19-21 APRIL IN VIENNA

“ESSENTIAL SUCCESS FACTORS FOR FILMMAKING

VENUES:

19 April: Austrian Chamber of Commerce at Rudolf-Sallinger-Platz 1, 1030 Vienna
20 April: Austrian Film Institute (ÖFI) at Spittelberggasse 3 / Stiftgasse 6, 1070 Vienna
21 April: Raiffeisen Hall (RBI) at Am Stadtpark 9, 1030 Vienna
19 & 21 April: RED ROOM, Stubenring 20, 1010 Vienna

REGISTRATION:
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The second forum and networking event made by LET’S CEE: twelve high-class presentations, two exciting panel discussions, a series of pitchings and much more: This will be the second edition of the LET’S CEE Industry Days from 19 to 21 April 2018 in Vienna. Note: Free tickets, which are sponsored by partners, are still available! 

A two-and-a-half-day industry session titled "Co-Financing and Co-Producing, Innovation and Know-How: Essential Success Factors for Filmmaking" will take place at the LET’S CEE Film Festival 2018 between April 19th and 21st.

The symposium will be held in English. Austrian and foreign top speakers will deliver individual lectures and contribute to discussion forums on topics such as film financing. film funding and co-productions, film production and distribution, and trends such as CGI (Computer Generated Imagery), 3D animation and Virtual Reality. For the first time, there will also be a series of pitchings during the Industry Days where selected projects from Poland, Slovenia, Austria, and Romania will be presented.

The organisers’ goal is to offer participants a broad programme of practical topics. Not only will participants learn about current opportunities for funding their projects in the EU, but they will also get an up-to-date look at other offers in the Central and Eastern European film industry. How can one increase the chances of having their own feature films or documentaries played by a big movie chain? What can a large film studio offer filmmakers and producers? What is possible with professional CGI and what does it cost? How will virtual reality change the film business in the near future?

A highlight of Industry Days will be an extensive presentation by one of the largest film studios in Europe. Yariv Lerner, Head of Nu Boyana Film Studios in Sofia, will be travelling to Vienna for this event. Among the other speakers and panellists are Jakob Ballinger, Founder of The Light Bridge; Simone Baumann, Producer and Representative for Eastern Europe at German Films; Nataša Bučar, Managing Director of the Slovenian Film Centre (SFC); Anna Franklin, General Director at Film New Europe; Vesselina Georgieva, Visual Effects Specialist at Worldwide FX; Marcin Łunkiewicz, Cinematic VR Specialist, Producer and Founder of mimo.ooo; Jan Maxa, Content Development Director at Czech Television (CT); Christof Papousek, CFO of Austria’s largest cinema chain Cineplexx; Tomáš Prášek, CEO and Co-Founder of Eventival; Julia Schmölz, Programme Manager at FISA – Film Industry Support; Christophe Vidal, Director at Natixis Coficiné SA; Virgil Widrich, Filmmaker and Director of Virgil Widrich Film- und Multimediaproduktion; Iris Zappe-Heller, Deputy Director of the Austrian Film Institute; Kathrin Zechner, Programme Director at ORF, and many more.

The closing event of Industry Days will be the "Live! Ammunition! Pitching Competition" hosted by Elliot Grove, founder and director of the Raindance Film Festival in London and the British Independent Film Awards. Young filmmakers will have the opportunity to present their ideas to film experts, such as Ursula Wolschlager, Producer and CEO of Witcraft Filmproduktion, Jakob Pochlatko, Producer and CEO of epo-film, Jani Sever, Producer and Owner of Sever & Sever Productions, and in front of a live audience.

The location of the pre-opening event will be the Austrian Chamber of commerce at Rudolf-Sallinger-Platz 1, 1030 Vienna. The event for the first Industry Day will be the Austrian Film Institute at Spittelberggasse 3 / Stiftgasse 6, 1070 Vienna, and for the second day, the Raiffeisen Hall at Am Stadtpark 9, 1030 Vienna.

The attendance fee, including catering, is 120 Euros. However, festival partners are providing a contingent of free tickets on a first come, first serve basis. Please register on time via This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. and secure your free seat. Thank you!

Industry Days is organised by the LET'S CEE Film Festival. The most important supporters of the engagement are the Austrian Film Institute, the Collecting Society of Filmmakers VdFS, the Collecting Society for Audio-Visual Media VAM, the Vienna Association of the Film and Music Industry at the Austrian Chamber of Commerce, the Polish Film Institute (PISF), the Romanian Cultural Institute in Vienna, the Slovenian Film Centre (SFC), and Raiffeisen Bank International.

The 6th edition of the LET’S CEE Film Festival will take place from 13th to 22nd April 2018, presenting 162 outstanding feature films, documentaries and shorts, including 140 Austrian premieres, most of them from Central and Eastern Europe. Many screenings will be followed by Q&A sessions with the respective filmmakers. For more information, please visit www.letsceefilmfestival.com. The detailed festival programme incl. screening dates and venues is already available.

_______________
Press and Industry Contact:
Wolfgang P. Schwelle
Festival Director LET’S CEE Film Festival
Email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Website: www.letsceefilmfestival.com
Facebook: www.facebook.com/letscee
Twitter: www.twitter.com/letsceeff
Instagram: www.instagram.com/letscee

East Silver, a documentary market specialized in Eastern and Central European documentary film, is open for submissions. Submit your film to the largest internationally recognized database of creative feature and television documentary films from Central and Eastern Europe.

Application deadlines for the 15th edition: 

Submission deadline for films produced in 2017: March 31, 2018

Submission deadline for films produced in 2018: May 31, 2018

Submission deadline for projects in rough cut stage: July 31, 2018 

(Applying is free of charge, applying is possible through the online application form)



Focus: Completed films

Dates: 15th East Silver Market during 22nd Ji.hlava International Documentary Film Festival 2018 (Oct 25 – 30, 2018)

How: Submit your documentary via our online ENTRY FORM

We accept online screeners (Vimeo, YouTube etc.), which must be available till Sep 30, 2018. In case you didn’t included online link to your film in the submission form, please send 2 DVD screeners with English subtitles / English voiceover, with trailer and any additional press and promo materials (if available) to: Institute of Documentary Film / East Silver, Štěpánská 14, 110 00, Prague 1, Czech Republic

 

Contacts:

Zdeněk Blaha / Manager: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Walter Nagy /  East Silver Caravan: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Deadline extended until April 8th! There are few more days left for submissions for Transilvania Pitch Stop (TPS). Filmmakers are invited to join the successful initiative of Transilvania IFF focused on development of features coming from 1^st and 2^nd time directors.

TPS aims to discover a strong selection of projects destined for European co-production from: Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria, Serbia, Ukraine, Russia, Moldova, Greece, Turkey and Georgia. The program aims to foster cross-border cooperation especially between the Black Sea countries and other countries invited to be part of the initiative.

TPS will presents a selection of approximate 10 projects, coming from 1^st and 2^nd time directors, currently in development and financing to international film professionals, facilitating their international visibility and establishing the right connections to ensure financing for their projects. Directors and producers of the selected projects will be invited to the industry event organized by Transilvania IFF on June 1st & 2nd, 2018.

The jury will award the following prizes:

- Eurimages Co-production Development Award amounting to €20,000
- Transilvania IFF Award, valued at €5,000

The regulations can be checked here. 

Selected projects will be announced no later then May 1st, 2018 and the director and producer will be invited to join the industry event in Cluj on the 1st and 2nd of June 2018. 

goEast Competition // Jury // Awards

Curtain up for Małgorzata Szumowska’s MUG, the opening film of the 18th edition of goEast – Festival of Central and Eastern European Film in Wiesbaden, Germany. The polish director’s film is screening out of competition, though it fits seamlessly into the Competition program, goEast’s centrepiece, which showcases socially critical, personal, epic and absurd cinema from Central and Eastern Europe. “Artistic diversity, courage and originality are characteristic for our Competition program,” says festival director Heleen Gerritsen. “In spite of increasing nationalism in many countries in Central and Eastern Europe and Cold War rhetoric going back and forth, I see many countertrends in the region’s cinema, for instance an astonishing number of transnational co-productions were submitted this year, incidentally also including many strong films from female directors.” All of the productions featured in the Competition tell of individuals attempting to assert their identities in times of change.

Awards and Jury
In the Competition as usual 16 films will be competing against one another, ten fiction features and six documentaries. 14 productions will be celebrating their German premieres at goEast. An international, five-member jury will determine the winner of the awards: the Golden Lily for Best Film (10,000 euros), the Award of the City of Wiesbaden for Best Director (7,500 euros) and the Award of the Federal Foreign Office for Cultural Diversity (4,000 euros). Oscar® nominated Hungarian director Ildikó Enyedi will serve as 2018’s jury president. Further members of the jury are Gennady Kofman, artistic director of Docudays UA International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival from Ukraine, Slovakian producer and director Peter Kerekes, Polish film actor Mateusz Kościukiewicz and Russian-born filmmaker, screenwriter and VJane Elena Tikhonova. FIPRESCI will be represented by their own dedicated jury, which will honour the best fiction feature and best documentary respectively with the International Film Critic's Award.

The complete film program is now available as download PDF:
http://archiv.filmfestival-goeast.de/downloads/goEast_Program_2018_web.pdf

goEast Competition
The Polish production ONCE UPON A TIME IN NOVEMBER (PEWNEGO RAZU W LISTOPADZIE, POL, 2017) by director Andrzej Jakimowski uses documentary images from Warsaw marches staged by right-wing extremists as a backdrop for the portrayal of one family’s social decline. The absurd found-footage satire OUR NEW PRESIDENT(RUS/USA, 2018) shows the US-American presidential campaign from a Russian perspective, in a collage composed of bizarre excerpts from state television broadcasts and YouTube fragments. Director Maxim Pozdorovkin previously made the documentary PUSSY RIOT, A PUNK PRAYER, among other films.
In the documentary THE OTHER SIDE OF EVERYTHING (DRUGA STRANA SVEGA, SRB/FRA/QAT, 2017) director Mila Turajlic reflects on the legacy of the Serbian civil war and links the country’s story with that of her own family history. The film won the main award at the 2017 edition of IDFA, the world’s largest documentary film festival.
The debut film FALLING (STRIMHOLOV, UKR, 2017, directed by Marina Stepanska) is a drama set in post-revolution Ukraine characterised by interwoven generational conflicts and characters in search of love and identity. A further debut film in the program: the Kosovar-Albanian LGBTQ drama THE MARRIAGE (MARTESA, RKS/ALB, 2017) by director Blerta Zeqiri. The film’s main character is faced with a tough decision: whether to continue to hide his own sexuality from the outside world and get married, or follow his former lover abroad. “Albanians and Serbs in Kosovo only agree about one thing: there’s no place for homosexuals in their society,” as the director puts it.
Based on a true story, the fiction feature THE MINER (RUDAR, SVN/DEU, 2017, directed by Hanna Slak) focuses on the discovery of a massacre which took place sixty years ago. In the main role: Leon Lučev. The historically weighty family drama AURORA BOREALIS (HUN, 2017) by grande dame Márta Meszaros, to whom goEast devoted 2017’s Homage, starts off in present-day Austria and Hungary and then sets out on a cinematic journey – back to the time of the Soviet occupation.
Other productions featured in the section also focus on unusual life paths. The black comedy MIRACLE (STEBUKLAS, LTU/BUL/POL, 2017, directed by Egle Vertelyte) is set in the post-Soviet desolation of the early 1990s. The life of kolkhoz director Irena is turned upside down by the sudden appearance of a flamboyant American entrepreneur. Director Bohdan Sláma is competing for the second time at goEast: in his tragicomedy ICE MOTHER (BABA Z LEDU, CZE/SVK/FRA, 2017) widow Hana breaks out of the monotony of her sad everyday existence and discovers the joy of ice swimming in winter. The documentary A WOMAN CAPTURED (HUN/DEU, 2017, directed by Bernadett Tuza-Ritter) offers a disturbing look at the everyday life of a domestic slave – right in the middle of Europe. A powerful portrait, representing the struggle of the estimated 1.2 million individuals held as slaves in private European households. In the unusual thriller SVETA (KAZ, 2017, directed by Zhanna Issabayeva) a deaf Russian woman in contemporary Kazakhstan sheds the role of the victim and takes revenge on society. 
THE DEAD NATION (TARA MOARTA, ROU, 2017, directed by Radu Jude) combines photographic portraits, diary entries from a Jewish doctor and excerpts from radio broadcasts into a collage on life and increasing anti-Semitism in Romania in the period between 1937 and 1946. THE ANCIENT WOODS (SENGIRE, LTU/EST/DEU, 2017) is a poetic nature film about the hidden life to be found in one of Europa’s few remaining primeval forests. Director and cameraman Mindaugas Survila’s lovely film gets along just fine without music or voice-over commentary. In REZO (ZNAESH‘, MAMA, GDE YA BYL, RUS, 2017) fancifully animated images are combined into a rapturous whole to relate the story of Revaz “Rezo” Gabriaze’s life in Georgia. Colourful characters such as Stalin, Lenin and even a prisoner of war from Wiesbaden make appearances in Rezo’s childhood memories. The film was directed by his son Levan Gabriadze and produced by Timur Bekmambetov (NIGHT WATCH).
A sombre fairy tale atmosphere reigns in NOVEMBER (EST/NDL/POL, 2017, directed by Rainer Sarnet). In a pagan village, werewolves, ghosts and the plague are running rampant and b-movie actor Dieter Laser (The Human Centipede) appears here in a supporting role as a German nobleman. Multi-award-winning cameraman Mart Taniel shot the story in high-contrast black and white. Russian director (with Uzbek roots) Rustam Khamdamov also chose black and white for his surreal folktale THE BOTTOMLESS BAG (MESHOK BEZ DNA, RUS, 2017). Ryunosuke Akutagawa’s RASHOMON served as inspiration for tales read by a Russian lady-in-waiting that lead deep into an enchanted Medieval forest, which is simultaneously the scene of a mystifying murder.

The cinematic narrative styles of the films featured in this year’s goEast Competition are as diverse as the societies from which they originate. An exciting race is guaranteed!

Save the date: On 12 April at 11 a.m., the goEast press conference will take place at Caligari FilmBühne in Wiesbaden.

The Slovenian Film Centre announced these grants on 3 April 2018.