WARSAW: FNE is pleased to announce that Variety has struck an exclusive editorial agreement with news service Film New Europe to augment its coverage of growing content markets across Eastern and Central Europe. Film New Europe sees this agreement as an important event in its strategic development.

PRAGUE: The annual documentary event East Doc Platform (25-31 March 2022) gave its top award to the Polish project The World Is Not A Mine by Natalia Koniarz about inhabitants working in inhuman conditions mining metals on the Cerro Rico mountain. Organised by the Institute of Documentary Film East Doc Platform is the largest coproduction, funding and distribution platform for Central and East European documentaries

SOFIA: FNE spoke to Nu Boyana Studios CEO Yariv Lerner about the Job Fair the Sofia based studios has been hosting to help Ukrainian refugees and the kind of jobs and training the studios are offering to new arrivals. He also spoke about Nu Boyana’s new studios in Greece.

SOFIA: The 26th Sofia International Film Festival gave its top prize for best first and second feature films to the Polish film Sonata directed by Bartosz Blaschke, which also was awarded the coveted Audience Prize

BERLIN: Russian director Alexander Zolotukhin has scored a slot in the Berlinale Encounters section with his film Brother in Every Inch, a second film that continues the military theme of his successful debut A Russian Youth, which screened in the Berlinale Forum in 2019.

BERLIN: Director Graham Moore scored a special gala screening at the Berlinale with his debut film The Outfit, an undoubted sign that here is a director to watch in future. Moore, who won an Oscar for his script for The Imitation Game, also wrote the screenplay for the film this time teaming up co-screenwriter Jonathan McClain.

BERLIN: Director Peter Strickland’s fifth feature film Flux Gourmet, a UK, USA, Hungary coproduction, screens in the Encounters section of the 2022 Berlinale. While the world of culinary art might sound like a frivolous setting for a film this is not the case.

BERLIN: Australian director Sophie Hyde has been awarded a Berlinale Special Gala for her film Good Luck to You Leo Grande, which arrives in Berlin after making a critical splash in Sundance. Hyde is already a Sundance regular with her previous films 52 Sundays (2014) and the comedy Animals (2019) also screening in Sundance.

BERLIN: The anti-abortion feminist drama Call Jane directed by Phyllis Nagy has scored a spot in the Berlinale main competition. The film had its USA premiere at the Sunday Film Festival earlier this year. International festival goers will remember Phyllis Nagy as the scriptwriter of the drama Carol directed by Todd Haynes and based on the Patricia Highsmith novel.