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European Film Market Gears Up for Online Edition With Hot Co-Production Titles, New Platform Structure

Nick Vivarelli
·3 min read

The Berlin Film Festival’s European Film Market (EFM) is gearing up for its upcoming online edition, for which it has announced 35 promising feature film projects from 25 countries selected for its co-production market.

The EFM on Friday also unveiled details of the digital platform on which business will be done.

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The Berlinale Co-Production Market selection comprises works in various stages from global helmers, most of whom are known on the fest circuit while several are Berlin regulars, such as Palestinian helmer Annemarie Jacir, who was on the Berlin jury last year.

The prolific Jacir will be presenting “The Oblivion Theory”; Turkish filmmaker Yeşim Ustaoğlu, who broke out in Berlin, will be pitching her new drama “Left Over”; Oscar-nominated Polish director Jan Komasa (“Corpus Christi”) will unveil “Shine of the Sun”; while New York-based Filipina filmmaker Isabel Sandoval, who made a splash with transgender drama “Lingua Franca,” will talk up her follow-up feature “Tropical Gothic.”

Other standouts comprise new projects by Argentina’s Benjamín Naishtat, who is known for “Rojo” and has teamed up with Maria Alché on “Puan”; Israel’s Elite Zexer (“Sand Storm”) who is seeking partners for “Two Peas in a Pod,” and Canada’s Bruce McDonald (“Dreamland”) who has “Vic & Doc & Duke go to the Store” in the works.

Projects by 14 female and 13 male directors make up the 25 pics that constitute the selection’s core, some of which are co-directed. The full list of projects can be found here.

The film’s producers will meet with international co-producers, world sales agents, broadcasters, streaming platforms, distributors, representatives of public funds and financiers from all over the world in more than 1,000 individual meetings organized in advance, according to an EFM statement.

The “Co-Pro Series” and “Books at Berlinale” selections will be announced in the upcoming weeks.

The EFM, which will run online March 1-5, as revealed by Variety last month, has also provided details of how its digital platform will be structured. Market screenings will be programmed according to the pre-established schedule and will be accessible within a 120-minute window after the designated start time.

All market participants will determine their own time zone. The film’s starting time will be based on the determined local time, ensuring — for example — that users in Australia, Central Europe or the West Coast of the U.S. can view specific screenings at the same local time. “This screening format preserves the momentum of a market presentation,” the EFM statement said.

On the sales side, global sales companies at EFM will be presenting their current film lineups and upcoming titles on the platform’s digital booths, which will also serve as the vehicle for national promotion agencies and the plethora of other entities that normally attend. Accredited market visitors will get access to an EFM guide and to the digital booths with a company’s program and events, and can make contact with the booth owners who can also use their preferred video conference systems for meetings.

In separate EFM news, on Friday the Berlinale also announced that “Dreams” will be the theme of its Berlinale Talents section, for which the March 1-5 digital aspect is launching a high-tech virtual space conceived by set-designer Uli Hanisch (“The Queen’s Gambit,” “Babylon Berlin”) who is transforming Berlin’s real Hebbel am Ufer theater into a digital set, so as to allow the 200 chosen Berlinale Talents “to convert the distance between the homes of participants from 65 countries” and the theater into an “augmented meeting point.”

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