BUCHAREST: Romanian director Alexandru Belc's debut feature Metronom has been selected for Cannes Un Certian Regard. The film is a teenage love story set in Romania of the 70s, when the music from Radio Free Europe was providing some kind of freedom for the youth caught up in a progressively oppressive regime. The film is a Romanian/French coproduction, produced by Catalin Mitulescu through Strada Film International in coproduction with France’s Midralgar and Romania’s Chainsaw Europe.

BUCHAREST: The Romanian projects Human Violins and Tangible Utopias, directed by Fulbright alumna Ioana Mischie and produced by Storyscapes, are among the first VR projects to receive a Meta grant from Women in Immersive Technologies, at the first edition of the Immersive Creators Catalyst programme.

PRAGUE: Czech animator and director Vlasta Pospíšilová, the last of Jiří Trnka's famous animators' guard, has died at the age of 87.

PARIS: New films by Jerzy Skolimowski and Cristian Mungiu have been selected for the Competition of the 75th Cannes Film Festival (17-28 May 2022), while films by Agnieszka Smoczyńska and Alexandru Belc are in Un Certain Regard. Czech and Croatian minority coproduction Butterfly Vision by Maksym Nakonechnyi was also selected in Un Certain Regard.

BUCHAREST: Cristian Mungiu’s new feature film R.M.N., selected for Cannes’s Competition 2022, questions the profound motivations of human behaviour in the face of reality and how we relate to a disquieting future. The Dardenne brothers are among the coproducers.

TBILISI: The Georgian National Film Center (GNFC) has launched the educational platform History-Film-History, which aims at facilitating the study of the history of the art form.

RIGA: The Grand Prix of the 26th Riga International Short Film Festival 2ANNAS went to the Ukrainian film Dad's Sneakers directed by Olha Zhurba.

ŽILINA: The 15th edition of the Fest Anča International Animation Festival has announced its selection of animated short films. The only Slovak multimedia festival focusing on animated films for a mature audience will take place this year from 29 June to 3 July.

BRATISLAVA: Slovak director Juraj Janiš has wrapped production on his short film Gritty Eyes, a coproduction between Slovakia and the Czech Republic. The film is backed by film funds from both countries.

WARSAW: The 6th edition of the international coproduction forum Kids Kino Industry, has launched its call for applications. The deadline is 31 May 2022.