WIESBADEN: Sixteen films, including ten feature films and six documentaries, were selected for the competition of the 18th edition of goEast – Festival of Central and Eastern European Film in Wiesbaden, Germany, set to take place from 18 to 24 April 2918.
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 1st and 2nd 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 1st and 2nd 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.
PRAGUE: Eight projects were selected for the 2018 edition of dok.incubator, the well-established rough-cut stage workshop aiming at offering individual mentorship with a focus on dramaturgy, distribution, marketing strategy and audience building.
The National Film Center of Latvia announced these grants on 3 April 2018.
dok.incubator has just announced the final selection of talented filmmakers whose projects will be supported in 2018. dok.incubator is a well-established rough-cut stage workshop that is unique in its format and impact on filmmakers. Its aim each year is to offer individual mentorship for eight documentary projects with a focus on dramaturgy, distribution and marketing strategy and audience building in order to premiere at prestigious festivals and reach a wide distribution.
After a remarkable success of last year’s projects A Woman Captured (HU, DE), which premiered at IDFA and since than has been screened at more than 40 festivals including Sundance and CPH:DOX, and polish co-production Over the Limit (PL, DE, FI) starting in the main competition at IDFA followed by screenings at dozens of festivals, whose rights were sold to more than 15 broadcasters, we are proud to present another two selected East European projects to be supported and mentored by top European and US editors, producers, distributors and marketing experts such.
Two out of eight teams are coming from east European countries.
Slovenian – Kosovo co-production
From the remote mountains of Albania in Avenge, Marija Zidar tells a story of family pride, and of deep-rooted principles of revenge and forgiveness while fighting the omnipresent corruption and prevailing communist residues.
A Latvian project (with Czech, Estonian and German co-production) People From Nowhere by Gints Grube uncovers family history in a picture of a father and daughter emigrating during the Cold War to New York. It is a search for the truth, a portrayal of family values, and a confrontation with choices that will change their lives.
The rest of the selected projects and the teams behind them come from the whole world and their projects cover a wide range of topics and genres. The complete list of all selected projects is available on dok.incubator website.
The projects have been selected out of 101 applications and they now have the opportunity to join ranks of the other successful documentaries which were developed at the dok.incubator workshop. Over the six years of dok.incubator, more than one third of the films have been screened at IDFA, six have competed at Sundance, and many more have been at Visions du Reel, CPH:DOX, Hots Docs, and other similar festivals.
Secret Ingredient, the debut feature by Macedonian director Gjorce Stavreski, won four awards last week at prestigious international film festivals. The film won the Best Film award in the main competition at the Aubagne International Film Festival and the First Prize in the main competition at the Bergamo Film Meeting. The film also received a Special Mention Award from the jury at the FRANCOFILM-festival in Rome, as well as a special award in the Balkan competition at the Sofia International Film Festival.
Secret Ingredient was also screened at the film festival International Film Festival Prague - FEBIOFEST, where all the projections were completely sold out. From the premiere in November the film was screened at 16 film festivals and won seven international awards. The film was screened in India, USA and Europe. The film is also available in the offer of the HBO on-demand video streaming service – HBO GO.
Another film supported by Macedonian Film Agency, Would You Look At Her by Goran Stolevski won the Grand Prix award for best international short film at the 65th edition of the Belgrade Documentary and Short Film Festival, the oldest Serbian film festival and also one of the longest living European film festivals. The film, which received the Short Film Jury Award at 2018 Sundance Film Festival, will compete in the 6th LET'S CEE Film Festival in Vienna from April 19th and 22nd.
Since its screening at the last year’s Tribeca Festival, the film INTENT TO DESTROY: DEATH, DENIAL & DEPICTION has been shown at numerous festivals, where it was selected primarily on account of its pressing and engaged theme. The thirteenth documentary film by the director Joe Berlinger, now already a renown documentary filmmaker, examines a very sensitive theme – the Armenian genocide committed by Turkey during the World War One – and poses the question why such a tragic historical event has been censored. Hence, Berlinger decides to expose the origin and the nature of the crime. And, in fact, it goes one step further! He unmasks the conspiracy of the Hollywood clique, which by censoring films in effect censored mass crimes, exploring in that manner a violent history of the Armenian genocide, as well as the last century Turkey’s denial of its involvement. In order to tell the story, Berlinger has compiled a massive documentation concerning the nature of the crime and created an exceptionally relevant high-budget work, despite all political pressure and threats of retaliation.
In the film INTENT TO DESTROY: DEATH, DENIAL & DEPICTION the author becomes a chronicler of the true events taking place in the 1915 genocide, treating them as if they happened yesterday. During those years, the Otoman Turks annihilated more than 1.5 million Armenians. Berlinger - as a chronicler - is equally interested in how historical events and concealed crimes actually affect and burden modern Turkey, as the key figure behind them. During the entire film, the author is focused on all efforts made by Turkey to free itself from the crimes, as well as on revealing how Turkish officials used diplomatic coercion to subvert international academia, sway over advocates and use Turkey’s geographic placement and geopolitical connections to strong-arm America and other key allies into accepting their version of history.
Much more than politics, the film explores a cultural suppression insisted on by Turkey, through which it promoted its version of history. In fact, in many ways Berlinger builds on the 2016 film THE PROMISE, the first completely produced big Hollywood film on the Armenian genocide, successfully made only thanks to the fact that was fully financed by the billionaire Kirk Kerkorian, an Armenian Christian, whose family witnessed the genocide and whose 1980s efforts to make the movie failed, precisely on account of the fact that Turkey found in the USA a strong ally in suppressing the horrible events. The Berlinger’s film reveals other movies that dealt with the genocide and were not able to reach wider audience – which is, actually, the highest achievement of his documentary! Before THE PROMISE, featuring Hollywood stars Christian Bale and Oscar Isaac, there had been a whole series of censored or put-aside films, hidden by Americans. Now, Berlinger uses the filming of THE PROMISE as a background story for one of the versions of the horrendous massacre, through which it explores the fact and all complexities of the genocide itself, as well as many-years long Turkish campaign of its denial.
By combining a cinéma vérité approach, never-before-seen archive material and interviews with former government officials, historians, artists and professor – giving, on the way, a special place to those who claim to the present day that the crime actually never happened – the film places itself into a unique unbiased position from which it follows both the shocking and complex history of the genocide and the Turkish efforts to control the story even in present times. Before our eyes an unrevealed and untold story develops, bringing to light, on the cinema screen, a long-ignored chapter on human cruelty.
It is particularly interesting that a big contemporary production Hollywood film is crossing the path with the history of genocide and the entire network of international repressive efforts to conceal it. This is how INTENT TO DESTROY provides a completely new angle of viewing both the last days of the Ottoman Empire and the history of enormous-scale brutal killings of Armenians from 1915 to 1923, along with all the consequences that follow that event until present days.
BelDocs festival:
During the last decade, Beldocs Festival has become the most loved spring documentary film festival, which gathers the best works of contemporary documentary filmmaking. The most important contemporary documentary films have had its premiere precisely at Beldocs. In this year, again, a documentary film market will be organised, for the second time supported by the European Union through the Programme: Creative Europe, sub-programme Media.
This year, as well, Beldocs is continuing to develop and educate its audience through a quality and premiere programme, offering, in addition to domestic, an international selection, as well as numerous accompanying programmes of events, among which Feel Good Movies and Biographical Documentaries proved to be the most loved. This year, in addition to Sava Centre, Beldocs will be held at Dom Sindikata, Kinoteka’s film theatres at Kosovska and Uzun Mirkova Street, the cinema Fontana and the Museum of Contemporary Art.
In this year, a #europeanfilmchallenge prize competition has been launched, in which the documentary film audience compete for valuable prizes – full paid trip to an A category film festival. After Berlinale, the next round is a trip to Cannes and the second round started on 12 February. The rules are the following: a competitor should see 10 European documentary films on any of possible platforms (VoD, SVoD, cinema, festival, television, etc.), name the film and the platform, place a photograph as a proof and hash tag #europeanfilmchallenge. After certain period of time, the competition organiser will select a winner, who will receive an attractive prize.
This year’s 11 Beldocs Festival takes place from 7 to 14 May.
