After the last successful focus on Spain, Portugal and Latin America, When East Meets West is back to work on the new edition to be held on January 22/24, 2017. After closing a six-year cycle that focused on all Western European countries, the 7th edition of the Trieste based co-production forum will bring some fresh air with a slightly refined format.
Starting from next year WEMW will launch for the very first time a double focus on both one Eastern and one Western European region, bringing together over 350 film professionals from all over Europe and, in particular, from the invited guest countries. The East/West country combination will be based on a mutual interest basis and will aim at offering new insights on the varied European film landscape.
This new formula is based on two complementary ideas: on the one hand, future call for entries will be open to all producers from Europe (plus North and Latin America) who are developing a project with an East/West co-production potential, preferably with one of the selected countries in focus; on the other hand, WEMW will ensure the presence of a large and comprehensive delegation of key decision makers, financiers, producers and film professionals from each spotlight territory so to maximise the co-production, financing and distribution opportunities for all selected projects.
To open the 2017 edition, France will be on the Western side and the Baltic region (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania) on the Eastern one. Which means that from next September, WEMW will be looking for producers from all Eastern Europe with a project suitable for coproduction with France (or Italy) and for producers from all Western Europe keen to co-produce with the Baltics (or Italy). At last, all Italian producers who are developing a documentary or long feature fiction film with a co-production potential with one of these invited guest countries will be eligible to apply as well.
WEMW will keep all the successful past ingredients and, along with the pitching forum for projects in development, it will reinforce Last Stop Trieste and First Cut Lab, two parallel sections for films in the editing phase meant to facilitate their access to the international market. Despite these new changes and challenges, head of WEMW Alessandro Gropplero reassures that “WEMW will continue selecting a blend of award winning directors and emerging talents with the twofold purpose of supporting established filmmakers in their most ambitious follow-ups and scouting for new strong voices”.
WEMW is organized by the FVG Audiovisual Fund and the Trieste Film Festival in collaboration with EAVE, Maia Workshops and the support of Creative Europe/MEDIA Programme, Direzione Centrale per il Cinema – MiBACT and CEI – Central European Initiative.
More information will be soon available at www.wemw.it and on our Facebook page.
