French directorJacques Malaterre is in Sofia rehearsing the UGC YMhigh budget epic fictionAo: The Last Neanderthal based on Marc Klapczynski's book Aô, Ancient Man.

French maestro Claude Lelouch began filming his 45th film, Ces amours-là on June 8 at MediaPro Studios in Romania, with shooting scheduled to last for two months in Bucharest and Beaune, France.

Romanian company MediaPro Pictures is in production with Ho-ho-ho, a feel good movie from Spanish director Jesus del Cerro.

Romanian filmmaker Alexandru Solomon (www.alexandrusolomon.ro) is working on a new long documentary, Kapitalism - Our Secret Recipe, a humorous approach on Romanian capitalism, 20 years after the fall of communism.

The Polish-Slovak-Czech-Hungarian co-production about the Slovak folk hero Janosik, Janosik. The True Story is in postproduction, with sound work taking place in Bratislava, Warsaw and Prague.

My Husband's Women, the latest film from Ivan Vojnár, has racked up sales to Poland and Greece prior to its debut in Slovakia in late June.

Judit Elek, the new Film New Europe ambassador, is in pre-production with Retrace, a Hungarian-Swedish-Romanian co-production.

Academy Award nominee Ondrej Trojan (Zelary, 2003) is in production with his 1970's film Občanský průkaz, produced by his production company Total HelpArt (THA).

A feature film adaptation of Rilke's Gravedigger by Hungarian cinematographer-director Sandor Kardos is in postproduction, producer Andras Muhi told FNE

Mihaly Schwechtje's feature film debut Heat, an international co-production with an estimated budget of €1.4 million, is in preproduction, producer Laszlo Kantor told FNE.

Constantin Popescu (Tales from the Golden Age) is in post-production with his first feature, Portrait of the Fighter as a Young Man, one of the very few Romanian films about the resistance movement during the Communist regime.

Peter Călin Netzer (Maria) is in post-production with his second feature, Medal of Honor, the story of a 75 man who receives out of the blue a medal for his heroic achievements in the WWII.

Romanian director Radu Gabrea continues his screen adaptations of Romanian born Saxon writer Eginald Schlattner's novels, this time with The Red Gloves (Mănuşile roşii).

Romanian director Andrei Zincă is in preparation to film Puzzle for a Blind Man, an adaptation of Argentinian playwright Mario Diament's Blind Date for Castel Film Studios.

Slovak director and producer Peter Kerekes found co-producers for his film on cosmonauts while participating in European Film Promotion's Producers On the Move at Cannes.

Hungarian director Judit Elek will begin filming her Communist-era co-production Returning Home in Sweden in July.