- THE INDIAN BRIDE by Hans Petter Moland, co-producers: EAVE 2003 graduate Helen Ahlsson and EAVE 1995 graduate Sigve Endresen is in pre-production. The screen adaptation of Karin Fossum's bestseller "Elskede Poona" about a long-time bachelor who meets and marries an Indian beauty, who is soon brutally murdered, is produced by Motlys AS and Tre Vänner Production. The film with a budget of 4-5 m Euro will be shot on locations in India and Norway.
- FIFTH BOAT by Iveta Grófová, producer: EAVE 2007 graduate Jicí Konecný is in development. The book tells the story of 11-year-old Jarka, who desperately misses motherly love and family. Rather than focusing on the bleak situation or depressive spaces, the story is told through the child’s play of the main protagonist in an abandoned garden. Jarka ends up stealing two toddlers whose mother has left them, and she brings them to her favourite garden, where she plays ‘family’ with her friend Kristián. Principal photography is scheduled for summer 2015.
- LOUDER THAN BOMBS by Joachim Trier, executive producer: EAVE 1995 graduate Sigve Endresen, co-produced by ARTE now received €1.9 million backing from the Norwegian Film Institute. Scripted by Eskil Vogt, the €7.5 million production stars Isabelle Huppert, Gabriel Byrne and US actor Jesse Eisenberg in the story of a famous woman war photographer, Laura, who is killed in a car accident. Shooting is due to start in September in New York.
The Hubert Bals Fund has selected eleven projects to receive contributions for script and project development in its 2014 spring selection round. Among them:
- DÉGRAD by Interchange 2013 graduates Ahmad Abu Nasser and Mohammed Abunasser
- THE WOUND by John Trengove, producer EAVE 2014 participant Elias Ribeiro.
- TARZAN’S TESTICLES by Alexandru Solomon, producer: EAVE 2007 graduate & Romanian National Coordinator Ada Solomon and EAVE 2011 graduate Cedric Bonin is set to start shooting this summer after having received a production grant of 142,553 EUR. Solomon began developing Tarzan's Testicles in 2012. Shooting was delayed due to lack of funding from the Romanian side. With the budget now reduced to 350,000 EUR, the project has attracted an international coproducer, Seppia. The project also benefitted from a MEDIA development grant. In his feature documentary, Solomon will move to the Abkhazian Scientific Research Institute of Experimental Pathology and Therapy, established in 1927, a renowned primatology center during the Communist era. His aim is to investigate the relationship between humans and monkeys many years after the Soviet Union’s collapse, in a “country that tries to reinvent itself" (as Abkhazia is doing today) where “the thin line between humanity and animality has been crossed during a savage civil war.”
