE / CELL PHONE € 690.000 / €495.000​ Elisa Sepulveda Ruddoff, +33 143870007 Cyriac Auriol, Producers +33 621086255 WEBSITE fulgurancefilms.fr

DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT PRODUCTION COMPANY PROFILE Things That You Kill is both historical and ​Fulgurance symbolic, a kind of Conradian search of one’s New ambitious and pioneering production place in the universe, one’s root, one’s identity company based in Paris. We produce and what happens to that identity in the ground-breaking worldwide content without encounter with the dominant culture. Ali has restrictions of genre, length or format. returned from the west with no answers. He is Remora Films a lost stranger in his own home. Reza, on the For over 20 years, with his first company Les other hand, has found the answer in Films du Requin then with Remora Films. Alireza Khatami, eliminating the questions through violence. Cyriac Auriol has produced 19 features from Director Ali’s attempt at eliminating the question both french and foreign directors. He is the however fails and the ghosts hunt him. In founder of the Cinémathèque de Tanger and order to move on, to come of age, to become had produced 4 films in Iran includingNour a father, Ali should have tried to understand, by Bahman Kiarostami, Bab’Aziz by Nacer but he is unable to forgive, and he learns that Khémir, Mitra Farahani’s Teddy award winner about himself too late. He will remain a child Just a woman and Tabou/Zohre & with no place in this world. I wrote hoping that Manouchehr. maybe it’s not too late for my generation and we still can learn to forgive. MAIN FILMOGRAPHY OF PRODUCER Elisa Sepulveda Ruddoff, 2020 Notes for a Film by Ignacio Agüero Producer 2019 Haut Perchés by Olivier Ducastel and Jacques Martineau 2010 Marimbas del Infierno by Julio Hernandez Cordón 2005 Bab’Aziz by Nacer Khémir 2003 Taboo: Zohre & Manouchehr by Mitra Farahani

PREVIOUS WORK BY DIRECTOR ON FESTIVAL SCOPE PRO Cyriac Auriol, Oblivion Verses Producer

59 THINGS THAT YOU KILL FRANCE, GERMANY TRANSAMAZONIA PIA MARAIS

DIRECTOR’S BIOGRAPHY SYNOPSIS Pia Marais grew up in Sweden and South Rebecca was declared “a miracle”, after she Africa. Having studied art, she went on to survived a plane crash deep in the Rainforest. study film at the DFFB in Berlin, where she is A trauma she has no memory of. Now thanks still based. Her feature debut The Unpolished to her father Lawrence Byrne’s entrepreneurial premiered in Competition in Rotterdam where talent, Rebecca has become a notorious it won the Tiger Award (2007). Her second miracle healer to whom people flock. This film AtEllen’s Age, was developed at the supports their mission of evangelising the Residence du Festival de Cannes and neighbouring indigenous population and premiered in Competition in Locarno 2010, baptising them in the name of the Lord. When followed by Toronto, London, New Directors marauding loggers plunder the indigenous New Films, etc. Her next filmLayla Fourie was land, the bible students desert the Mission to set in her home country South Africa and take up arms. Rebecca and her father are premiered in Competition at the 2013 drawn into this conftict, hoping to broker Berlinale, receiving a Special Jury Mention. peace on behalf of the tribe and hinder further violence. An encounter at the illegal sawmill leads Rebecca to make an unexpected LOG-LINE discovery: whilst logging deep in the ​Rebecca is a young miracle healer, whose reservation, the loggers have unearthed parts fame brings crowds to her father Lawrence of a plane. Rebecca is propelled into the core Byrne’s evangelical mission, deep in the of the mystery of her own origins, discovering Amazon rainforest. As hostility arises between that her past is not what she was led to the neighboring indigenous tribe and illegal believe. She starts to question her father and loggers invading their territory, Rebecca and his endeavours of gaining inftuence over the Byrne are pulled into an escalating conftict. fortune hunters. As the conftict takes a bloody Byrne believes he can use his daughter’s turn, father and daughter realize they cannot notoriety to mediate and avoid bloodshed. But preach peace without confronting their own events cast Rebecca into the mystery of her demons and the mystery of their own past. own past. As doubt creeps into their relationship, father and daughter realize they cannot preach peace without confronting their own demons.

60 VENICE GAP-FINANCING MARKET GOALS AT GAP- MAIN PRODUCTION COMPANY DELEGATE PRODUCTION FINANCING MARKET Cinema Defacto COMPANY To find equity and/or financiers with CO-PRODUCTION COMPANIES Cinema Defacto low spending constraints, sales agent, Pandora Filmproduktion, Gaijin MAIN CONTACT PERSON distributors in the co-producing countries, Sophie Erbs pre-sales. PARTNERS ATTACHED CNC, FFA, NRW, Media, Angoa ADDRESS PROJECT TYPE 32, Boulevard de Strasbourg Fiction CURRENT STATUS OF PROJECT Pre-production 75010 Paris FORMAT / RUNTIME France HD / 100' CREATIVE TEAM Pia Marais, Director and Writer EMAIL BASED ON Willem Droste, Martin Rosefeldt, Writers [email protected] Original Idea Sophie Erbs, Main producer PHONE / CELL PHONE LANGUAGE / LOCATION Tom Dercourt, Christoph Friedel, +33 155790404 English / Amazon Claudia Steffen, Co-Producers +33 670855874 BUDGET / FINANCING IN PLACE WEBSITE € 3.200.000 / €​ 2.200.000 cinemadefacto.com

DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT PRODUCTION COMPANY PROFILE Transamazonia is freely inspired by the story Cinéma Defacto is a French, author-driven of a young woman who survived a plane production company at human scale, based crash in the Amazon rainforest in the 1970’s. in Paris. The company’s track-record totals 40 Due to her miraculous survival, she became features, almost all premiering in A-class famous overnight. I became interested in the festivals. Films such as Los Perros by Marcela idea of what it means to be a projection for Said (Critics’ Weeks 2017), The Harvesters by others, upon which they project their needs Etienne Kallos (Un Certain Regard 2018), As and hopes of being saved. This became the Happy As Possible by Alain Raoust (ACID – Pia Marais, inspiration for Rebecca and her father, the Festival de Cannes 2019). Focusing on Director Missionary, Lawrence Byrne. Rebecca’s international productions as a lead producer survival is interpreted by him, as a miracle and and as a coproducer, the ambition of the he creates a miracle healer out of her. company is to reach a wide market with Through their business of the soul, they give crossover titles and to forge links with major meaning to this traumatic event that befell independent players abroad. them both. She, his prodigy. He, her manager. Raised in the fabricated certainty that she is the beacon of some holy power, Rebecca will MAIN FILMOGRAPHY have to free herself and create her own OF PRODUCER beliefs. As a leitmotiv I could never satisfy, I 2019 As Happy As Possible by Alain Raoust want to tackle again the theme of family. Of 2018 The Load by Ognjen Glavonic Sophie Erbs, the need for unconditional love and of 2018 The Harvesters by Etienne Kallos Producer certainty that is driving us. And of the mystery 2017 Milla by Valérie Massadian of the human soul which, fortunately, is never 2017 Los Perros by Marcela Said fully solved. 2017 After The War by Annarita Zambrano

PREVIOUS WORK BY DIRECTOR ON FESTIVAL SCOPE PRO Layla Fourie

Christoph Friedel, Co-producer

61 TRANSAMAZONIA BELGIUM, GERMANY WHY WE FIGHT ALAIN PLATEL, MIRJAM DEVRIENDT

DIRECTOR’S BIOGRAPHY SYNOPSIS Alain Platel is one of Belgium’s most renowned In this film, the acclaimed choreographer choreographers. In 1984, he set up the dance Alain Platel poses the question of Why We company les ballets C de la B. With Lets op Fight to various artists who reflect on violence Bach (1998), he rocketed to the international in a special way. Violence is mental and top, then Pcreating Wolf (2003), Vsprs (2006), physical. And who better than a dancer to Gardenia (2010), Tauberbach (2014), Nicht reflect on how mind and body work together? Schlafen (2016) and The Most Recent The film shows how violence erupts as a Requiem Pour L. (2018). Platel was hailed in physical reaction when we lack words and 2001 as “Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des ways to express our dissatisfaction. The film is Lettres de la République Française and in told through 3 dancers: Bérengère has just 2015 as ‘Commandeur de l’Ordre des Arts et become a mother and struggles with the des Lettres’. In the UK he received the “Time complicated emotions that motherhood Out Live Award” in 2001. His filmograhpy brings. Samir, as the son of immigrants, grew includes De balletten en si en la (2006). up in a violent neighbourhood in a racist Mirjam Devriendt is a well-known Belgian country.Russell saw death during the election photographer and video artist with 25 years of protests in Congo in 2011. All three of them experience. She is famous for her video work have learned to detect in a very intimate way for opera and for photographing the work of violence around them but also within the internationally renown artist Berlinde De themselves. Our emotional life is directly Bruyckere. linked to the world and the violence we experience in it - whether that violence is physical, psychological, social or political. We, LOG-LINE the people, have power and it is our If we can’t find words anymore, to express our responsibility to react, but is that at all deepest, biggest and ugliest feelings, the possible in a non-violent way? Or is that only body takes over. possible for those who create music, art, dance, and words?

62 VENICE GAP-FINANCING MARKET GOALS AT GAP- MAIN PRODUCTION COMPANY DELEGATE PRODUCTION FINANCING MARKET Cassette for timescapes COMPANY To find an international co-producer that can CO-PRODUCTION COMPANIES Cassette for timescapes help us with (post-) production funding, for Gebrueder Beetz Filmproduktion MAIN CONTACT PERSON television partners and a world sales agent. PARTNERS ATTACHED Emmy Oost PROJECT TYPE ZDF/arte, VRT ADDRESS Documentary CURRENT STATUS OF PROJECT Schuurstraat, 39 FORMAT / RUNTIME Production 9040 Gent 4K / 85' Belgium CREATIVE TEAM BASED ON Alain Platel, Mirjam Devriendt, EMAIL Original Idea Directors and Writers [email protected] LANGUAGE / LOCATION Bérengère Bodin, Samir M’Kirech, CELL PHONE French, Dutch, English / Belgium, France Russel Thsiebua, Main Cast +32 478211811 Emmy Oost, BUDGET / FINANCING IN PLACE Producer WEBSITE € 514.231 / €​ 429.231 Christian Beetz, Tuan Lam, Co-producers timescapes.be Mirjam Devriendt, DoP Dieter Diependaele, Editor Steven Prengels, Soundscape Composer

DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT PRODUCTION COMPANY PROFILE A number of scenes from my last dance Cassette for timescapes produces films and performance, Nicht Schlafen, referred quite interactive projects that combine innovative directly to the significant unrest and the vision and social or political engagement. profusion of gratuitous violence that we Producer Emmy Oost started her career with currently observe and feel in the world. Right the internationally acclaimed filmmaker Johan from the start, we noticed how intense this Grimonprez. His Doube Take premiered at dance piece was, both emotionally and Berlinale and in Sundance. Cassette for physically, and that it gave rise to feelings timescapes has successfully co-produced Alain Platel, among the dancers that they had trouble with the US, UK, France, Germany, the Directors and Writers controlling. This led to discussions that were Netherlands and aims at distributing its films quite confronting, but also purging and worldwide through a tailor-made impact sometimes disturbing. Hence my idea to make strategy for each project. this film. InWhy We Fight we look violence straight in the eye in order to uncover certain mechanisms outside and within us. We are MAIN FILMOGRAPHY constantly pointing out what’s wrong in the OF PRODUCER world. With this film, I want to go beyond that: 2020 Glad That I Came, Not Sorry To when we know how violence works within us, Depart (VR) by Azam Masoumzadeh we might better see how we can change this. 2019 Mars, Oman by Vanessa del Campo Using various types of imagery and visual 2018 Zie Mij Doen (Watch Me) by Klara Van Mirjam Devriendt, metaphors, the film analyses social change, Es Directors and Writers the lack of emotional processing and the power 2017 Barber Shop by Luc Vrydaghs of humanity, which always seems to balance 2016 The Invisible City Kakuma by Lieven between creating something spectacularly Corthouts beautiful and something horribly cruel.

Emmy Oost, Producer

63 WHY WE FIGHT SWITZERLAND, GERMANY

WIR WAREN KUMPEL working title ONCE WE WERE PITMEN CHRISTIAN JOHANNES KOCH, JONAS MATAUSCHEK

DIRECTORS BIOGRAPHIES SYNOPSIS Christian Johannes Koch was born in 1986 in Once We Were Pitmen accompanies several Lucerne, Switzerland. Studied photography at miners (a few men and one woman) on a the HEAD-Genève and the HGB Leipzig. tragic but humorous journey to themselves in Studied film directing at the Film University times of discussions about climate change Babelsberg Konrad Wolf, graduated MA and gender identities. Locke & Langer, the big under Barbara Albert. His latest film isSpagat one and the small one, are the last “real / Шпагат (2020). pitmen”. While Locke clings to his miners Jonas Matauschek was born in 1987 in pride, Langer longs for self-realization in Dresden, Germany. He studied photography retirement. For Thomas, the eternal bachelor, at the HGB in Leipzig and film at the Media who lives with his mother, his social gathering Master Class Lab. Berlinale Talent Campus place will disappear. He must emancipate Alumni. He co-founded the “Film Initiative himself a little from his role as a mama’s boy. Leipzig” (FILZ). His latest films areDrei Wege Also, Kiri has found refuge and a new home (2018) and Habitat (2017). on the colliery. In his youth, he fled from the civil war in Sri Lanka. However, he can ignore the questions about his identity and the LOG-LINE repressed past less and less. Martina could In times of discussions about climate change not and did not want to be a male miner and gender identities, several miners embark anymore. She took the courageous step and on a tragic and humorous journey to begin a decided to start living as a woman, tentatively new chapter in their lives, triggered by the trying to build her new life. Through the closure of their anachronistic place of work: symbiotic interweaving of documentary The last underground coal mine in Germany. observation and precise arrangements, the film brings together four personal stories of very different men’s metamorphoses against the background of the social changes of our time.

64 VENICE GAP-FINANCING MARKET GOALS AT GAP- MAIN PRODUCTION COMPANY DELEGATE PRODUCTION FINANCING MARKET CognitoFilms COMPANY To find the gap-financing through pre-sales, CO-PRODUCTION COMPANIES CognitoFilms world sales, investors and co-producers, Elemag Pictures (DE) | Serienwerk (DE) MAIN CONTACT PERSON as well as festivals and partners for the Rajko Jazbec distribution. CURRENT STATUS OF PROJECT Financing / Pre-Production ADDRESS PROJECT TYPE Erlachstrasse 25 Fiction CREATIVE TEAM Christian Johannes Koch, 8003 Zurich FORMAT / RUNTIME Jonas Matauschek, Directors and Writers Switzerland Digital / 70-90min' Rajko Jazbec, Dario Schoch, Main Producer EMAIL LANGUAGE / LOCATION Tanja Georgieva, Co-Producer [email protected] German / Ibbenbüren, Fulda, Sebastian Klatt, DoP PHONE Ruhrpott, Sri Lanka +41 793209423 BUDGET / FINANCING IN PLACE WEBSITE € 847.937 / €​ 655.864 cognito-films.com

DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT PRODUCTION COMPANY PROFILE The heroic image of the miner bravely risking CognitoFilms Ltd is a Zurich based production his life to wrest the treasures from “Mother company. It focuses on the development, Earth” seems like an anachronism today. But financing and production of national and certain values and ideas of this working-class international feature and documentary films. image still have meaning in some parts of the We produce films for an international audience working society. It is, therefore, our desire to that inspire to think outside of boundaries. We look behind this mythical facade and to work with filmmakers that are distinguished by question historically grown role models. What a style of their own and believe in a long-term Christian Johannes Koch, does being a man mean today? How are role cooperation with our creatives and production Director models shaped by work relationships? How partners. The two producers Rajko Jazbec will masculinity be constituted in the future? and Dario Schoch are well- connected These are the questions that arise for us as throughout Europe and North America thanks men and filmmakers of today. From our point to international producer programs like EAVE, of view, the closure of the last German coal ACE and Inside Pictures. mine symbolizes in an exemplary way an end of the industrial age that has had a lasting impact on our society. On the one hand, MAIN FILMOGRAPHY German prosperity has been built on this OF PRODUCER foundation (despite devastating wars) and, on 2020 Spagat (Шпагат) by Christian the other hand, the time has come to not only Johannes Koch (to be released) Jonas Matauschek, take a critical look at the legacy of this 2020 Lost In Paradise by Fiona Ziegler (to Director industrialisation but also to question the role be released) models that have been passed from 2020 The Bubble by Valerie Gudenus (to be generation to generation and that still released) penetrate deep into our society. 2019 Another Reality by Noël Dernesch and Olli Waldhauer 2018 Cloud Whispers by Kerstin Polte 2017 Goliath by Dominik Locher

PREVIOUS WORK BY DIRECTOR ON FESTIVAL SCOPE PRO Rajko Jazbec, Above us Electricity Producer

65 ONCE WE WERE PITMEN 66 VENICE GAP-FINANCING MARKET VIRTUAL REALITY IMMERSIVE STORY PROJECTS FINLAND YKSIN YÖSSÄ ALONE AT NIGHT HANNA VÄSTINSALO

DIRECTOR’S BIOGRAPHY SYNOPSIS A Ph.D. in molecular genetics, director Hanna After a triggering encounter with an unknown Västinsalo received the Alfred P. Sloan bar patron, a young woman’s point of view of Foundation fellowship for her film directing her hometown takes a turn for the worse. studies at the American Film Institute Embarking with the viewer on the simple Conservatory. She has directed the dance VR journey of walking home through the film,Wombsong , and directed and curated an seemingly safe streets of Helsinki, the woman exhibition with VR animation for the Helsinki sees threats on every corner. Tormented by City Museum, Man Under Bridge, which gives coyote-like taxi drivers, lewd teenagers, and a a voice to a homeless historian. Her future persistent stalker, she finally reaches a boiling projects include a human genetics point when she witnesses a teenage girl documentary, and a horror feature based on struggle in the same, unnerving environment. Finnish mythology. Västinsalo gave a speech about the relationship between science and film at TEDxHelsinkiUniversity event in 2018.

LOG-LINE Alone at Night takes the viewer on a simple journey – a walk home through a seemingly safe city – but through the eyes of someone who has been triggered to see everything as a threat.

68 VENICE GAP-FINANCING MARKET GOALS AT GAP- MAIN PRODUCTION COMPANY DELEGATE PRODUCTION FINANCING MARKET Handle Productions COMPANY To find co-production partners, distribution PARTNERS ATTACHED Handle Productions funding, feedback about the concept, spread Teatime Research, Kone Foundation, MAIN CONTACT PERSON the word of mouth and create a community The Church Media Foundation, AVEK Hanna Hemilä around our project. CURRENT STATUS OF PROJECT ADDRESS PROJECT TYPE Development Pohjoisranta 20 b B 41 VR Fiction CREATIVE TEAM 00170 Helsinki FORMAT / RUNTIME Hanna Västinsalo, Director Finland 360 degree stereoscopic 3D video /10' Beata Harju, Writer, Associate Producer EMAIL LANGUAGE / LOCATION Hanna Hemilä, Producer [email protected] English / City of Helsinki, Finland Pirjo Honkasalo, DoP CELL PHONE BUDGET / FINANCING IN PLACE Paavo Happonen, Visual Effects Supervisor +358 400512205 € 180.000 / €​ 54.000 Tommi Teronen, 360 Producer Sakari Salli, Sound designer WEBSITE Juulia Kääriä, Concept Artist handleproductions.com

DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT PRODUCTION COMPANY PROFILE Alone at Night was conceived when our team Handle Productions delivers critically compared our memories of after-hours acclaimed stories to international audiences, Helsinki. The startling differences in our and offers production expertise for prominent depictions showed how people view the same independent productions. The company’s places with different triggers for fear. This led story-first approach has led to award winning to the exploration of how public spaces are documentary, children’s content and feature mindscapes created by our unique personal film collaborations. The hand-drawn animated experiences. Alone at Night allows the viewer feature, Moomins on the Riviera premiered at Hanna Västinsalo, to step inside a young woman’s mind and see the BFI London Film Festival, and the Director what she sees during a solitary walk through a Finnish- French feature filmLe Havre by Aki nightly cityscape. As a director, I’m interested Kaurismäki premiered in competition at the in the subjective truth of an experience using Cannes Film Festival. a virtual reality environment. The goal is to utilize a heightened reality with surrealism to bring forth the truth of one experience, and MAIN FILMOGRAPHY explore the public space through the eyes of a OF PRODUCER frequently objectified young woman. The 2017 Catcalling Virgin by Douglas exhibition space surrounding the VR McGinness experience is an enhanced communal 2014 Moomins on the Riviera by Xavier opportunity that encourages audiences to Picard and Hanna Hemila Hanna Hemilä, participate, and continue the conversation 2011 Le Havre by Aki Kaurismäki Producer about the impact and ownership of public 2010 Paavo, a Life in Five Courses by spaces on everyone regardless of gender, Hanna Hemila age, race, ethnicity or disability. 2010 Bad Family by Aleksi Salmenperä 2004 Pelicanman by Liisa Helminen

PREVIOUS WORK BY DIRECTOR ON FESTIVAL SCOPE PRO Wombsong Man Under Bridge

Beata Harju, Writer, Associate Producer

69 ALONE AT NIGHT GERMANY, PALESTINE, NETHERLANDS BANKSY: THE WALLED OFF HOTEL VR AMER SHOMALI

DIRECTOR’S BIOGRAPHY SYNOPSIS Amer Shomali is a multidisciplinary Palestinian Banksy, the famous yet anonymous British artist, who uses painting, film, digital media graffiti artist, has createdThe Walled Off Hotel and comics as tools to explore the (TWOH) - a fully functioning hotel in sociopolitical complexities of life in Palestine. Bethlehem which overlooks the wall Shomali co-directed the animated separating Israel and Palestine. The adjoining documentary The Wanted 18 which premiered museum is focused on street art. Both have at the Toronto International FF in 2014 and become must-see destinations for tourists and won awards at the Abu Dhabi FF, the graffiti artists from all over the world. Banksy Aljazeera International Documentary FF, had quite the career for an artist who started Carthage FF. It was the official Palestinian out “bombing” walls in Bristol during the submission in the Oscar’s Best Foreign 1990s. To this day he has bombed cities from Language Film and Best Documentary Vienna to San Francisco, Barcelona to Detroit. category. His art has been exhibited widely, And he has moved from graffiti on walls to i.a. at The British Museum and The Seoul paint on canvas, conceptual sculpture, and Museum of Art. site-specific installations like TWOH. At auctions his prints fetch up to 1.4 million Dollars. The user will have the unique LOG-LINE opportunity of exploring the hotel, interacting Our VR experience will take you to Bethlehem, with the art of Banksy and his Monkey Bellboy, right inside The Walled Off Hotel, a Banksy art learning about the Middle East Conflict. The project/boutique hotel overlooking the Monkey Bellboy escaped from Qalqilya Zoo controversial wall between the West Bank and and now works at TWOH to save money for Israel. Users of our VR experience will be able his return home. Equipped with virtual spray to explore the hotel, accompanied by the cans and stencils, the user can sneak up to Monkey Bellboy, thus getting an idea of the wall - tagging the wall and thus Banksy’s art and a brief, but potent taste of reappropriating the concrete, all the while Palestinian life in the shadow of the wall. helping the Monkey to leave Bethlehem.

70 VENICE GAP-FINANCING MARKET GOALS AT GAP- MAIN PRODUCTION COMPANY DELEGATE PRODUCTION FINANCING MARKET K5 Factory GmbH COMPANY To find co-producers, co-financiers CO-PRODUCTION COMPANIES Odeh Film and distribution partners. Odeh Film, Bind Film MAIN CONTACT PERSON

PROJECT TYPE PARTNERS ATTACHED Clarens Grollmanm VR Documentary Oculus Start, FFF Bayern ADDRESS FORMAT / RUNTIME CURRENT STATUS OF PROJECT K5 Factory Photogrammetry / 20' Development Konradinstr. 5 BASED ON 81543 Munich CREATIVE TEAM Germany Original Idea Amer Shomali, Director LANGUAGE / LOCATION Christian Felder, DoP EMAIL English / Bethlehem, Palestine Oliver Simon, Producer [email protected] BUDGET / FINANCING IN PLACE May Odeh, Producer PHONE / CELL PHONE € 350.000 / €​ 105.000 Clarens Grollmann, Producer +49 89998252983 Oda Schäfer, Producer +49 15121227260 Joram Willink, Co-Producer WEBSITE Michel Schütz, Production Manager k5factory.com Ozan Saltuk, Lead Developer Alex Degner, 3D Artist Mikel Tischner, Tech Artist

DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT PRODUCTION COMPANY PROFILE I remember well when Israel started the K5 has always been in the vanguard: construction of the wall. With each concrete launching the first German script consultancy; slab, my hometown, Bethlehem, was being founding K5 Film; distributing English choked some more. I was thrilled and honored language films out of Germany with K5 to see some of my works of art exhibited at International. After 10 years of selling The Walled Off Hotel in Bethlehem. Since then exceptional films and Oscar contenders The( I have become a regular visitor. The hotel itself Visitor, Land of Mine) K5 teamed up with is not a political site but whether you’re inside Amazon in 2015 to cofinance/produce Amer Shomali, or outside the hotel - you are always besieged Jarmusch’s Paterson. Since then we have Director by the wall. Wherever you turn it is in your line refocused on producing: Niccol’s Anon was of sight. The hotel is an eye-opening our 1st as lead producers. With K5 Factory we experience and at the same time suffocating, have entered the realm of XR: in a synthesis of just like my city. I believe that it is sometimes storytelling and technology we develop new easier to sympathize with animals than with realities and offer audiences a novel people, like in the true story of my movie The experience of embodiment. Wanted 18 about a herd of cows that becomes a pawn in the Middle East Conflict. For this VR experience, I want to give the MAIN FILMOGRAPHY monkey, the bellboy of the hotel, a voice and OF PRODUCER agency. He will be the guide, explaining the 2020 The Coldest Game by Lukasz Oliver Simon, history of the hotel and the wall. In an ironic Kosmicki Producer twist the cheeky monkey asks for help to 2018 ANON by Andrew Niccol escape over the wall, quoting Banksy: “Think 2016 Paterson by Jim Jarmusch outside the box, collapse the box, and take a 2015 Land Of Mine by Martin Zandvliet fucking sharp knife to it”. 2014 War Book by Tom Harper (Executive Producer)

PREVIOUS WORK BY DIRECTOR ON FESTIVAL SCOPE PRO The Wanted 18

May Odeh, Producer

71 Banksy: The Walled Off Hotel VR FRANCE, BELGIUM BIRDIE LONG GONE SAMUEL LEPOIL

DIRECTOR’S BIOGRAPHY SYNOPSIS Samuel Lepoil is a young director who, after Birdie Long Gone is a 20-minute immersive 15 years of practicing theatre, seeks to narrative installation for one spectator who understand the language of immersion. After brings a travel suitcase back to life, becoming a first VR experienceSaving Tomas bought by the magical theatre of a quest for origins. The France TV in 2017, Samuel works as an participant plays the character of Claire in an interaction designer for projects such as The introspective treasure hunt. By opening her Roaming, selected at the Venice Virtual Film magician parents’ travel suitcase, the young Festival 2018 or Playmobil VR. Co-founder of woman tries to find their trail, which the Tamanoir studio, his projects all aim to disappeared when she was 10 years old. combine the living arts with new technologies. Birdie Long Gone is a family drama told like a fairy tale. This experience deals with the place of illusion in our lives, and more precisely with LOG-LINE the part played by fantasized memories of our Play the role of Claire when she discovers her origins in the construction of our identity. parents’ travel trunk, disappeared since when These themes are approached through a work she was 10 years old, in which the secrets of on matter and objects, memory supports that her origins are buried. betray them as much as they contain them Birdie Long Gone uses all the technologies of augmented reality to give objects a magical dimension. Thanks to Demute’s Ahia immersive headphones, memories are played with sound, leaving the spectator room to imagine the ghostly world playing out in front of him.

72 VENICE GAP-FINANCING MARKET GOALS AT GAP- MAIN PRODUCTION COMPANY DELEGATE PRODUCTION FINANCING MARKET Tamanoir Immersive Studio COMPANY To find co-production partners. CO-PRODUCTION COMPANIES Tamanoir Immersive Studio PROJECT TYPE Demute Studio MAIN CONTACT PERSON VR Immersive PARTNERS ATTACHED Rémi Large FORMAT / RUNTIME CNC, Pictanovo ADDRESS No shooting, just audio recording CURRENT STATUS OF PROJECT 22 rue de la Roquette and spatialization / 20' Development 75011 Paris France LANGUAGE / LOCATION CREATIVE TEAM French, English / Worldwide Samuel Lepoil, Director EMAIL BUDGET / FINANCING IN PLACE Alice Lepetit, Artistic Director [email protected] € 200.000 / €​ 90.000 Greg Berger, Maker PHONE / CELL PHONE Walter Fiorini, Sound Designer +33 685393256 Rémi Large (Tamanoir) and François Fripiat WEBSITE (Demute), Producers tamanoir.co

DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT PRODUCTION COMPANY PROFILE Birdie Long Gone tries to capture those Tamanoir is a studio that creates immersive childhood memories that are built around worlds. Each of its experiences creates fetish objects. If at any random day in your bridges between age-old practices, such as adult life, you get your hands on them again, a the live arts, and today’s tools, such as virtual strange feeling of mixed pleasure and reality, augmented reality, video-mapping and discomfort occurs in your mind. You are spatialized sound. This curiosity for all the arts happy to find this small object, but when you comes from its two founders and their love for touch it, it seems to you that it is not the same theatre, dance, cinema and video games. It is Samuel Lepoil, one you had years ago. Even more disturbing, this energy that allows the studio to design Director as if this impression of falsity were experiences that place the spectator at the communicative, some of your memories center of its creative process. disappear, defeated by the reality of the object in your hands. This feeling of strangeness born from the relationship MAIN FILMOGRAPHY between memory and touch is at the heart of OF PRODUCER Birdie Long Gone. It determines the tone of 2020 Birdie Long Gone by Samuel Lepoil the experience, a magical realism that draws 2019 The Empire of the Ordinary its source from the impossibility of giving full by Leon Denise, Samuel Lepoil, Elie Michel, credit to children’s memories. This tension Marie Vilain between what is faithful memory and what is 2019 Jungle Love by Samuel Lepoil Rémi Large, impregnated by the imaginary is maintained 2017 Saving Tomas by Samuel Lepoil Producer by the sound, which strongly distinguishes the animate from the inanimate. It is that wonderful sad feeling that will accompany the participant PREVIOUS WORK BY DIRECTOR when he or she takes off the immersive ON FESTIVAL SCOPE PRO headphones to get out of the experience. The Roaming - Interaction Designer

François Fripiat, Producer

73 Birdie Long Gone FRANCE GULLIVER’S PUTSCH MICHAEL BOLUFER, JÉRÉMY POUILLOUX

DIRECTOR’S BIOGRAPHY SYNOPSIS Jérémy Pouilloux is associate producer at the A 25 and 30 minute narrative and interactive Paris-based Générale de Production. His experience in virtual reality. From 7 years award-winning and critically-acclaimed works onwards depending on VR restrictions. include Le Président (feature- length Surreal humour... gameplay aimed at casual documentary), Dring (award-winning short players. Adventure involving Gulliver the giant series), Tantale (award-winning interactive and a commando made up of Lilliputians and fiction for the big screen), andAccused#2: Blefuscudians. Apart from the beginning of Walter Sisulu (a VR documentary entered in the game, characters tell the story during the numerous festivals, including TRIBECA and game... there are no cutscenes. The aim of IDFA). He is regularly invited to professional the experience: Return the egg of Lilliput by juries for festivals (CNC Fiction TV, SACD, helping the commando of putschists to obtain Séries Mania). He also founded a hub for peace. professionals in new media that is behind the Love Transmedia event in Paris.

LOG-LINE Gulliver’s Putsch is inspired by Gulliver’s Travels and it invites the spectator to plunge into the heart of Lilliputian society. Our mission? To help commandos from Lilliput and Blefuscu return the egg of the island of Lilliput and end the war between the Little-Endians of Lilliput and the Big-Endians of Blefuscu. The adventure is experienced through the eyes of Gulliver and/or Bilelstrum, one of the commandos operating on Lilliput. In the complete version, the adventure is played out by two people – one as Gulliver, the other as Bilelstrum.

74 VENICE GAP-FINANCING MARKET GOALS AT GAP- MAIN PRODUCTION COMPANY DELEGATE PRODUCTION FINANCING MARKET La Générale de Production COMPANY To strengthen the financing of our project CURRENT STATUS OF PROJECT La Générale de Production internationally, in order to place it right away Development MAIN CONTACT PERSON in a global ambition. CREATIVE TEAM Bérengère Sabourin

PROJECT TYPE Michael Bolufer, Director ADDRESS VR Immersive and Artistic Director 7 rue Affre FORMAT / RUNTIME Jérémy Pouilloux, Writer and Producer 75018 Paris Animation / 25' France LANGUAGE / LOCATION EMAIL French, English / France [email protected] BUDGET / FINANCING IN PLACE PHONE / CELL PHONE € 670.162 / €​ 105.163 +33 142232034 +33 642614922

DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT PRODUCTION COMPANY PROFILE Gulliver’s Putsch is an opportunity to pay Founded in 2001, La Générale de Production homage to Jonathan Swift’s novel by has produced around sixty films. Specialising reactivating certain themes in the work in fiction, documentaries and magazines, it particularly the one highlighting the ridiculous has broadened its scope to publish general way in which all sorts of convictions come content for all media. It combines radical about and how they can lead to conflict. ambition with formal research in order to Equally it retains the book’s inquiry into the explore the world in a keen, inquisitive manner. ability of culture and learning to illustrate The subjects it examines provide openings for Michael Bolufer, human behaviour. From the ancient Greeks to more universal stories. Convinced of the Director the modern day, it seems the issue of war has potential of new forms of writing, La Générale never been properly explained. Man’s sees the digital world as both a promising overwhelming need for aggression... will it be environment and a responsibility to provide a tamed one day? Or will it for ever induce us to better understanding of a new era whose die for ideas? Or as the French singer George main language is images. Brassens once mused: will we have to die for those ideas slowly? Consequently, Gulliver’s Putsch assumes the form of an allegory... the MAIN FILMOGRAPHY one of constant restarts.The aim of the putsch OF PRODUCER is to return the egg of the island of Lilliput in 2019 Accused #2: Walter Sisulu by Nicolas order to install it the same direction as the egg Champeaux and Gilles Porte Jérémy Pouilloux, of the enemy island of Blefuscu. The egg is 2020 The executioners of Katyn Writer and Producer thus a totem. by Olivia Gomolinski, Cédric Tourbe 2018 Doxa by Alexandre Pierrin and Olivier Marquézy 2016 Tantale by Gilles Porte

PREVIOUS WORK BY DIRECTOR ON FESTIVAL SCOPE PRO Accused #2: Walter Sisulu

75 GulliVeR’s putsch FRANCE LET GO MICHAEL BEETS

DIRECTOR’S BIOGRAPHY SYNOPSIS Michael Beets is an Australian award-winning Let Go is a thrilling experience that blends director. His virtual reality projects, music spirituality and use of codes that are usually videos, and films have been screened at seen in genre movies and specific literature. festivals around the world including Venice, Each episode offers a different experience Cannes, Busan, Toronto and Melbourne. In and a dedicated narrative through age-old 2018 his interactive VR work The Unknown mourning rituals. Patient was selected at the 75th Venice Film In Japan, in the ‘Nezunoban’ tradition, the Festival, and won the VR Award at the audience must ensure that an incense stick is Adelaide Film Festival. He also won Audience burning overnight so the soul of the spirits choice award for his music video Gordi: Bitter may be guided to heaven. In Lithuania, close End at the St. Kilda Film Festival. Michael was relatives of the deceased must cut down a r also nominated for a 2019 ADG award for best tree in the middle of a forest. In Australia, direction in an immersive experience. ‘Kunmanara’ is a ritual using smoke to chase spirits. In the Xhosa culture in South Africa, when somebody dies, all mirrors, windows LOG-LINE and reflective surfaces must be smeared with Let Go is a five-part VR experience that ashes so the dead can’t see themselves. confronts the viewer with his relation to death, Finally, in China, during the ‘Jin’ ritual people through age-old mourning rituals set in Japan, must keep throwing fake, papier money into Lithuania, Australia, South Africa and China. the re in order to keep the spirit rich and The audience will have the responsibility of happy in the afterlife. carrying the ritual out, or else the fear - unique Across the lens of each tradition, Let Go asks to each culture - will present itself. us to reconsider our own process of mourning our loved ones.

76 VENICE GAP-FINANCING MARKET GOALS AT GAP- MAIN PRODUCTION COMPANY DELEGATE PRODUCTION FINANCING MARKET Les Produits Frais COMPANY To find financing partners but also PARTNERS ATTACHED Les Produits Frais broadcasters and local distributors, both for CNC, Région Sud, Diversion cinema MAIN CONTACT PERSON the LBE installation and the platform version. CURRENT STATUS OF PROJECT Oriane Hurard

PROJECT TYPE Development ADDRESS VR Animation CREATIVE TEAM 1, impasse de la Baleine FORMAT / RUNTIME Michael Beets, Director 75011 Paris Real-time 3D animation / 5×10' Oriane Hurard, Main Producer France LANGUAGE / LOCATION Côme Jalibert, Sound Designer EMAIL English, Japanese, Lithuanian, Xhosa, Albyon, Animation Studio [email protected] Mandarin, Aboriginal dialect / N/A CELL PHONE BUDGET / FINANCING IN PLACE +33 661431502 € 500.000 / €​ 70.000 WEBSITE www.lesproduitsfrais.com

DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT PRODUCTION COMPANY PROFILE Let Go began from a personal curiosity with Based in Paris since 2010, Les Produits Frais the Japanese tradition of ‘Nezunoban’. Half of specializes in emerging filmmakers and new my family is Japanese and I am aware that narratives. The company is developing a one day I will have to partake in the mourning diversified portfolio including short and tradition myself. To be perfectly honest, I was, feature films, series and VR.Isle of the Dead and to an extent still am, quite terrified of the won the Best Story VR Award at 2018 Venice inevitable day that I will spend the night with a Film Festival and has been showcased in loved one, lighting incense and saying more than 50 festivals. Coming soon in 2020, Michael Beets, farewell. It turns out the Japanese are not Meet Mortaza VR will be participating in the Director alone, and these age-old rituals exist all over 2020 Venice VR Expanded selection; and The the world. All of them designed to say farewell. Passengers, a French-Canadian VR multi-user After much research, I have chosen four more experience written by Nicolas Peufaillit and rituals from around the world: Lithuania, directed by Ziad Touma. China, South Africa and Australia. Each of these deals with active participation in the ritual and are horrifying at first glance, but all MAIN FILMOGRAPHY uniquely beautiful. This duality of tension OF PRODUCER between horror and meditative is crucial in 2020 Meet Mortaza VR by Joséphine Derobe understanding the purpose of this project, 2018 Isle of the Dead by Benjamin Nuel because everything - narrative, interactions, 2017 Legacy by Benjamin Nuel Oriane Hurard, tone - are all based around it. Covid-19 has Producer been a stark reminder of our the fragility of life, and there has never been a more relevant PREVIOUS WORK BY DIRECTOR time in our generation to contemplate the ON FESTIVAL SCOPE PRO mourning rituals that we partake in to The Unknown Patient celebrate and let go of loved ones.

77 LET GO FRANCE NÉPHÉLÉ ALEXANDRE PEREZ © Daniel Balage - Albyon studio

DIRECTOR’S BIOGRAPHY SYNOPSIS After graduating from film school in Paris, and Néphélé is an animated and interactive VR a professional experience in several experience that narrates the story of an production companies, Alexandre Perez eponymous woman on a pilgrimage to reach embarked on a career in writing and directing. the top of a mystical mountainous island. To It started with award-winning shorts and assist her in this quest, she is helped and collaborations with France Inter’s web guided along this ancient path to the clouds department. In 2017, Sergeant James, his first by an archaic giant wind spirit played by the VR film produced by Floréal Films, was user. This intimate complicity, collaboration presented online and shown in more than 100 and trust-building relationship drive the whole festivals, events and VR theaters. In 2018, he story. The user can move around the scale wrote and directed a second VR film called model mountain at the center of the Séance 129. Alexandre’s only desire these experience and assist Néphélé on her epic days is to tell stories, regardless of the style or and final journey as a mentor, intervening form they take. whenever she gets stuck and protecting her from the island’s harsh elements and dangerous perils. They will use their hands or LOG-LINE breath to interact with the environment of this Néphélé is on a mission: to reach the top of tiny world and generate wind, in order to solve the island. To assist her in her quest to the puzzles, uncover secrets and live Néphélé’s clouds, she is helped by a giant wind spirit legend. An AR experience is also considered, played by the user. bringing the same adventure into the real world by projecting a scaled-down version of the set onto the ftoor.

78 VENICE GAP-FINANCING MARKET GOALS AT GAP- MAIN PRODUCTION COMPANY DELEGATE PRODUCTION FINANCING MARKET Floréal Films COMPANY To find co-producers, distributors, exhibition PARTNERS ATTACHED Floréal Films spaces and platforms. CNC, City of Paris, Orange XR Grant, MAIN CONTACT PERSON PROJECT TYPE Kaleidoscope Avi Amar VR Animation CURRENT STATUS OF PROJECT ADDRESS FORMAT / RUNTIME In Development 28 rue du Chemin Vert 3D and real-time animation / 30' CREATIVE TEAM 75011 Paris LANGUAGE / LOCATION Alexandre Perez, Director and Writer France No dialogue / N/A Avi Amar and Katayoun Dibamehr, EMAIL BUDGET / FINANCING IN PLACE Producers [email protected]

€ 850.000 (TBC) / €​ 150.000 PHONE / CELL PHONE +33 185091737 +33 668178827

DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT PRODUCTION COMPANY PROFILE The notion of presence, as a viewer or as a Founded in 2014, Floréal Films is an player, is key for creation for me. I understood independent film production company based immediately what could be attractive to me as in Paris whose mission is to discover a creator when I discovered virtual reality filmmakers with a desire to express experiences: the intimate dialogue with themselves through their films. Our aim is to embodied users inside the world I can create establish lasting relationships with an for them. In Néphélé, I needed to come up emerging generation of talents, with a story to stimulate that sensation with an accompanying them in every step and Alexandre Perez, engaged relationship between a giant divine coming up with tailor-made production Director and Writer presence played by the user and a tiny virtual strategies not only in traditional film but also in character. In fact, Néphélé is on this rocky new forms of storytelling. island to follow a strange ritual in order to meet the user and evolve. The whole structure of the story is actually based on the MAIN FILMOGRAPHY connection you’re going to build with her as a OF PRODUCER helping hand with your wind powers. The 2020 Minimum Mass by Raqi Syed experience deals with parenting and and Areito Echevarria embraces poetically the sensitive subject of 2020 The Hangman at Home by Michelle the End. The end of a life or of a cycle. It is and Uri Kranot human and universal. I want the experience to 2017 Sergeant James by Alexandre Perez Avi Amar, be visual, simple, pared-down and without Producer dialogue like Journey by Jenova Chen or Ico by Fumito Ueda. With Néphélé, I’m seeking PREVIOUS WORK BY DIRECTOR the perfect balance between the ON FESTIVAL SCOPE PRO contemplative aspect of an animated film and Sergeant James the interactive nature of a video game.

Katayoun Dibamehr, Producer

79 NÉPHÉLÉ SUDAN, SOUTH AFRICA NIGHT SHIFT ABDALSALAM ALHAJ

DIRECTOR’S BIOGRAPHY SYNOPSIS Abdalsalam Alhaj is a Sudanese digital media On April 6 2019, the Sudanese Professionals producer, visual storyteller and founder of Rift Association asked people to march in protest Digital Lab. He is passionate about visual arts, to the army headquarters in Khartoum—the AR/VR and self- expression. His works put a most dangerous place in Sudan’s capital. spotlight on stories often overlooked by Skeptical, but nonetheless, the filmmaker mainstream media, treasure the local, the joined the march knowing the risks, but also small-scale and evoke the passage of time. It knowing it was the only way this revolution questions the attitudes, fears and unwritten could succeed. Night Shift gives a first hand rules which have formed our environment and account of the events that took place on the our behavior within it. He aims to uncover ground and tells another story of the peaceful unexplored stories, places of curious sit-in. self-expression, the world of new relationships, new chances, new beginnings by using immersive technology.

LOG-LINE A first person VR experience of the peaceful Sudanese Revolution

80 VENICE GAP-FINANCING MARKET GOALS AT GAP- MAIN PRODUCTION COMPANY DELEGATE PRODUCTION FINANCING MARKET Electric South COMPANY To find co-producers, post production CO-PRODUCTION COMPANIES Electric South support, finance, grants and sales agent. Rift Digital Lab, Gisa Group MAIN CONTACT PERSON

PROJECT TYPE CURRENT STATUS OF PROJECT Steven Markovitz, VR Documentary Post Production Kirstin Lee Grey FORMAT / RUNTIME CREATIVE TEAM ADDRESS 360 Stereoscopic / 12' Abdalsalam Alhaj, Director, 76 Arnold Street, BASED ON Cinematographer, Editor Observatory True events Abdalla and Iman, Main Cast 7925 Cape Town South Africa LANGUAGE / LOCATION Steven Markovitz, Executive Producer Arabic / Sudan Kirstin Grey, Producer EMAIL [email protected] BUDGET / FINANCING IN PLACE [email protected] € 18.615 / €​ 13.445 PHONE / CELL PHONE +27 832611044 +27 785746629 WEBSITE electricsouth.org

DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT PRODUCTION COMPANY PROFILE What drew me to this idea of this film, stems Founded in 2015, Electric South is an award from the fact that I had been part of the winning non-profit company based in Cape revolution from the beginning, witnessing all Town, South Africa and operating across the the peaceful protesting, so I wanted to give African continent. We are involved in the my own version of the story. Every day that I production of daring and urgent stories was at the sit-in square, shouting with the around African experiences, using immersive, demonstrators and filming with my 360 interactive formats including virtual and camera was the most overwhelming personal augmented reality, and other digital media. Abdalsalam Alhaj, experience I’ve ever had. I lived for 30 years We build audiences and exhibition models for Director under the rule of Bashir, so this time really felt these stories in the local sector. We have like it was our time to overthrow Bashir’s pioneered VR production in Africa, producing regime. At the sit-in, there were hundreds of work that have been selected for festivals filmmakers, photographers, and dozens of such as Sundance, Tirbeca, Sheffield and films that were filmed and arranged, but I was over 80 festivals around the world. always looking for a different way to tell the experience, I wanted the viewer to really feel things from my perspective. MAIN FILMOGRAPHY OF PRODUCER 2020 Azibuye - The Occupation by Dylan Valley Steven Markovitz, 2019 Le Lac by Nyasha Kadandara Executive Producer 2019 Lagos at Large by Jumoke Sanwo

81 Night Shift UNITED KINGDOM, INDIA, PAKISTAN PROJECT DASTAAN: CHILD OF EMPIRE ERFAN SAADATI, SPARSH AHUJA

DIRECTOR’S BIOGRAPHY SYNOPSIS Erfan Saadati is an award winning storyteller, Child of Empire is an interactive animated filmmaker and an immersive producer. He journey of the gruelling Partition of India. started his career as a VR creator, and has Immersed in the world of 1947 British India, been at the forefront of this exciting new you will actively participate at key moments medium ever since. Erfan has worked on of migration, recounted to us by firsthand productions for the United Nations, Royal witnesses. Opera House and The Guardian. You may be hiding from a violent mob in the Sparsh Ahuja is a UK-based digital artist, a backroom of a shop with Ishar Das Arora, a 2020 National Geographic Explorer and the Punjabi farmer boy from Attock; sharing founder of Project Dastaan. Sparsh graduated meagre food rations while taking sanctuary in as a FitzRandolph Scholar in Philosophy, a gurdwara with Trilochan Singh, an Politics and Economics at the University of independence activist in the Quit India Oxford. He was the youngest ever recipient of Movement; or accidentally glimpsing a truck the CatchLight Fellowship in 2019. piled with dead bodies when taking a 360° view when arriving in Pakistan with Zarina Akram, a Mohajir girl who fled her home in LOG-LINE Delhi on the day of Eid. At certain points in the Project Dastaan: Child of Empire is an narrative, the real-life survivors will even break interactive VR docu-fiction experience which the fourth wall to speak directly to the viewer, puts you in the shoes of a migrant during the adding a hyper realism to the experience and 1947 Partition of India and Pakistan. Weaving grounding it in reality. through the stories of three-present day The production is intended for the Oculus survivors, it navigates identity and Quest, allowing viewers to walk through the sectarianism during times of immense social narrative in a 25m2 6DoF space. The level of upheaval. interactivity is going to be cutting edge, merging various elements to push the boundaries of the technology as far as it can. The VR will serve the story first and foremost, intended to ground the viewer into the historical reality of this experience, whilst ensuring the UX is not remotely jarring, and that the VR elements are simple enough that they bring in audiences who are both new to the format, or completely familiar with it.

82 VENICE GAP-FINANCING MARKET GOALS AT GAP- MAIN PRODUCTION COMPANY DELEGATE PRODUCTION FINANCING MARKET Project Dastaan COMPANY To secure extra financing and distributional CO-PRODUCTION COMPANIES Anzu Films Limited partners, particularly cultural institutions. Anzu Films Limited MAIN CONTACT PERSON

PROJECT TYPE PARTNERS ATTACHED Sparsh Ahuja VR Documentary Arts Council England, Digital Catapult, The ADDRESS FORMAT / RUNTIME CatchLight Foundation, Google Arts and 30 Vitae Quill Animation / 15' Culture, Kaleidoscope DevLab, Citizens London, W6 0SZ BASED ON Archive of Pakistan. Citizens’ Archive of India. United Kingdom 1947 Partition Archive, Partition Museum Original Idea EMAIL (Amritsar), Oxford VR and AR Hub, Tareekh [email protected] LANGUAGE / LOCATION Arts and Culture, MENA Arts, The National English, Hindustani / Set in British India South Asian Heritage Month, India Cultural PHONE / CELL PHONE BUDGET / FINANCING IN PLACE Hub, The Pakistani Foundation +61 398701303 € 64.820,65 / €​ 44.820,65 +44 7961866324 (WhatsApp Only) CURRENT STATUS OF PROJECT Development WEBSITE projectdastaan.org CREATIVE TEAM Erfan Saadati, Director Sparsh Ahuja, Main Producer Stephen Stephenson, Lead Artist

DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT PRODUCTION COMPANY PROFILE We are living in one of the great periods of Project Dastaan is a peace-building initiative global migration. In the last decade, migration which examines the human impact of global rates have doubled. This has reshaped migration through the lens of the largest cultural identities, altered global economies forced migration in recorded history, the 1947 and unleashed an unprecedented surge in Partition of India. The Project is backed by right-wing politics. The 1947 Partition of India Malala Yousafzai, Suroosh Alvi (cofounder of is the largest case study of migration in VICE Media) and celebrated authors such as history. Plagued by the legacy of Partition, William Dalrymple and Aanchal Malhotra. Erfan Saadati, political relations between India and Pakistan We’ve received a CatchLight Fellowship and a Director remain on the brink of war. Over 70 years later, National Geographic Exploration Grant, have most migrants have never been able to return spoken at British Parliament and were recently home. Child of Empire is first and foremost an accepted onto the prestigious Kaleidoscope homage to the legacy of the 14 million DevLab Accelerator. refugees in the subcontinent who had their lives changed overnight. More importantly, however, it is a reminder that it is ordinary MAIN FILMOGRAPHY people who suffer the most when nationalities OF PRODUCER are created and torn apart. As children of 2018 Haka by Erfan Saadati (VR Supervisor) diaspora, we have come to understand that 2018 Incredible India by Erfan Saadati the important stories of migration are not those 2016 Growing A World Wonder by Erfan Sparsh Ahuja, of the politics that dictate it, but the people it Saadati Main Producer uproots. The Partition is a harrowing tale of (VR Producer) migration, human loss, and the devastating 2016 Home: Aamir by Erfan Saadati effects of colonial occupation. In Child of Empire, we want our viewers to take a jump towards empathy, inviting them to walk PREVIOUS WORK BY DIRECTOR through the history of empire. ON FESTIVAL SCOPE PRO Home: Aamir Incredible India

Stephen Stephenson, Lead Artist

83 Project Dastaan: Child of Empire ROMANIA TANGIBLE UTOPIAS IOANA MISCHIE

DIRECTOR’S BIOGRAPHY SYNOPSIS Ioana Mischie is a Romanian-born transmedia Tangible Utopias is an exploratory VR artist, screenwriter, director and futurist, experience immersing the viewer as a advancing film Government( of Children, first-person into an Odyssey of potential future Cumulonimbus, 237 Years), cinematic VR (The city scenarios, inspired by the imagination of Wetland) or innovative concepts. UNATC children worldwide. The project is a Alumna and Fulbright Grantee Alumna of USC continuation of the transmedia universe School of Cinematic Arts, her cinematic entitled Government of Children – a civic projects have traveled to more than 100 imagination-driven transmedia world (3D film, festivals worldwide, were developed in VR, web) that encourages children from all top-notch international programs (Berlinale over the world to see themselves as leaders Talents, Sundance Workshop, Cannes and to design their societal future. We have International Screenwriters Pavilion) or gathered a total of more than 250 visions that awarded by The Webby Awards, Golden will selectively serve as a script for the current Drum, D&AD, SXSW Hackathon. VR universe. Tangible Utopias aims to design alternative multi-layered futuristic societies. The users can personalize the ever-expanding LOG-LINE interactive world and reshape it exponentially Tangible Utopias is an exploratory VR depending on their own involvement. At the experience immersing the viewer as a end of the experience, each user receives first-person into an Odyssey of potential future their own customized tangible utopia both as city scenarios, inspired by the imagination of an artistic souvenir, but also as an awareness children worldwide. tool in order to advocate for more ethical long-term cities.

84 VENICE GAP-FINANCING MARKET GOALS AT GAP- MAIN PRODUCTION COMPANY DELEGATE PRODUCTION FINANCING MARKET Storyscapes COMPANY To find international co-production CO-PRODUCTION COMPANIES Storyscapes partners, distributors, curators, publicists, Studioset MAIN CONTACT PERSON decision-makers. PARTNERS ATTACHED Ioana Mischie

PROJECT TYPE SeeThree ADDRESS VR Immersive CURRENT STATUS OF PROJECT Mendeleev Street, Nr. 2, FORMAT / RUNTIME Interactive Virtual Reality Prototype 050707 Bucharest Open World VR Transmedia Franchise Romania (Unreal & Unity extensions) / CREATIVE TEAM EMAIL minimum 10’ - maximum 100' Ioana Mischie, Director and Writer Mircea Olteanu, Lead Unreal Developer [email protected] BASED ON Sorin Baican, Ioana Mischie, Main Producers PHONE / CELL PHONE The visions of children in Bogdan Jugureanu, Editing +40 724741411 Government of Children Andrei Nechifor, Original Music WEBSITE BUDGET / FINANCING IN PLACE Călin Bogdacenco, governmentofchildren.com € 240.000 / €​ 60.000 Alexandru Pop, 3D Artists tangibleutopias.com studioset.tv

DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT PRODUCTION COMPANY PROFILE Tangible Utopias is a noetic fiction world or Storyscapes was initiated in 2012 as the first noe-fi, as we love to nickname it. If the sci-fi Romanian-based transmedia association, genre proposes science-led futures, noe-fi currently having three innovative paths of aims to rather design consciousness-driven development: transmedia creation (XR / futures. It is a blend of noetic science and Expanded Cinema), transmedia research and hope-filled visions. Some might see it as a transmedia education. The goal of the window into long-term future scenarios, some multi-awarded artistic studio is to create others as a civic imagination practice or as a holistic works of art with profound social Ioana Mischie, healing journey. It questions our choices and impact. Director and Writer invites us to customize the surrounding world Studioset is a full-house production and with care to detail. To me personally, Tangible post-production studio based in Bucharest, Utopias is a way to archive the unarchivable - Romania with 12 years of AV production that glimpse of human imagination that is experience and over 50 employees enriching, generative and aspirational. This specialized in production, post-production, multiverse is designed to be a modular world, animation, CGI. where we will continuously add fresh visions into immersive futuristic worlds. It is an creative archival of the potential future. At the MAIN FILMOGRAPHY end, each explorer receives a postcard from OF PRODUCER the chosen tangible utopia. 2019 Government of Children by Ioana Sorin Baican, Mischie Producer 2019 Unquiet Voices by Ioana Mischie 2019 Pendulum by Ioana Mischie 2018 Opinci / My Father’s Shoes by Anton Groves and Damian Groves 2018 The Wetland by Ioana Mischie 2017 Cumulonimbus by Ioana Mischie

PREVIOUS WORK BY DIRECTOR ON FESTIVAL SCOPE PRO Government Of Children 3d

85 TANGIBLE UTOPIAS CANADA, FRANCE THE GARDEN DAVID BARLOW-KRELINA, CHARLES AYATS

DIRECTOR’S BIOGRAPHY SYNOPSIS A Montreal-based animator/filmmaker, David As you put on the helmet, you look down and Barlow-Krelina specialises in everything 3D see your hands. You are in the skin of the – from character design to rigging to shader Host, aboard a true sensory vessel. You are development. David produced and directed immersed in several natural environments. In the animation Bless You (2013), a short film these places, your perception of reality is that was shown at the Ottawa International calm and stable. You are free to explore, to Animation Festival and toured in the Animation walk, to pick flowers, to eat berries. Some of Show of Shows. In 2017, he directed the NFB these actions will change your perceptions short filmCaterpillarplasty which was subtly or severely. This is where Homunculus nominated for Best Animated Short by the comes in. We recognize him, with his falsetto Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television voice, his little song and that arrogant little (2019). tune he has when he makes the shapes change around him and you. Each of the hallucinations that he proposes to you is a LOG-LINE stage of learning and delivers a message to Welcome to your brain. It has been hiding you. His goal is to deliver the Host from the there forever a small, weird, facetious being. routine of the senses and to reconnect with his He looks strangely like you. Every part of his body. The visions that he proposes sometimes body is the same size it occupies in your look terrifying and chaotic, but remain cortex. Homonculus, that’s what the scientists tolerable. Each sequence has its own call it, invites you to explore your inner world, mechanics. The Host must focus on each one, change size, touch sounds, make embracing chaos through touch, sight and appearances vibrate at a glance or with your movement. Homonculus never uses the same hand and discover the disturbing beauty of method twice. He hopes that the Host will stay the world, the unknown garden you carry alert and pay attention to his environment. inside. The Garden is a VR experience where Only then will he be able to see its true animation, movements and sounds interact in beauty. new ways. No drugs, no God: the unknown is you.

86 VENICE GAP-FINANCING MARKET GOALS AT GAP- MAIN PRODUCTION COMPANY DELEGATE PRODUCTION FINANCING MARKET E.D. Films COMPANY To find coproducers, financial partners CO-PRODUCTION COMPANIES Red Corner and VR locations. Red Corner E.D. Films

PROJECT TYPE PARTNERS ATTACHED MAIN CONTACT PERSON VR Animation Epic Games, NFB Marie Blondiaux FORMAT / RUNTIME CURRENT STATUS OF PROJECT ADDRESS Animation / 20' Production 14 rue du Moulin Joly BASED ON 75011 Paris CREATIVE TEAM France Original Idea David Barlow-Krelina, Director LANGUAGE / LOCATION Charles Ayats, Interactive Designer EMAIL English, French / Canada, France Franck Weber, Sound Director [email protected] BUDGET / FINANCING IN PLACE Emily Paige, Producer PHONE / CELL PHONE € 193.994 / €​ 58.000 Marie Blondiaux, Producer +33 677889174 WEBSITE red-corner.fr edfilms.net

DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT PRODUCTION COMPANY PROFILE My parents are both psychiatrists. At the Red Corner is dedicated to digital creation. dinner table, every day, I was surrounded by Based in Paris, we produce fictions and questions about the mind, about mental documentaries for VR, AR, webseries. Our illness. As a young man, I worried about my experiences gather talents from films, books, own abnormalities, my own perceptions. I video games to create narratives that became a director, animator and creative celebrate curiosity, diversity and critical technologist. My work, mostly done at the thinking. E.D. Films is an animation studio NFB and then with E.D. Films, mixes drawing, based in Montreal. Known for their hybrid and David Barlow-Krelina, animation and programming. I try, in my holistic animation production, technical Director creations, to push back the limits of realistic experimentation and innovation, E.D. Films representation. Animation allows me to work does this for the animation and game on the distortion of forms, to visually embody industries. emotions. VR is an exciting field to deploy this conceptual work. To tell a story that would bring to life the incessant connections that our MAIN FILMOGRAPHY brain makes, the powerful or subtle changes OF PRODUCER in our perceptions. With The Garden, I want to Red Corner take the user to explore a universal 2019 7 Lives by Jan Kounen contradiction, between that part of us that 2016 Sens (VR) by Charles Ayats would like to control everything and that part E.D. Films Emily Paige, that is ready to let itself dissolve in the 2018 Let There Be Light by Mila Aung-Thwin Producer pleasure of the senses. Often, these two parts 2019 Giant Bear by Neil Christopher of ourselves contradict each other. Sometimes they manage to move forward together. Some of us would like to make a choice but between PREVIOUS WORK BY DIRECTOR order and chaos everything is a continuous ON FESTIVAL SCOPE PRO movement. It’s up to us to embrace them. Caterpillarplasty Bless You

Marie Blondiaux, Producer

87 The Garden FRANCE, CANADA, QATAR THE GREATEST WAIT (AFTER THE LAST SKY) RAZAN ALSALAH

DIRECTOR’S BIOGRAPHY SYNOPSIS Razan AlSalah works across a range of Zei loses her body in cyberspace and finds image, text and installation practices, herself trapped in a city that bears an investigating the politics of dis/appearance of uncanny resemblance to her grandparents’ places and bodies in colonial image worlds home but denies they ever existed. She floats - photographic / digital / virtual - breaking in photorealistic locations she cannot enter these thresholds of view into elsewheres here and navigates through an immersive depth - where colonialism no longer makes sense. that denies her senses. Only when Zei begins Razan is a 2020 Arab Fund for Arts and to witness the injustice of her own entrapment, Culture (AFAC) Grantee and Sundance New does she regain physical sensation. Frontier Story Lab Fellow and Grantee. Her Excavating her own inherited and living work has been exhibited internationally in memory of exile pixelates the panoramic festivals and galleries. Razan teaches Moving image of Haifa to a glitchy 3D triptych city, a Images and Intermedia at Concordia collage of the many places Zei lives between University in Tiohtiá:ke/Montreal. today. Zei moves in place again, with a new understanding of how to inhabit space: shifting from gazing at the world to being in LOG-LINE the world, her exile transforms from a national Zei is trapped in cyberspace in an impossible identity to a political commitment to yet eternal return to Palestine. Disembodied decolonize this place, wherever that may be. ,Haifa/ افیح by the virtual, she interconnects Beirut & Tiohtiá:ke/Montreal in the/ توریب 1940s, 90s & 2020s. Zei returns home to her body with a new way of being in the world.

88 VENICE GAP-FINANCING MARKET GOALS AT GAP- MAIN PRODUCTION COMPANY DELEGATE PRODUCTION FINANCING MARKET IDA.IDA COMPANY To find co-producers, funders, distributers, CO-PRODUCTION COMPANIES IDA.IDA partners. Kngfu MAIN CONTACT PERSON PROJECT TYPE PARTNERS ATTACHED Emilie Dudognon VR Immersive Sundance, AFAC, DFI ADDRESS , avenue Jean Jaurès FORMAT / RUNTIME CURRENT STATUS OF PROJECT 118-130 360 / 15' Late development 75019 Paris France BASED ON CREATIVE TEAM Original Idea Razan AlSalah, Director and Writter EMAIL [email protected] LANGUAGE / LOCATION Emilie Dudognon, Ghassan Fayad, Main Arabic, French and English versions / Producers PHONE / CELL PHONE Montreal, Beirut, Haifa Momchil Alexiev, Research Consultant +33 68867007 +33 688670079 BUDGET / FINANCING IN PLACE Ali Kays, Lead technologist € 363.964 / €​ 77.057 Farah Saleh, Choreographer WEBSITE Farah Hazim, Sound designer ida-ida.com Wissam Sader, Sound Installation

DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT PRODUCTION COMPANY PROFILE For the past three years, I’ve been recording IDA.IDA is a production company for auteur experimental films inside Google Streetview films and artists’ projects, based in Paris. It exploring a virtual return to Palestine and an was created by Emilie Dudognon, in 2005, in aesthetics of land reclamation in virtual space. order to answer the specific production needs In The Greatest Wait, I approach the land as a of films at the crossroads of cinema and art. form, inextricably linked to my body, weaving IDA.IDA’s first international co production, (non)narratives that blur the two at a Ouroboros by Basma Alsharif, opened in fundamentally material level to circle back on Locarno in 2017. Razan AlSalah, the cultural, social and political. I use the Director and Writter cinematic form, and specifically virtual reality because it connects physical space to the MAIN FILMOGRAPHY projected image. This formally manifests the OF PRODUCER tension between colonial and indigenous 2017 Ouroboros by Basma Alsharif worldviews, between the Euclidean image and the immersive environment, between perspectival depth and spatial depth, between PREVIOUS WORK BY DIRECTOR embodiment and disembodiment; inhabiting ON FESTIVAL SCOPE PRO space by being in the world versus gazing at it. Your father was born a 100 years old, and so was the Nakba

Emilie Dudognon, Producer

Ghassan Fayad, Producer

89 The Greatest Wait (After the last Sky) TAIWAN 病玫瑰 THE SICK ROSE ZHI-ZHONG TANG

DIRECTOR’S BIOGRAPHY SYNOPSIS Zhi-Zhong Tang is currently an animation A terrible infectious disease comes to a town director and the representative of Turn Rhino named Wonder, and forced quarantine has Original Design Studio. The Sick Rose is his sent people into a frenzy. Rose is unwell, but directorial debut. In 2014, he was in charge of she wants to deliver a handmade gift to her the animation and the post-production for the mother who is working at the hospital. Rose animation Bart, which he also made and misses her mother so much that she embarks produced. The lengthy production spanning on an unknown journey alone although she two years aimed to achieve international does not know the location of the hospital. standards of commercial animation, and to When she needs help the most, she finds that strive to enhance the expression of animation people have become selfish and horrific due and the ability of storytelling. He continued to to their fear of the disease. Animals have produce stop-motion animation shorts, such mutated as they were eaten by humans, even as Where Am I Going? and Little Hilly. they teased Rose. The little girl’s body has become weaker and weaker. With only her will left, will she able to reach her mother? LOG-LINE An infectious disease has visited a town named “Wonder”. Rose, a girl under forced quarantine, is determined to embark on an unusual fantastical journey to meet her mother.

90 VENICE GAP-FINANCING MARKET GOALS AT GAP- MAIN PRODUCTION COMPANY DELEGATE PRODUCTION FINANCING MARKET HTC Corporation COMPANY To seek international co-production CURRENT STATUS OF PROJECT HTC Corporation and funding opportunities. Production MAIN CONTACT PERSON To build network with global distributors. CREATIVE TEAM Nina Weng PROJECT TYPE Zhi-Zhong Tang, Director and Writer ADDRESS VR Animation Yun-hsien Huang, Artistic Director and Writer No. 88, Sec. 3, Zhongxing Rd., Xindian Dist. FORMAT / RUNTIME Szu-ming Liu, Yu Yu, Creative Lead New Taipei City, 231 8k 360 video / First episode: 15 min' Szu-ming Liu, Main Producer Taiwan Jack Huang, BASED ON DoP EMAIL Original Idea Anferne Chen, Post Production Lead [email protected] LANGUAGE / LOCATION PHONE / CELL PHONE Mandarin Chinese, English / Taiwan +886 0905689335 BUDGET / FINANCING IN PLACE +886 0981154998 € 955.467 / €​ 334.414

DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT PRODUCTION COMPANY PROFILE The world is indeed filled with hardship and HTC VIVE ORIGINALS devotes to the suffering. But this is also its most beautiful development, production and distribution of part. We might have to hold fast to kindness original content. It explores the development and the common good so that the suffering of industries including XR films, arts, becomes meaningful in a positive sense. For animation, music, cultural collection, as well me, this is what the process of stop-motion as cultural and creative entertainment. It also animation means, and also what life is all actively incubates cross-disciplinary creative about. The Sick Rose is born incidentally. content teams, standardizes XR technical Zhi-Zhong Tang Many coincidences make it bloom so well. I formats and builds standardized operating Director hope everyone can enjoy the fragrance of the procedures of content process. By providing roses. a greater diversity of XR solutions and content, HTC VIVE ORIGINALS enriches our cultural life through the latest technological creativity.

MAIN FILMOGRAPHY OF PRODUCER 2019 Gloomy Eyes by Fernando Maldonado and Jorge Tereso (Ex. Producer) Szu-ming Liu, 2018 VR project 5×1 Main Producer 2017 The Deserted by Tsai Ming Liang (Ex. Producer)

PREVIOUS WORK BY DIRECTOR ON FESTIVAL SCOPE PRO Where am I going? Little Hilly

91 THE SICK ROSE 92 VENICE GAP-FINANCING MARKET BIENNALE COLLEGE CINEMA – VIRTUAL PROJECTS DENMARK, FRANCE A VOCAL LANDSCAPE OMID ZAREI, ANNE JEPPESEN

DIRECTOR’S BIOGRAPHY SYNOPSIS Omid Zarei is an Iranian director and DoP. A Vocal Landscape is a hyper-realistic VR After studying film directing in Paris he made documentary based on an audio recording of L’ Etra n g e r and Jester. As an XR artist he has a late-night conversation revolving around a created projects that cross platforms brining Persian poem that connects the two together artists of different disciplines. In 2016 characters to themes of childhood and he created the “VR filmmaking workshop” in individual identity. It invites the spectator to Helsinki with the support of Kone Foundation get closer to the characters using interactive and Aalto University. In 2019 his VR project sound and visuals that respond organically: Songs of Future Past was finalist in the XR mirroring the fine nuances of the voice. competition at The Finnish National Opera and Ballet. Anne Jeppesen is a critically acclaimed, Copenhagen based producer with a focus on audio documentaries. With a background in classical music and musicology, Anne is driven by a never fading fascination for the richness of the human voice and is constantly seeking out new ways to work with vocal expressions. She has produced audio documentaries for Danish Broadcasting Corporation and the journal Politiken. Her pieces have been nominated four times for the national radio and podcast documentary awards.

LOG-LINE A hyper-realistic VR documentary showing the complexity of communication and how much is hidden in the richness of the human voice.

94 VENICE GAP-FINANCING MARKET GOALS AT GAP- MAIN PRODUCTION COMPANY DELEGATE PRODUCTION FINANCING MARKET Superposition COMPANY To find executive co-producers, PARTNERS ATTACHED Superposition financing and distribution Khora VR MAIN CONTACT PERSON

PROJECT TYPE CURRENT STATUS OF PROJECT Anne Jeppesen VR Documentary Late development stage ADDRESS FORMAT / RUNTIME CREATIVE TEAM Sigynsgade 29 Volumetric capture in VR / 7' Omid Zarei, Director and Artistic Director 2200 Copenhagen BASED ON Anne Jeppesen, Co-Director, Producer, Denmark Documentary voice recording Sound Designer, Composer EMAIL LANGUAGE / LOCATION Khora VR, VR production partner [email protected] Dimitrius Tsirozoglou, English / VR Lead VR developer PHONE / CELL PHONE BUDGET / FINANCING IN PLACE +45 20773936 € 60.000 / €​ 5.000 +33 678948893 WEBSITE superposition.dk

DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT PRODUCTION COMPANY PROFILE Our project initiated with our fascination with Superposition focuses on associating sound the the richness of the human voice and the and volume in novel ways. Coming from subtle ways in which it communicates. Hidden diverse backgrounds- Cinema, sound in its timbre, rhythm and intensities our storytelling and XR- we extract all the qualities personality, emotions, intentions and we love in the familiar art-forms and fuse them dynamics are embedded. We want to amplify into new sensory and emotionally rich formats. these qualities so that they come more to the VR partner: Khora VR Khora is a Virtual & surface. Through our VR piece, we want our Augmented Reality production house with Omid Zarei, spectator to experience an enhanced full-scale production team including CG Director and Artistic Director sensibility of the subtleties in human artists, filmmakers, programmers and communication. Something they can take developers. Khora has made more than 140 away with them. productions involving 6 DOF 3D animation VR, 360º video and AR applications across several platforms.

MAIN FILMOGRAPHY OF PRODUCER Superposition 2020 Oprør for livet by Anne Jeppesen Anne Jeppesen, documentary for DRP3 Co-Director, Producer, 2018 Odilon Redon: Into the Dream by Sound Designer, Composer Anne Jeppesen exhibited at Glyptotek museum 2018 Karoline, Journal 5305 by Anne Jeppesen documentary for Politiken Khora VR 2017 La Apparizione by Christian Lemmerz 2017 Coach Stage Stage Coach by Paul McCarthy. 2016 Switchstance Bay by Erik Parker.

PREVIOUS WORK BY DIRECTOR ON FESTIVAL SCOPE PRO L’Étranger Jester

95 A Vocal Landscape HONG KONG CHROMA 11 TSUI-SHAN TSANG

DIRECTOR’S BIOGRAPHY SYNOPSIS Tsang Tsui-Shan was awarded Best New Chroma 11 is an immersive dance piece Director at the 31st Hong Kong Film Award. In performed by Ix Wong who lost his love 2008 her first feature filmLovers On the Road Aaron. The gay dancer couple had been won the Best Drama Award at the 8th South happily in love and dancing together for over Taiwan Film Festival. In 2011 her second 20 years, but life has given them many feature Big Blue Lake won the Jury Special challenges. Aaron unfortunately fell ill with Award at the Golden Koala Chinese Film cancer. This project is a further development Festival and the Asian New Talent Jury Prix at of a 2D dance documentary, Ward 11, made the Shanghai International Film Festival. Tsang by Tsang Tsui-Shan. Before Aaron passed also makes documentaries. Her documentary away, Tsang recorded the final 2 years of his feature Flowing Stories (2014) won the life. Dancing never stopped even with a sick Humanitarian Award at FilmAid Asia. Her body. The body condition changed but their latest feature filmThe Lady Improper was spirits remain unchanged. Tracing and released in April 2019. arresting a dance couple’s shadows, encountering the dance, trekking the terrains of their adventures. In Chroma 11, listening LOG-LINE lovers’ whisper, even at the dullest moments, Chroma 11 holds the tale of forbidden love, words of love, conversations continue to flow. unconditional love, in dreams and in reality. A There wasn’t a clear linear narrative in place story of lost love, through the VR journey and the emerging story not only featured one re-visiting memories, experiencing past, living character, it also everyone‘s love journey present and future. Beginning from an isolated about life and death. Through the loneliness, Chroma 11 allows the audience to documentary footages of Ix and Aaron’s last transcend from the fear of separation to dance, their relationship began to transform fearless. As long as we can face separation in into shapes, textures and lights. life, we can find peace in life and in death.

96 VENICE GAP-FINANCING MARKET GOALS AT GAP- MAIN PRODUCTION COMPANY DELEGATE PRODUCTION FINANCING MARKET River Vision Company Limited COMPANY To find partners for motion capture, special CURRENT STATUS OF PROJECT Hong Kong Arts Centre effects, 3D modelling and scanning. Pre-production MAIN CONTACT PERSON

PROJECT TYPE CREATIVE TEAM Kattie Fan VR Immersive Tsui-shan Tsang, Director ADDRESS FORMAT / RUNTIME Kattie Fan & Teresa Kwong, Producer 8/F Hong Kong Arts Centre, HD Volmetric / 15' Jason Lam, Creative Technologist 2 Harbour Road, Wan Chai BASED ON Eunice Martins, Composer and Sound Hong Kong

Ward 11 Designer EMAIL Ix Thien-pau Wong (Hockix), Dancer LANGUAGE / LOCATION [email protected] English, Chinese / Hong Kong, Malaysia PHONE / CELL PHONE BUDGET / FINANCING IN PLACE +852 28245328 € 85.000 / €​ 8.000 +852 60806024

DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT PRODUCTION COMPANY PROFILE Upon completing Ward 11, Aaron passed River Vision Company Limited was away. I hope I can make use of the specificity established with the intention of discovering of the VR medium to continue lx and Aaron’s and supporting talented, creative people to sentimental dialogue and spread their story to make films with both independent and a wider audience. The idea of Chroma 11 mainstream elements. Previous production comes from that of a dance with the dead. including drama and documentaries, namely The border between life and death can be Lovers on the Road (2008), Big Blue Lake wide but also blurred. Taking user’s (2010), Flowing Stories (2014) and more. Their Tsui-shan Tsang, experience into consideration, I decided that film productions have received numerous Director the work should use the spirit of the departed recognitions. In 2018, the company was as a point of departure to return to one’s loved granted by the Hong Kong Film Development one. I hope that the boundless love between Council to produce a new feature filmThe lx and Aaron can touch participants, and use Lady Improper, which was nominated for the the specific quality of the medium that lies Best Actress at the 38th Hong Kong Film between reality and unreality to create a Awards. dance work that is flavored with Eastern elements. Ward 11, a flat dance video work, was a collaboration between Ix, Aaron and MAIN FILMOGRAPHY myself, while Chroma 11 will be a collaboration OF PRODUCER of the above parties plus participants. To Kattie Fan Kattie Fan, bring someone back to life is impossible, but it 2011 Big Blue Lake by Jessey Tsang Producer can be realized by VR technology, for VR is a 2010 Dead Slowly by Rita Hui perceptual medium that transfers intense Teresa Kwong emotion to audience. Considering its highly 2019 Suk Suk by Ray Yeung transformative potential, we have decided to 2018 Napping Kid by Amos Why make a 360-degree, linear, immersive VR dance piece in an installation setting. PREVIOUS WORK BY DIRECTOR ON FESTIVAL SCOPE PRO Ward 11

97 CHROMA 11 POLAND TAŃCZĄCE LITERY DANCING LETTERS ANNA ZOLL, MARCIN MARCZYK

DIRECTOR’S BIOGRAPHY SYNOPSIS Anna Zoll is a screenwriter, director and Together with our main character Noel, we producer, specialised in short films on social would like to invite you for a journey through issues. Anna’s 3-minute short Heart Therapy memories of his life. You will see Noel on your won 2nd prize of Nespresso Talents 2018 at side and hear Noel’s voice as well as his inner Cannes. She also directed the short voice that will lead you through his emotions. documentary You can’t see me and the short Beginning credits will already present you animated fictionSpider. some “Dancing Letters” to immerse you in the Marcin Marczyk a producer in the media world of Dyslexia. Then you will meet 5 year industry for over 15 years, is debuting as old Noel, his parents, and his kids room. Here director. Since 2013, he deals with the you will discover inverted individual letters influence of technology on narrative methods. written by Noel as well as mirror reflection that He is the initiator of the Polish edition of helps him writing correctly. The next scenes StoryCode, a series of community meetings will let you go through Noel’s memories and interested in new forms of storytelling. situations where you will not be able to read normally because of letters changing their order, rotating, dancing and blurred lines. At LOG-LINE the end of this experience, Noel as an adult Hidden dysfunctions may be devastating but will become very successful by having his once understood by society may not be a own photo exhibition in London, but even then problem anymore. someone will come to you showing a smartphone, saying: “Look what they wrote about your exhibition”. Of course, Noel will not be able to read it because of Dancing Letters. In some moments of Noel’s story, you will have a chance to live his life and see how it is be to have dyslexia.

98 VENICE GAP-FINANCING MARKET GOALS AT GAP- MAIN PRODUCTION COMPANY DELEGATE PRODUCTION FINANCING MARKET Udyssey Creative Technologies COMPANY To find co-producer and distributor. CO-PRODUCTION COMPANIES Udyssey Creative Technologies PROJECT TYPE vnLAB Polish National Filmschool, Locomotive MAIN CONTACT PERSON VR IMMERSIVE sp. z o.o. Marcin Marczyk FORMAT / RUNTIME CURRENT STATUS OF PROJECT ADDRESS 360 stereoscopic video / approx. 15' Pre-Production Marii 13 m. 39 BASED ON CREATIVE TEAM 05-803 Pruszków Original Idea Anna Zoll, Writer and Director Poland LANGUAGE / LOCATION Marcin Marczyk, Co-Director and Producer EMAIL English / Poland [email protected] BUDGET / FINANCING IN PLACE PHONE / CELL PHONE € 101.000 / €​ 78.000 +48 505585728

DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT PRODUCTION COMPANY PROFILE In Dancing Letters we would like to show the Udyssey Creative Technologies (former 2m world of a dyslexic, seen through his eyes and film studio) specializes in television and film his emotions. Dyslexia has many varieties and production. For many years, it has been here - we will deal with the problem of slow providing outsourcing services for Polish TV reading. We would like to invite the viewer to a stations and foreign film crews. The studio life’s journey of dyslexic for a while and to was involved in co-production of the have a reading problem. Letters will change international documentary project Yarn: The order, rotate, “dance” and lines will blur. The movie (2016). In addition, it co-organizes new Anna Zoll, viewer will be able to feel shame, media workshops for professionals from the Writer and Director embarrassment, misunderstanding, but also creative industry (StoryCode Warsaw, Digital achieve great success in life, thanks to the Stories Lab). Currently developing 3 VR “gift of dyslexia”. It happens very often that in projects (including one interactive LBVR). the case of some dysfunction the other senses are sharpened. In the case of dyslexia, sometimes dyslexics look at the MAIN FILMOGRAPHY world with pictures, they have a photographic OF PRODUCER memory and they can see some elements 2016 Yarn: The movie by Una Lorenzen more clearly. For a long time, we were looking (co-producer) for a way to make a film in a technology that will be able to take the viewer into the Marcin Marczyk, unknown world. Discovering cinematic VR PREVIOUS WORK BY DIRECTOR Co-Director and Producer with interactive elements, we felt that it is the ON FESTIVAL SCOPE PRO language and technology that best reflects Heart Thearpy the assumptions project. The project will be Spider produced using 360 stereoscopic video cameras and ambisonic audio, interactive parts we want to develop using Unity3d engine.

99 TAŃCZĄCE LITERY AUSTRIA JAMIE & JAMIE FANNI FAZAKAS

DIRECTOR’S BIOGRAPHY SYNOPSIS Fanni Fazakas is a Creative Technologist, By going through the experience, players are Director, and Co-founder of OCG Immersive. given hilarious domestic tasks to perform She works across a range of media including such as - ironing endless amounts of wrinkled VR, immersive theatre, and interactive suites while the irons are talking to the players installation. Combining her expertise as an about their miserable past. The game master artist, developer, and producer she aims to - a huge talking Washing Machine - is running investigate real-world problems through her several competitions between the two players unconventional practice. In 2015 she won the in a very unfair way. He always privileges one Best Director Prize at Hungary’s Music Video player - his “favorite” over the other, while Award with her very first music video. By 2017 commands all living objects in the laundry she directed a few short films which got into room to be his servants and do what he asks the London Short Film Festival, National Film for. As the series of competitions go on, a hint Festival for Talented Youth and the Berlin from a secret rebellion reaches the player’s MVA. ears. It’s organized by one of the latest home appliances, the Robot Vacuum Cleaners who are very intelligent and mobile, still, the LOG-LINE success of the rebellion depends on whether Jamie & Jamie is an interactive narrative VR the two players can come up with a experience for 2 participants, who can collaborative solution to destroy the Washing experience gender inequality like never Machine and end his reign. Through the before. Through dark comedy, they are given multiplayer experience, we hope to spark a chance to overcome the hegemony of an inclusive conversations that encourage autonomous washing machine and escape participants to reconsider their own the surreal laundry room. association and approach to everyday responsibilities, which could be the first step towards gender parity.

100 VENICE GAP-FINANCING MARKET GOALS AT GAP- MAIN PRODUCTION COMPANY DELEGATE PRODUCTION FINANCING MARKET OCG Immersive Studio COMPANY To find co-production and distribution CURRENT STATUS OF PROJECT OCG Immersive Studio partners to join our team. Furthermore, we In Development MAIN CONTACT PERSON are looking for investors, fund and grant Daniel Benyi opportunities. CREATIVE TEAM Fanni Fazakas, Director and Writer ADDRESS PROJECT TYPE Kevin Kim, Writer Kauergasse 10/6 VR Immersive Daniel Benyi, Creative Producer 1150 Vienna FORMAT / RUNTIME Clemens Den Exter, Lead Designer Austria 6 DOF Interactive Virtual Reality / 25' Zara Olson, Art Director EMAIL BASED ON Vincent Warmerdam, Technical Artist [email protected] Original Idea Balazs Bakon, Programmer PHONE / CELL PHONE LANGUAGE / LOCATION +36 307605474 English / Austria WEBSITE BUDGET / FINANCING IN PLACE ocgmedia.tech € 42.000 / €​ 24.000

DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT PRODUCTION COMPANY PROFILE I grew up in Budapest where almost everyone OCG is a brand new immersive studio based I know in their 20’s, including myself, is in Vienna, Budapest and New York. We are a married. I am considered quite lucky for young, cross-disciplinary creative team and having a “progressive” husband who shares our mission is to introduce people to the household duties equally with me. Yet, even in power of storytelling in virtual and mixed the privilege of my own relatively equal reality - in a fairly unexpected way. marriage, the issue around gender roles and dynamics is a difficult conversation. The ugly Fanni Fazakas, truth is that even Europe’s most egalitarian MAIN FILMOGRAPHY Director countries struggle to put women on an even OF PRODUCER footing at work, in fact women still earn an 2020 Missing 10 Hours VR by Fanni Fazakas average of $ 0.80 for every dollar earned by a 2019 Run VR by Fanni Fazakas man on a global scale. One of the many 2016 Two Hookers and a Bitch by Daniel causes of this pay gap is uncompensated Young labor, which is often referred to as “invisible work”. Unpaid domestic duties not only undermine women’s career opportunities, but PREVIOUS WORK BY DIRECTOR the fact that mostly women are performing it ON FESTIVAL SCOPE PRO also reinforces those socially constructed Run VR ideas about which traits and roles are Daniel Benyi, associated with each gender. Our team Creative Producer decided to deliver this message through dark humor since people tend to be more receptive of the truth when they are confronted with a familiar situation on which they are able to laugh.

101 Jamie & Jamie PALESTINE, UNITED STATES NOWHERE LEFT TO GO PATRICIA ECHEVERRIA LIRAS

DIRECTOR’S BIOGRAPHY SYNOPSIS Patricia Echeverria is a multi-media artist On the road from Jericho to Jerusalem exists whose work spans across multiple disciplines the village of Khan al Ahmar, home to one of including architecture, storytelling, therapy, & the last remaining Bedouin tribes in the West social justice. Through her work, she explores Bank. Its people have suffered a long history the ways we can bridge perceptual of displacement. Today their livelihoods (and differences and create spaces that foster culture) are threatened by the imminent connection, and empathy across divides. She destruction of their village. The location of has worked on Parallel Utopias, an Khan al Ahmar represents a strategic point for environmental conflict-resolution scheme at Israeli-Palestinian relations: Its survival the Korean DMZ, organized ‘the public represents the possibility for a two-state therapy tour’ across Palestine with AM Qattan solution; while its destruction represents the Foundation, and ‘Not a Question of Peace’ an loss of hope for peace and stability across the immersive playback performance with the region. Nowhere Left to Go is inspired by the Freedom Theatre from Jenin. real story of Sara, a Bedouin woman and activist fighting to protect her village and culture from destruction. This is the story of LOG-LINE her people’s past, present and future. The tiny village of Khan al Ahmar sits at a Participants of the experience will not only strategic location contested since biblical interact with Sara and her village; they will also times. This village is home to Sara, a Bedouin be invited to protect the village (and its future) woman turned activist, who needs your help through action-based participation, and a new to preserve her village & culture, in order to form of ‘virtual reality activism.’ maintain the possibility for peace & hope within the broader region.

102 VENICE GAP-FINANCING MARKET GOALS AT GAP- MAIN PRODUCTION COMPANY DELEGATE PRODUCTION FINANCING MARKET Lightshed COMPANY In addition to our partnerships with Oxfam and CO-PRODUCTION COMPANIES Lightshed UN, we are continually seeking opportunities INVR.SPACE MAIN CONTACT PERSON for financing, high-level distribution, and Barry Pousman promotion. PARTNERS ATTACHED Oxfam, UN, Bedouin without Borders, GVC ADDRESS PROJECT TYPE (Gruppo di Volontariato Civile) 352 Carlton Ave, suite 1 VR Documentary CURRENT STATUS OF PROJECT Brooklyn, FORMAT / RUNTIME In Development 11238 New York photogrammetry & animation / 9' USA CREATIVE TEAM BASED ON Patricia Echeverria, Director, Writer EMAIL Original Idea and Creative Lead [email protected] LANGUAGE / LOCATION Sara Abu Dahouk, Writer [email protected] Arabic, English / West Bank Sara Abu Dahouk, Main Cast PHONE / CELL PHONE BUDGET / FINANCING IN PLACE Barry Pousman, Sohail Dahdal, +1 3104151910 Sönke Kirchhof, € 100.000 / €20.000​ Producers WEBSITE Sawsan Qaoud, Local Producers lightshed.io Adeline Guerra, Hind Wataniya, Lauren Anders Brown, Impact Leads Gabo Arora, Advisor

DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT PRODUCTION COMPANY PROFILE If the headset is the ultimate empathy LightShed uses the power of immersive machine, how can we leverage the power of storytelling and emerging technologies (VR/ immersive storytelling to mobilize the AR/AI) to create positive social change. We international community into action, in order to shed light on the lives of everyday people effect real change on the ground? In the most struggling to overcome today’s structural recent unfolding of the Israel-Palestine inequalities. Because we believe that ‘conflict,’ Netanyahu has announced an immersive storytelling leads to empathy – and official annexation plan to confiscate 30% of empathy leads to action. Patricia Echeverria, the West Bank. The plan has been Director and Writer condemned by UN human rights experts as ‘a violation of international law,’ and has been MAIN FILMOGRAPHY deemed ‘a threat to the stability of the broader OF PRODUCER Middle East region’ by Jordanian King 2019 These Sleepless Nights Abdullah. by Gabo Arora Sara is a Bedouin woman born in Khan al 2018 ZIKR: A Sufi Revival by Gabo Arora Ahmar, (only one of many villages threatened 2018 The Day the World Changed by Gabo to be destroyed). She represents a powerful Arora and contemporary female voice standing for 2017 The Last Goodbye by Gabo Arora human rights for all in the region. In 2018 the 2016 My Mother’s Wing by Gabo Arora and village of Khan al Ahmar was saved from Ari Palitz Barry Pousman, destruction thanks to the support and 2016 Ground Beneath Her by Gabo Arora Producer pressure exerted by international activists and 2014 Clouds Over Sidra by Gabo Arora and media. Today, we aim to do the same: Barry Pousman leverage the power of immersive storytelling, and key partnerships on the ground, to shift the course of history, starting with this tiny PREVIOUS WORK BY DIRECTOR village. ON FESTIVAL SCOPE PRO Not a Question of Peace

103 Nowhere Left to Go ITALY MONO CHIARA TROISI

DIRECTOR’S BIOGRAPHY SYNOPSIS Chiara Troisi is a young director, author, A man comes back from work, gets into his filmmaker and illustrator. She has obtained a house and walks through it stripping himself degree in set design at the Academy of Fine of everything; he drags himself to the garden, Arts in Turin, and she attended the master in where he will clear out the bad energy and screenplay and directing at Scuola Holden. start again to breath and see in colour. The She has worked as director, writer and viewers follow the main character on his animator on several projects: Italia - Colombia journey through the house and the garden. (2018 - documentary short film),Tulips (2018 They get into his personal life and his fears so - teaser trailer/animated feature film project), they could watch him unfiltered. Sala Pastrone - Circolo Cinematografico Mono aims to tell the story with candor and Vertigo commercial (2015) and Our Eyes, simplicity of content, lines of the drawing and Academy of Fine Arts of Turin commercial staging. It also talks about Nature as spiritual (2015) are the most relevant. salvation, regardless of gender, ethnicity, She’s currently working on her next short film social class, religion or any other distinction, XI, la Forza (Torino Factory development and about the alienation that human beings program 2020). inflict on themselves to survive, the birth-work-death triad. This journey is visually told with animation that simulates LOG-LINE two-dimensional nature of the image by the A man returns from work, enters the house use of (monochromatic) watercolour textures. and crosses it stripping slowly of all his The graphic style is inspired by the poetical possessions; it drags on towards the garden, watercolour vision of painter and writer Gao the place where you can clean yourself of Xingjian. every slag and start to see in color again.

104 VENICE GAP-FINANCING MARKET GOALS AT GAP- MAIN PRODUCTION COMPANY DELEGATE PRODUCTION FINANCING MARKET Epica Film COMPANY To find financing to complete the CO-PRODUCTION COMPANIES Epica Film development of the project. Dead Pixels MAIN CONTACT PERSON

PROJECT TYPE CURRENT STATUS OF PROJECT Federico Lagna VR Animation In Development ADDRESS FORMAT / RUNTIME CREATIVE TEAM Via Col di Cadibona 5 Animation / 15' Chiara Troisi, Director and Animator 10024 Moncalieri BASED ON Federico Lagna, Producer Italy Original Idea Maurizio Marseguerra, Technical Consultant EMAIL LANGUAGE / LOCATION [email protected] English / Fictional PHONE / CELL PHONE BUDGET / FINANCING IN PLACE +39 3930040579 € 100.000 / €​ 25.000 WEBSITE epicafilm.it

DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT PRODUCTION COMPANY PROFILE Have you ever tried to help someone and Epica Film was founded in 2008 in Turin as a have had difficulties to do so? Or not wanting cinema association by Federico Lagna. Its to get help? Imagine coming home from work, activities include writing, producing, shooting you’ve had a hard day and you’re tired; your and post-production of audiovisual contents of head bursts and you’re down. Maybe you various kinds: advertising, video clips, suffer from depression. The only thing you can documentaries, feature films and animation. think about is that you are tired of that life, you Its nature has been versatile and multifaceted don’t like what you do, and you can’t react. All since the beginning: it focuses on social Chiara Troisi, that you want is to find peace. What if contact issues and is mainly targeted at younger Director and Animator with nature is peace? What if nature is spiritual audiences. In 2018 Epica Film was selected at salvation? This is a personal story. It’s about the Biennale College Cinema 2018 with the my family, my mother especially, and about feature filmHominarius , directed by Federico me trying to help her. It’s about her feelings Lagna, pitched to Alberto Barbera and now in with nature. Mono starts its journey from here, development. and from the necessity to talk about these themes. Mono is an interactive animated VR experience in black and white watercolor. This MAIN FILMOGRAPHY is a journey, and we are with the protagonist, OF PRODUCER in his house, which is very small, so we can 2008 Demon’s Twilight by Federico Lagna feel like him, as an animal locked in a cage. 2009 Ubaldo Terzani Horror Show by Federico Lagna, The user is watercolor, and sees himself as Gabriele Albanesi Producer watercolor, and this watercolor is energy. 2011 Zooschool by Andrea Tomaselli There isn’t just one final solution, there are 2019 Cucine Vicine by Giulietta Vacis many different types, but our aim is to 2019 Hominarius by Federico Lagna communicate how much the contact with nature can be important to all of us. PREVIOUS WORK BY DIRECTOR ON FESTIVAL SCOPE PRO Tulips

105 Mono HUNGARY OPEN THE DOOR ZSOLT MAGYARI

DIRECTOR’S BIOGRAPHY SYNOPSIS Zsolt Magyari is a multidisciplinary cinematic Open the door is essentially an interactive storyteller. He has made fiction films and one-on-one theatre in VR format. You are documentaries in Germany, Romania, United teleported back in time to 1939, to a gorgeous Kingdom and Hungary as DoP (Government neo-baroque Villa in Central Europe, at the of Children, My Life Rehearsed in One Leg, dawn of World War II and you are challenged The Cork Justifies the Means) and as intellectually and emotionally by wide-ranging stereographer (The Forbidden Girl, Lost Place, world views. The thrilling characters you meet A New Normal), directed music videos (e.g. there come from various social backgrounds. for Seksendört), short films and They share with you their secrets, express documentaries (The Hero, Peking). Guest their personal frustrations, social grievances, lecturer of stereoscopic cinematography at and conflicting political views. Your reactions HFF Potsdam, dffb Berlin, Filmakademie BW, are rewarded with more intimate confessions SSR Manchester. Co-founder of or trigger aggressive argumentation, Stereographer Ltd that creates high-end depending on the situation. These accounts technology for stereoscopic filming. constitute the outline of the bigger picture that shows grim similarities to our world today. The difference is that we all know what was the LOG-LINE outcome of those times, but we can still Would you recognize a cataclysm change our future. approaching? What would you personally do to avoid it?

106 VENICE GAP-FINANCING MARKET GOALS AT GAP- MAIN PRODUCTION COMPANY DELEGATE PRODUCTION FINANCING MARKET Good Kids Productions COMPANY To find co-production, fundings, distribution, CO-PRODUCTION COMPANIES Good Kids pre-sales, sales, festivals. Budapest City Archives MAIN CONTACT PERSON

PROJECT TYPE CURRENT STATUS OF PROJECT Patricia D’Intino VR Fiction Preproduction, Financing ADDRESS FORMAT / RUNTIME CREATIVE TEAM Sziv utca 12. 3em 14a interactive 360 degrees stereoscopic / Zsolt Magyari, Director and Writer 1063 Budapest selectable 5-15' Patricia D’intino, Main Producer Hungary BASED ON Ágnes Telek, Co-Producer EMAIL Original Idea Gergő Roszik, Editing [email protected] LANGUAGE / LOCATION PHONE / CELL PHONE Hungarian, English subtitles / Budapest, +36 209562911 former Scitovsky Villa, now residence of the WEBSITE British Ambassador goodkids.tv BUDGET / FINANCING IN PLACE € 80.000 / €​ 29.000

DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT PRODUCTION COMPANY PROFILE We want to show that history is a complex Good Kids is a Budapest based boutique weaving of endless fragments, faiths and production house co-founded by producer personal stories that form a constructed Patricia D’Intino focusing on young directors narrative only in retrospection. We suggest and author-driven projects as well as creative that learning these very subjective and branded video contents. personal viewpoints of a certain epoch can bring us closer to understanding our own present and our personal participation in MAIN FILMOGRAPHY Zsolt Magyari, historical events. On the other hand, we OF PRODUCER Director and Writer acknowledge and we want to highlight 2020 Whisper by Adam Breier through the interactive experience that each of 2018 A Siege by Istvan Kovacs us journeys through time on an individual path 2017 Granny Project by Balint Revesz and social position, thus we all have a 2017 Another New Story by Orban Wallace different reading of the world. The goal of this VR experience is to create awareness of our present reality and also to urge us for PREVIOUS WORK BY DIRECTOR consciousness and for understanding our own ON FESTIVAL SCOPE PRO responsibility in history. The Hero Peking

Patricia D’intino, Main Producer

107 Open the door BRAZIL, USA PUPPET TROUBLE LUCAS RIZZOTTO

DIRECTOR’S BIOGRAPHY SYNOPSIS Lucas Rizzotto is an award-winning VR/AR After the world’s messiest breakup, Supreme Director and Interactive Storyteller from Brazil. Leader Dick and his second in command A self-made indie in every sense of the word, must recruit a race of super intelligent babies Lucas’s work challenges audiences to interact to help them take back the Earth from a group with virtual worlds in never seen before ways, of revolutionaries. In this innovative VR from leaving their most sacred stories behind comedy, the main characters are puppets you using their voice to puppeteering characters control with your hands... but don’t be fooled, in wild interactive comedies. His directorial for you only control them to an extent: these debut Where Thoughts Go premiered at characters have a mind of their own and will Tribeca in 2018 and went on to win several turn on you when you least expect it. awards and an official release on the Oculus Quest. Now in 2020 Lucas is focusing on figuring out the highly underexplored genre of interactive comedy.

108 VENICE GAP-FINANCING MARKET GOALS AT GAP- MAIN PRODUCTION COMPANY DELEGATE PRODUCTION FINANCING MARKET Thought Co. COMPANY To find production financing and a publisher. CO-PRODUCTION COMPANIES Thought Co. PROJECT TYPE FXG MAIN CONTACT PERSON VR Immersive PARTNERS ATTACHED Lucas Rizzotto FORMAT / RUNTIME Oculus ADDRESS Realtime 3D Interactive / 25' CURRENT STATUS OF PROJECT 55 E 3RD AVE BASED ON Completed Pre-Production San Mateo Original Idea 94401 California CREATIVE TEAM USA LANGUAGE Lucas Rizzotto, Director, English Writer and Creative Lead EMAIL [email protected] BUDGET / FINANCING IN PLACE Aidan Wolf, Unity Developer € 75.000 / €​ 0 Vladimir “Vrhuman” Ilirc, 3D Artist PHONE / CELL PHONE Max Noir, Main Producer +1 9178252889 +1 7676401030 WEBSITE lucasrizzotto.com

DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT PRODUCTION COMPANY PROFILE What if your hands were the main characters Thought Co. is the independent production of an interactive story... and what would company behind the production and happen if they hated one another... or even publishing of Where Thoughts Go as well as a you? That is the central idea this project number of other Mixed Reality experiences. means to explore. Puppet Trouble is an With widespread experience creating interactive VR comedy where the main products for all major VR and AR platforms, characters are puppets you control with your Puppet Trouble is its second major release. hands... but these are no mindless puppets, Lucas Rizzotto, no sir! They’re alive and well with their own Director free will, voice, interests, desires and fears. MAIN FILMOGRAPHY The result? A new kind of VR comedy where OF PRODUCER you control the main characters while 2020 Coronavirus 360 VR paradoxically having no idea of what they’re 2020 Juneteenth March NYC 360 about to do next - a perfect match for 2020 Sense Slaves interactive comedy. If you move our 2019 Africa Future Summit 2019 in 360 VR protagonists really close to one another, for 2019 Welcome to VR Planet example... will they share a kiss or attempt to murder each other? Get them close and find out! I’m hugely excited about this new PREVIOUS WORK BY DIRECTOR storytelling format and what it represents for ON FESTIVAL SCOPE PRO Max Noir, the medium. It Puppet Trouble reinvents Where Thoughts Go Producer audience participation, embraces improvisation, subverts embodiment and creates an entirely new way to do comedy. It’s a ridiculous, hilarious and often shocking - but it’s also important to develop the medium. And that’s what I would like to work on with you.

Vladimir “Vrhuman” Ilirc, 3D Artist

109 PUPPET TROUBLE NORWAY THE PUB DUANE HOPKINS

DIRECTOR’S BIOGRAPHY SYNOPSIS Duane Hopkins is a Writer/Director & Artist You are in a classic English Pub. You can turn whose short films,Field, Love Me Or Leave 360 degrees but not move from your vantage Me Alone and Twelfth Man have won over 30 point. You take in your surroundings: Xmas international awards. His debut feature, Better decorations. Atmosphere of celebration. Things premiered in Cannes and his Holidays beginning. Groups of people in sophomore feature Bypass in Venice. The numbers of 2 to 6 - cutting across age, Better Things script won the MEDIA new talent gender, class, race. You observe the people award and both of Duane’s features have in the bar. How they dress, act, the collected awards on the festival circuit. conversations they are having. Some are loud, Duane’s third feature Wolf Note is in others quiet and intimate. Some arrogant, development at the BFI. Duane’s ignorant of those around them. Others multi-channel film installation seriesSunday considerate, even intimidated. Your opinions has exhibited worldwide in solo and group on each group/individual form - even if only exhibitions in Museums of Modern & sub-consciously. Then: BOOM! The windows Contemporary Art. shake and everyone jumps in shock. Glasses drop. Screams! A BOMB has GONE OFF outside the Pub. Everyone in the pub is now in LOG-LINE FIGHT/FLIGHT/FREEZE mode. You watch The Pub is a live action 360 Cinematic VR them react - do they act in the way your experience. One where you begin by previous judgement of them would have watching other people but by the end, you predicted? As the drama unfolds the question realise you have been watching yourself. The occurs: how would I be reacting? You KNOW Pub is about the Fight / Flight / Freeze what your brain and body are telling you to do. response in Human Beings. An evolutionally What YOUR reaction would be. As the adapted physiological reaction that occurs in experience ends, you are left in the empty us in response to a perceived harmful event, Pub. Was your reaction FIGHT, FLIGHT or attack or threat to our survival. We all believe FREEZE? You KNOW which one it was, did we would run into the burning building. To the answer shock/surprise you? Then: you help our friends. To help a fellow human hear someone MOVING behind you! being. But how can we really know? The Pub will reveal that unknown to the participant.

110 VENICE GAP-FINANCING MARKET GOALS AT GAP- MAIN PRODUCTION COMPANY DELEGATE PRODUCTION FINANCING MARKET Oslo Pictures COMPANY To find financiers. production and post- CURRENT STATUS OF PROJECT Oslo Pictures production houses. Production camera Financing MAIN CONTACT PERSON partner, headset for gallery exhibition, sales. Andrea Ottmar Open to meeting other interested parties. CREATIVE TEAM Duane Hopkins, Director and Writer ADDRESS PROJECT TYPE Andrea Ottmar, Producer Thorvald Meyers gate 2 VR Fiction David Proctor, DoP 0555 Oslo FORMAT / RUNTIME Norway 8k Stereoscopic / 10' EMAIL BASED ON [email protected] Original Idea PHONE / CELL PHONE LANGUAGE / LOCATION +47 92427426 English / UK WEBSITE BUDGET / FINANCING IN PLACE oslo-pictures.com € 250.000 / €​ 5.000 (30.000 pending)

DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT PRODUCTION COMPANY PROFILE The Pub will be a dramatic and compelling Oslo Pictures is an independent Norwegian experience that also serves as a social production company. We produce feature psychological experiment for the participant. films, shorts, TV drama and documentaries, An exploration of VR’s storytelling potential to and aim to have a high quality portfolio that connect the participant to what would be their we can offer to a broad specter of audiences. honest circumstantial reactions in a similar One of our latest filmsThe Body Remembers situation. Revealing part of the participants When The World Broke Open (co-prod) had ‘self’ that may remain unknown to them its premiere in the Generation programme of Duane Hopkins, outside such a VR experience, something that Berlinale 2019, and Hope (co–prod) had its Director and Writer ‘flat’ film is not capable of. A Games Engine premiere at Toronto IFF in 2019, and was will enable you to hear mainly the people you screened at the Berlinale 2020. The company look at. Adding interactivity through what you includes creative partners, director Joachim choose to hear. Deepening connection Trier and screenwriter Eskil Vogt, and between participant and the onscreen producers Dyveke Graver and Thomas characters to help the participant make their Robsahm. initial ‘judgements’ pre explosion. This experience is not about terrorism. We never see the terrorists or comment on any moral MAIN FILMOGRAPHY aspect of terrorism. We will not engage in any OF PRODUCER judgment or ideological POV. There is no 2019 Children of Satan by Thea Hvistendahl Andrea Ottmar, religious, political, race or societal context of (short) Producer the attackers. The exterior act of terror is 2019 Chronos by André Chocron (short) simply a device to move from safety to danger 2018 Virgins4Lyfe by Thea Hvistendahl in the most efficient way possible.The Pub is (short) an investigation into our human reactions as 2018 Bauta by Paul Tunge(short) individual and group animals that will 2017 Fanny by Halfdan Ullmann Tøndel challenge your perception of self and others. (short)

PREVIOUS WORK BY DIRECTOR ON FESTIVAL SCOPE PRO Bypass David Proctor, DoP

111 The Pub NORWAY ULVEN OG LAMMET THE WOLF AND THE LAMB EMANUEL NORDRUM

DIRECTOR’S BIOGRAPHY SYNOPSIS Emanuel Nordrum is a British-Norwegian The user finds themselves in a clearing by a screenwriter and has written for TV and film shallow two-tiered stream. A small lamb both in Norway and internationally. His appears and, once satisfied they pose no graduation film from the Norwegian Film danger, steps forward to drink. Should they School, The Culture, won awards at festivals move closer, it pleads: “Please, I just want a worldwide. drink of water.” Something moves. The lamb freezes as a silhouette circles the clearing. A wolf – large, LOG-LINE but malnourished – steps onto the tier above An immersive adaptation of Aesop’s fable them. It drinks, but notices the lamb. It paces about the futility of debating someone who is back and forth, licking its lips. looking for an excuse to hurt you, where the Finally, it growls: “How dare you walk around audience comes to realise that they’re not and stir up all the mud! Are you trying to merely watching the story unfold, but are an poison me?” active participant. How do you react to an The lamb is terrified. “That can’t be. You’re injustice playing out in front of you? upstream, and any mud I stir can’t find you.” “You’ve got a mouth on you,” the wolf responds. “I don’t mean to. I was just pointing out a fact.” “So I’m stupid?” “That’s not what I said.” “Oh, so now I’m deaf and dumb?” Throughout, the wolf keeps glancing at the user. They can turn the story. To do so, they will have to confront the wolf, but remain unaggressive, allowing it to choose to leave with its pride intact. But this isn’t easy. As they assert themselves, the wolf will focus its ire on them, finally ignoring the lamb completely. And if they fiinch, it may be the last thing they do.

112 VENICE GAP-FINANCING MARKET GOALS AT GAP- MAIN PRODUCTION COMPANY DELEGATE PRODUCTION FINANCING MARKET Varino Creative COMPANY To find 3D artists, animators, financiers, PARTNERS ATTACHED Varino Creative production partners Qvisten Animation MAIN CONTACT PERSON

PROJECT TYPE CURRENT STATUS OF PROJECT Jennifer Varino VR Immersive In Development ADDRESS FORMAT / RUNTIME CREATIVE TEAM Frogner terrasse 7B Animation / ca 10' Emanuel Nordrum, Director 0267 Oslo BASED ON Jennifer Varino, Producer Norway The Wolf and the Lamb by Aesop Sigrid Anita Haugen, Composer EMAIL LANGUAGE [email protected] English PHONE / CELL PHONE BUDGET / FINANCING IN PLACE +47 90066960 € 89.422 / €​ 0

DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT PRODUCTION COMPANY PROFILE After graduating from the Norwegian film Producer Jennifer Varino runs her work school in 2018, I immediately felt the need to through her Oslo-based sole proprietorship at least partially break away from the medium. Varino Creative. With more than two decades While I love film, it is by its nature a one-way of experience in creative communications, she medium. I wanted to find a way to tell stories finds her extensive background allows quicker that would involve the audience and be adaptation to new platforms such as VR. Her personal to them. portfolio includes post production on an The Wolf and the Lamb is a short fable where Emmy-award-winning PBS documentary; Emanuel Nordrum, the wolf looks for a excuse in order to attack project management for a MTV Networks’ Director and eat the lamb. The lamb, taking those anti-drug TV commercial; project excuses at face value, attempts to reason its management for a number of TV-level live way out of being eaten. The unfortunate moral events; and creation and production of the of the story is that someone looking for an sound art piece Globally Connected, which excuse to hurt you will always find a way to do was recently selected for Copenhagen’s radio so. art platform. In my retelling, the audience member isn’t merely a passive observer. The wolf and lamb are aware of them, and are constantly MAIN FILMOGRAPHY watching to see if they’ll step in. If they do, the OF PRODUCER story stops being about the wolf and the lamb, 2005 And They Flew: The Story of Jennifer Varino, but instead becomes about the audience, and Detroit’s Mosaic Youth Theatre by Producer how they react to witnessing a bully attack Katherine Weider someone. This is based on my own experience of standing up to a drunken bully late one night, PREVIOUS WORK BY DIRECTOR and having him forget all about his target and ON FESTIVAL SCOPE PRO instead turn on me. I want to put the audience The Culture in that experience, to have them chose to Danse Macabre confront the bully — and question whether they went about it in the right way.

Sigrid Anita Haugen, Composer

113 THE WOLF AND THE LAMB DENMARK TICKET TO NOWHERE DAVID WEDEL

DIRECTOR’S BIOGRAPHY SYNOPSIS Graduating from the first class of Denmark’s Three participants enter a mysterious world Film & Transmedia school, David Wedel wrote located between life and death. In their role as and directed the immersive VR-filmSeparate Soul Protectors, they fail their first mission to Silences as his final project. The 260-degree, save a little girl, resulting in them getting surrealistic drama, used tactile elements such demoted to serve as lowly helpers on a as carefully synchronized touch, wind and train-ride to the other side. During the smells to increase immersiveness, besides train-ride, the participants will have an having 2 different perspectives. Since then, he opportunity to redeem themselves, as the has worked on short films, music videos and villainous Eris, goddess of chaos, returns to web series, as well as a multiplayer tear the train apart. The story will revolve VR-experience. Using his wide background in around the three participants, letting them filmmaking, he attempts to use a hands-on become the main characters. As the approach, to create projects that feel experience progress, they will have to work distinctive throughout. together in order to complete challenges - gathering information as well as action-packed sequences. To help move the LOG-LINE story along, we will have a live actor in a Three prodigal Soul Protectors in a wondrous motion capture suit, who will play different world, must redeem themselves on a ghostly characters throughout the experience, and will train-ride to the other side, after they lose a be able to interact with the participants in small child to a dark goddess, on their first real-time. With this setup, we can create an mission. interactive performance in a virtual environment from anywhere in the world, meaning that the three participants can enter the experience from all over the world as well.

114 VENICE GAP-FINANCING MARKET GOALS AT GAP- MAIN PRODUCTION COMPANY DELEGATE PRODUCTION FINANCING MARKET MANND COMPANY To find financing, 3D animation and VFX. CURRENT STATUS OF PROJECT MANND PROJECT TYPE Pre-Production MAIN CONTACT PERSON VR Immersive CREATIVE TEAM Maria Engermann FORMAT / RUNTIME David Wedel, Director and Writer ADDRESS Animation / 20' Maria H. Engermann, VR Experience Filmbyen 2, 6.th BASED ON Designer and Producer 8000 Aarhus C Original Idea Signe Ungermand, Producer Denmark Nikolaj Stausbøl, Creative Unity Developer LANGUAGE EMAIL English [email protected] BUDGET / FINANCING IN PLACE PHONE / CELL PHONE € 93.733 / €​ 0 +45 22241388 +45 22241388 WEBSITE mannd.dk

DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT PRODUCTION COMPANY PROFILE To me, personally, this is a chance to push the MANND is a XR production house based in medium once more. I realize that some Aarhus, Denmark, established in 2017 by VR-experiences have already tested the Maria Herholdt Engermann and Signe waters of the aforementioned techniques, but I Ungermand. At MANND our mission is to feel there is a need to have them all merged develop and challenge the use and together in the setting of an original story. understanding of XR in order to create the Having been the scriptwriter and director of next era of branded content, communication Separate Silences, as well as the facilitator and shared experiences. Our award winning David Wedel, during screenings, I have personally heard VR experiences Separate Silences (‘17) and Director and Writer countless testimonials on user experiences. X-Ray Fashion (‘18) have been showcased at We learned what worked and what didn’t, and various A-ranked exhibition venues across the with this knowledge, we now want to take VR world, including Cannes & Venice Film - both storytelling-wise and technically - a step Festival, Qatar Museums and the UN’s further. Environmental Assembly in Kenya.

MAIN FILMOGRAPHY OF PRODUCER 2020 ERA 360 by MANND 2019 Blind VR by MANND Maria Engermann, 2018 X-Ray Fashion by Francesco Experience Designer Carrozzinii 2018 WhatWeEat by MANND 2017 Separate Silences by David Wedel

PREVIOUS WORK BY DIRECTOR ON FESTIVAL SCOPE PRO Separate Silences

Signe Ungermand, Producer

115 Ticket to Nowhere THE NETHERLANDS, DENMARK TOUCHED EMILIA ONDRIASOVA, SARA LISA VOGL

DIRECTOR’S BIOGRAPHY SYNOPSIS Working simultaneously in advertising, theatre Women masturbate. And the world should video art and independent documentary world, eventually start appreciating it. Touched is an Emilia Ondriasova represents a truly versatile interactive documentary installation with a VR director and editor. Her portfolio includes queer component that empowers women to speak documentary web-series IDentity, numerous openly about their experiences with commercials, a handful of video-theatre pieces self-pleasure. Their intimate confessions and a short biopic Lille Lys. combined with haptic body exploration are Sara Lisa Vogl is collaboratively constructing meant to take you on a journey; not only to a and exploring VR experiences since 2013. A virtual self-induced orgasm but also out of background in communication arts & your comfort zone by challenging your interactive media it is Sara’s mission to go unconscious biases and fixed beliefs. beyond the status quo, experiment with a deep immersion in virtual realities and explore their diverse potentials for the future.

LOG-LINE It’s time to shatter the taboo around female masturbation by empowering women to be shameless about it. The showdown is in your hands – literally.

116 VENICE GAP-FINANCING MARKET GOALS AT GAP- MAIN PRODUCTION COMPANY DELEGATE PRODUCTION FINANCING MARKET Studio Baritz COMPANY To find the main producer/production CO-PRODUCTION COMPANIES Studio Baritz, Makropol company as well as prototype and production Makropol MAIN CONTACT PERSON funding. PARTNERS ATTACHED Sara Lisa Vogl

PROJECT TYPE Astrid Kahmke ADDRESS VR Documentary (Virtual Worlds/ EU Creators lab) Rheinsberger Strasse 68 FORMAT / RUNTIME CURRENT STATUS OF PROJECT 10115 Berlin Real-time 6dof VR experience for sitting/ Development Germany laying-down position. Environment and CREATIVE TEAM EMAIL Interactivity created in Unity or Unreal [email protected] (depending on financing etc.). Personal Emilia Ondriasova, Director, Story Editor testimonies recorded over podcasting Sara Lisa Vogl, Director, Producer PHONE / CELL PHONE software. / 12' Corine Meijers, Mads Damsbo, Producers +49 015119497421

BASED ON WEBSITE Real-life experiences saralisavogl.com studiobiarritz.nl LANGUAGE / LOCATION makropol.dk English / Germany, Slovakia BUDGET / FINANCING IN PLACE € 150.000 / €​ 0

DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT PRODUCTION COMPANY PROFILE Even if we live in a society where sex can be Studio Biarritz, was founded by Corine openly discussed, we – as women – barely Meijers in 2019, Studio Biarritz is a brand- do so when it comes to self-pleasure. new production house that specializes in Women are denied masturbation even more audiovisual projects that cross borders. severely than men and that’s another method Studio Biarritz develops its own projects, but of control – they’re not taught to please we also love collaborating with filmmakers, themselves. – Lydia Lunch, multidisciplinary artists and partners from all over the world artist. to produce stories with a lot of heart that are Emilia Ondriasova, Our aim is to look at masturbation as relevant for our trying times. Director, Story Editor everyone’s prerogative, not a male privilege. We cross borders in 1) form, technology Even though open to guests of all genders, and subject matter, in 2) collaboration Touched is a statement piece of with filmmakers, artists & partners and 3) empowerment, created by women for women. in audience reach, distributed on multiple The ultimate mission is to establish a safe platforms. space of non-judgement, acceptance and the Makropol, based in Copenhagen, Denmark, is possibility of women being heard. The an award-winning independent studio working exploration of one’s body within the in the intersection of cinema, technology, live experience leads not only to unleashing performance and installation with their works hidden secrets but also to a self-induced, exhibited, screened, and featured in venues, virtual orgasm. Thanks to the honesty of our galleries, and festivals all over the world. Sara Lisa Vogl, female contributors and the highly intense Director, Producer immersion, Touched definitely helps shatter one of the last-standing sexual taboos – PREVIOUS WORK BY DIRECTOR because it finally takes the judgement and ON FESTIVAL SCOPE PRO shame out of the equation. Writer Lucid Trips

Corine Meijers, Producer

117 Touched 118 VENICE GAP-FINANCING MARKET BIENNALE COLLEGE CINEMA PROJECTS

119 BIENNALE COLLEGE CINEMA PROJECTS BRAZIL, PORTUGAL BABADO CAMILA FREITAS, JOÃO VIEIRA TORRES

DIRECTORS BIOGRAPHIES SYNOPSIS Camila Freitas, Brazilian, born in 1983. Jairo is a young Umbanda priest, who lives at Director of Chão, premiered at Berlinale a crossroads in which religion, gender identity Forum in 2019, and screened worldwide in and sexuality superpose. He has built his venues such as True/False (USA), or BAFICI temple in the backyard of an occupied piece (Argentina). Also a cinematographer, he has of land in the outskirts of Tabatinga, in the studied filmmaking at the École Nationale core of the Amazon forest. Jairo is bisexual Supérieure Louis Lumière in Paris. and a former transgender who used to take João Vieira Torres, Brazilian, born in 1981. part in the local sex market before he was Doctor in Contemporary Art by the École initiated in Umbanda. His temple constitutes a Européenne Supérieure de L’image. His work kind of cluster, a point of reference, has been screened at venues such as the encounters, healing and affection for a Pompidou Center, New York Anthology Film network of young people who have grown up Archives, Palais de Tokyo, Villa Arson, MIS together and share their lives between São Paulo, LABoral, CPH:Dox, FIDMarseille, spiritual devotion and the nightlife in Vilnius CAC, etc. Tabatinga. Cristielly, a young transgender prostitute initiated in Umbanda, is one of Jairo’s over 30 children-of-saint, and one of LOG-LINE the keepers of the temple since it was created At the triple border between Brazil, Peru and eight years ago. Jairo, Cris and their network Colombia, there is a town called Tabatinga. In of close friends deftly circulate between the this town there is a religious temple where spiritual world of Umbanda’s entities, such as most devotees are transgender sex workers. caboclos, pretos velhos, exus and There, in ritual, those who have been initiated pombagiras, and the material world, turning enter a trance and receive in their bodies the the streets of Tabatinga into their home and living spirits of entities that have once been in the place where they live adrift, party and the same unprivileged position they are now, earn a living, all at once. and thus are able to guide them. During the day, these transgender women suffer prejudice by the same people who at night are their clients. When they are in trouble, they can’t call the police. They can only rely on the ghosts.

120 VENICE GAP-FINANCING MARKET GOALS AT GAP- MAIN PRODUCTION COMPANY DELEGATE PRODUCTION FINANCING MARKET Duas Mariola COMPANY To find production and post-production CO-PRODUCTION COMPANIES Primeira Idade funding. Making international pre-sales. Primeira Idade MAIN CONTACT PERSON

PROJECT TYPE PARTNERS ATTACHED Pedro Fernandes Duarte Fiction Institut Français ADDRESS FORMAT / RUNTIME CURRENT STATUS OF PROJECT Travessa da Ilha do Grilo, 40 HD / 90' In development, significant material shot. 1900-262 Lisbon Portugal LANGUAGE / LOCATION CREATIVE TEAM Portuguese /Tabatinga, Brazil Camila Freitas, Director EMAIL BUDGET / FINANCING IN PLACE João Vieira Torres, Director [email protected] € 220.000 / €​ 16.000 Marina Meliande, Brazilian Producer PHONE / CELL PHONE Pedro Fernandes Duarte, Portuguese +351 916588889 Producer +55 21991780055 WEBSITE primeira-idade.pt

DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT PRODUCTION COMPANY PROFILE The film will portray the experiences of the Primeira Idade is an organization dedicated main characters in the different spheres of exclusively to film production, founded in their lives: at night, in prostitution and 2014. Its latest production is The partying; during the day, in family life and in Metamorphosis of Birds directed by Catarina special days, in ritual in the temple. Structured Vasconcelos, premiered at the Berlinale around the ever-evolving self- dialogue of our Encounters program in 2020, where it was characters’ desire for self-narrative and distinguished with the FIPRESCI Award for Camila Freitas, self-fiction, which we were able to verify in our Best Film. Winner as well of the award for Best Director research, carried out in loco, we will depart Film at the Vilnius Film Festival, has been from the temple, a space that is itself a selected to multiple other festivals such as character, and approach political resistance True/False, MoMA’s New Directors/New Films, by looking at our characters’ multifaceted and Jeonju, Taipei, Thessaloniki, San Sebastian, diverse experiences in Afro-Brazilian religions, Spirit of Fire, Cartagena de Índias, Sheffield queer sexuality and prostitution, three Doc, New Horizons, Beldocs and others. domains that still suffer a great deal of prejudice. The film language we are going to use will be inspired by our characters’ ways of MAIN FILMOGRAPHY being in the world, with the aesthetic OF PRODUCER João Vieira Torres, contributions such ways produce: fabulation, 2020 The Metamorphosis of Birds by Director fantasy, humor, the mystical experience and Catarina Vasconcelos spirituality, syncretism and the codification of 2019 Ruby by Mariana Gaivão violence as a weapon for survival. Through 2019 Look no Further by André Marques those means, our characters resist the 2019 Cerro dos Pios by Miguel de Jesus hardships they face in daily life. All of this 2019 Ghosts: Long Way Home by Tiago constantly in dialogue with the entities who Siopa embody our characters, which turn the 2017 Coelho Mau by Carlos Conceição mundane into mythological. PREVIOUS WORK BY DIRECTOR ON FESTIVAL SCOPE PRO Pedro Fernandes Duarte, Portuguese Producer Chão

Marina Meliande, Brazilian Producer

121 Babado CHINA 好生意 GOOD DEAL DI SHEN

DIRECTOR’S BIOGRAPHY SYNOPSIS Shen Di, graduated from Shanghai Theater Qian Xi is a poor, middle-aged man in Academy (STA). The Storms in our Blood cosmopolitan Yiwu. The only way to gain (2017) won the second prize of the custody of his six-year-old daughter after Cinefondation of the 71st Cannes Film divorce is to prove he has the financial means Festival. to support her. He meets a Yemeni businesswoman, Nora, who faces the problem of not being able to renew her visa. Nora LOG-LINE wants to adopt a Syrian-Chinese girl to obtain Fake business, fake marriage, fake daughter: a family visa. However, only married persons but life and love are real. may adopt a child. Hence, Qian marries Nora in a fake marriage, so that Qian splits Nora’s fortune equally to win custody and Nora is able to adopt May. With Nora’s help, Qian Xi opens an international marriage agency to help foreigners find Chinese fake marriages for family visas. Qian meets many foreigners living in Yiwu, including foreign doctors, models, and those calling on foreigners to donate blood. The marriage agency business goes better and better. Qian, Nora and May live together and they rediscover their confidence in life. However, Qian is reported to the embassy and the agency’s business is almost ruined. May learns that they adopted her for the visa, and Nora learns from the government that she could get a five-year visa. Where does this fake family go?

122 VENICE GAP-FINANCING MARKET GOALS AT GAP- MAIN PRODUCTION COMPANY DELEGATE PRODUCTION FINANCING MARKET Super Player Film & Media Co. Ltd., COMPANY To find funds, co-producers, Sales agents, Midnight Blur Films Super Player Film & Media Co., Ltd. Pre-sales CURRENT STATUS OF PROJECT Midnight Blur Films PROJECT TYPE Finalising script, Financing MAIN CONTACT PERSON Fiction CREATIVE TEAM Shen Di FORMAT / RUNTIME Shen Di, Director and Writer ADDRESS Digital Format / 110' Rachel Cai, Zhao Jin, Producer Furong street 8,, Chaoyang District, 100000 Beijing LANGUAGE / LOCATION Mandarin / Yiwu,China China BUDGET / FINANCING IN PLACE EMAIL € 2.576.557 / €​ 386.483 [email protected] PHONE / CELL PHONE +86 17310053061

DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT PRODUCTION COMPANY PROFILE The current cultural context of China is not Super Player Film & Media Co., Ltd. attempts unified, and the disunity of context is precisely to think of the rational and scientific a manifestation of change and development, production management. We are committed which is reftected in Yiwu. Yiwu is a magical to producing works of the film and television city. There are more than ten thousand Arab which offer more attitude and depth. Midnight businessmen in the city, and the streets are Blur Films is a film production and service full of Arab restaurants. Here, it is even brand that is devoted to developing and possible to predict the general election in the creating films with international vision and Shen Di, United States through the number of ftags idiosyncratic style, both commercial and Director and Writer produced by each candidate. These Arab arthouse. It has two subsidiaries: an businessmen live in Yiwu hoping to uncover a international sales and film festivals PR pot of gold in the vibrant business market of company, Parallax Films, and a new media the world’s small commodity capital. Foreign brand, Deep Focus. Its business covers all doctors who can speak three languages, Arab major film markets and festivals worldwide. restaurants, Sudanese businessmen who solicit active blood donations, Arabs who speak Putonghua with Zhejiang accents, MAIN FILMOGRAPHY countless transnational marriages and families OF PRODUCER — and they all face visa problems. People 2020 Wild Grass by Xu Zhanxiong enter this small town in different ways, and at 2021 The Neo-New Adventures by Qiu Zhao Jin, the same time weave their lives into this huge Jiongjiong Producer and vibrant international commodity market, 2020 Yanagawa by Zhang Lu leading a stable, anxious, drifting and lucky 2019 All About Ing by Huang Zi life. 2019 Vanishing Days by Zhu Xin

PREVIOUS WORK BY DIRECTOR ON FESTIVAL SCOPE PRO The Storms in our Blood

Rachel Cai, Producer

123 好生意 BRAZIL A PLANTA SOB A TERRA SELVAGEM THE PLANT UNDER THE WILD LAND DIEGO ZON

DIRECTOR’S BIOGRAPHY SYNOPSIS Diego Zon (1986) is a Brazilian filmmaker who In a small country town in Brazil, time goes by presented his short films in several festivals in a house at the pace of Antonio’s tired across Latin America such as Tiradentes Film breathing, who gets older amidst his plants Festival, Rio de Janeiro International Film that grow on the terrace. In the house, in Festival, Film Festival of Uruguay and Habana which past and present mix together, the Film Festival. His latest short “Running understanding of an imminent passage of Waters” had its world premiere at the 66th time seems to be linked to the sensations that Berlin International Film Festival, nominated surround only Antonio, and for moments for Golden Bear. Currently Diego is a master’s natural and supernatural merge. Fragments of degree student in film at Lisbon Theatre and a lifetime, the spaces, the objects kept in a Film School and he is preparing his first box, the VHS tapes and mysterious characters feature filmsSubmersal (Ancine) and The around, slowly unveil this silent man. He Plant Under the Wild Land (Biennale College). seems to step in reality when next to Brando, a snack-bar employee about to celebrate his 70th birthday, full of vitality and eccentric LOG-LINE dreams, that speaks for both, sometimes In the effort of his tired breathing, Antonio causing a certain noise in their relationship. grows older between his plants growing on One day Antonio suddenly turns off his the terrace and dusty VHS tapes that he often hearing aid and later Brando realizes that he watches with Brando. One day, Antonio falls has decided to fall asleep indefinitely. Faced asleep indefinitely. with this absence, Brando penetrates alone into the forest and the river, searching for the plant from which Antonio brought seedlings. He returns transformed, with that root, hoping to wake him up. It is a film that flows through the feelings and transformations that happen in our lives and after them.

124 VENICE GAP-FINANCING MARKET GOALS AT GAP- MAIN PRODUCTION COMPANY DELEGATE PRODUCTION FINANCING MARKET De Repente o Rio COMPANY To find financiers, co-producers and meeting CURRENT STATUS OF PROJECT De Repente o Rio with funds. To get in touch with potential Development (closed) MAIN CONTACT PERSON buyers such as sales agents or distributors. CREATIVE TEAM Diego Zon PROJECT TYPE Diego Zon, Director, Writer and Producer Ana Ana Cristina Viegas Fiction Cristina Viegas, Producer ADDRESS FORMAT / RUNTIME Patrick Tristão, DoP Rua Dr Jose Vieira Tatagiba, 89, 2K / 90’ Djanira Bravo, Production Designer 29500000 Guararema Alegre LANGUAGE / LOCATION Brazil Portuguese / Espirito Santo, Brazil EMAIL BUDGET / FINANCING IN PLACE [email protected] € 350.000 / €​ 3.000 PHONE / CELL PHONE +55 28999463994 +351 963290451 WEBSITE derepenteorio.com

DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT PRODUCTION COMPANY PROFILE The Plant Under the Wild Land is a film in De Repente o Rio is an independent film which we find ourselves involved in the production company based in Espirito relationships revealed by the passage of time. Santo-Brazil and founded in 2015. The It is as if it was the expression of time over the company has a special focus on arthouse and characters, the things, the places and the documentary films with an authoral cinematic elements of the story itself. We are in a film and innovative projects, for both local and about the old age, with Antonio, his friend international markets. De Repente o Rio’s Brando, his sister Solange, and the mysterious debut film was the short filmRunning Waters Diego Zon, Linita, with whom we go through a process of premiered at the 66th Berlin International Film Director meditation on life, spirituality and the Festival, nominated for the Golden Bear. At imminence of death. In such a way that the present De Repente o Rio is preparing its ancestry and the experience of contemporary new feature films projectsSubmersal (Ancine) life, tenderness and human complexity and The Plant Under The Wild Land (Biennale coexist. Building a film of affection, of love Cinema College). stories articulated in a bittersweet mood, in which the minimal daily gestures have a meaning and the simplest things are deep, as MAIN FILMOGRAPHY if the banality of life was sacred. I was born OF PRODUCER and raised in a small state of Espirito Santo 2019-2021 Submersal by Diego Zon Brazil, where I was awakening to experiences 2020 Our Equinox by Diego Zon Ana Cristina Viegas, typical of the countryside environment, people 2016 Voárvore by Ana Viegas and Joana Producer of nearly unnoticeable singularity before the Pires hurried and annihilating look of contemporary man. The film proposes to engage in this intimacy, with characters belonging to a PREVIOUS WORK BY DIRECTOR particular place – not only a physical place, ON FESTIVAL SCOPE PRO but also a place in their memories. Running Waters

125 THE PLANT UNDER THE WILD LAND Editorial Coordination La Biennale di Venezia Editorial Activities and Web and Venice Production Bridge

Design Leonardo Maraner (Headline)

Layout Riccardo Cavallaro

September 2020