SOFA helmers Nikolaj Nikitin and Oliver Baumgarten talk about how SOFA is holding its training sessions online during the COVID-19 crisis. They also share the beginnings of SOFA and how the project with sessions in Tbilisi, Warsaw and Vilnius is helping kickstart projects that are developing new ways to connect European films and audiovisual content to audiences. The project is supported by German Federal Foreign Office, the Creative Europe MEDIA programme of the EU, the Lithuanian Film Centre, Fundacja Współpracy Polsko-Niemieckiej and the Polish Film Institute.

BRATISLAVA: Film Europe has announced the launch of a VoD platform, Edisonline, as the final part of its expansion of Edison Filmhub. The company is also donating a percentage of subscription fees for the support of cultural institutions affected during the Covid-19 crisis.

BUCHAREST: The Transilvania IFF has announced that it plans to expand its streaming platform TIFF Unlimited, which was launched during its past edition in June 2019.

ZAGREB: The 30th World Festival of Animated Film – Animafest Zagreb 2020, which was set to take place 8-13 June, has announced its postponement.

BUCHAREST: The Romanian director/producer Dan Chișu is currently in final postproduction with his no budget feature film Nine Stories of Love and Hate in Isolation / Nouă povești de dragoste și ură in izolare, which was shot with mobile phones by the actors themselves in a span of one week.

BUCHAREST: The Romanian film director Mircea Mureșan passed away on 24 April 2020 at the age of 91. He received the Best First Work Award at the Cannes Film Festival for The Uprising / Răscoala in 1966 and he also directed the most popular Romanian TV series of all times, All Sails Up! / Toate pânzele sus! (1977), both produced by Centrul de Producție Cinematografică București.

The COVID crisis has thrown film festivals all over Europe into crisis. In the series of podcasts FNE asks festival directors to share with us how they are coping with the new COVID reality.

Applicants have until the end of April to submit their projects for Ex Oriente.

PRAGUE: Central European Media Enterprises (CME) released its first quarter of 2020 results, reporting a 2 percent decline in net revenues, with TV advertising down by 4 percent.