COTTBUS: Turkish writer/director Senem Tüzen will make her feature film debut with Motherland, a struggle between a traditionalist mother and daughter, who moves to the city.
COTTBUS: Serbian star Mirjana Karanovic (When Father Was Away on Business, Grbavica) will make her writing and directing debut with a post-Yugoslav war film A Good Wife.
COTTBUS: Following the success of Punk’s Not Dead which won the East of the West award at the 2011 Karlovy Vary IFF (www.kviff.com), Macedonian director Vladimir Blazevski and Punk Film (www.punkfilm.mk) producer Darko Popov reteam with the black comedy Freedom or Death, pitched at Connecting Cottbus (www.connecting-cottbus.de).
COTTBUS: Polish director Bartek Konopka, whose imaginative and clever 2009 documentary Rabbit a la Berlin received an Oscar nomination, presented his new project The Mute at the 2012 edition of Connecting Cottbus (www.connecting-cottbus.de).
COTTBUS: Czech producer Jiri Konecny of endorfilm (www.endorfilm.cz) teams up with FAMU (www.famu.cz) trained Slovenian director Olmo Omerzu for his second film shot in the Czech Republic, Family Film.
COTTBUS: Kosovo made its first appearance at the Connecting Cottbus (www.connecting-cottbus.de) pitching forum with Three Windows and a Hanging, a dramatic post-war story from leading Kosovo director Isa Qosja.
PRAGUE: Cinema City (www.cinemacity.nl), the largest multiplex operator in CEE, recovered most of its earlier 2012 losses in the third quarter, with revenues up 8 percent, to 74.9 m EUR, compared to the same period in 2011. Ticket sales for the quarter were up 7.7 percent, to 9.7 m, with the increase attributed to new screens added in the past year.
BRATISLAVA: Slovakia’s emergence as a country of talented documentary filmmakers in the past decade is attracting a young generation of directors and producers to the genre. FNE caught up with several of Slovakia’s leading young documentary filmmakers during the 14th Bratislava IFF (www.iffbratislava.sk).
BRATISLAVA: A pair of films from Israel and Germany dominated the awards ceremony of the Bratislava IFF (www.iffbratislava.sk) on 15 November 2012, and Slovakia recognized its own film industry with Made in Ash winning the prize of a new Slovak Competition.
BRATISLAVA: Slovak director Iveta Grofova, whose debut feature film Made in Ash was selected as Slovakia 2012 Oscar candidate, will follow up with a fiction film cast with amateur actors and based on a prize winning book, Fifth Boat.
