BUCHAREST: Romanian director Tudor Jurgiu is in development on his first feature, The Japanese Dog (Câinele japonez), about an old man, Costache Moldu, who tries to connect with his estranged son after a flood has swept away his wife and house. The script, by Ioan Antoci won the HBO Romania script contest in 2008 and the Krzysztof Kieslowski ScripTeast Award (www.scripteast.pl ) in 2009.

WARSAW: Janusz Zaorski had just ended the first part of principal photography for Polish Sibiriad (Syberiada Polska), about a dark episode in the Polish history - the fate of Poles who were deported by the Soviet NKVD to Siberia in 1940.

WARSAW: Józef and Michal Skolimowscy, in the midst of shooting Ixjana Z piekła rodem (Ixjana Straight from Hell), are working with an all-star cast for their first major feature project.

WARSAW: Wieslaw Saniewski has wrapped shooting of The Winner, one of the most anticipated Polish productions of the year. The Polish-American drama revolves around a talented young pianist, an American of Polish descent who breaks his European tour contract and falls into debt. In his struggle to repay on time he meets an eccentric retired professor of mathematics, who introduces him to the world of horse track gambling.

WARSAW: The production stage has just ended for the first part of the Warsaw 1935 trilogy, an ambitious project of 3D reconstruction of the Polish capital.

WARSAW: Polish company Syrena Films will co-produce and distribute the new film by Patryk Vega, director one of the hit Polish comedy Ciacho. Syrena (www.syrenafilms.com ) has signed a co-production agreement with East Pictures (www.eastpictures.pl ), the executive producer of the title. Shooting is planned for the end of September.

Shooting for Weapon, an action movie directed by Ernie Barbarash, started 9 September at MediaPro Studios (www.mediaprostudios.com ) near Bucharest. The story centers on two famous assassins who put their skills together in order to annihilate the head of a drug cartel.

ISTANBUL: Turkish detective comedy Hunting Season, directed by Yavuz Turgul, is in post-production.

One of the most promising projects supported by the Polish-German Co-Development Fund, Winter Daddy, directed by Johannes Schmid, is the story of 11-year-old Kattaka, who travels from Germany to Poland in search of her biological father. She only knows that he is a Russian sailor named Alexei whose ship moors in Gdynia till New Year's Eve. Kattaka and a boy from her neighborhood set off on the journey in an old Barkas bus driven by her nana, a 70-year-old relocated from East Prussia.

The Bear, the second film from Dan Chişu (Websitestory, www.websitestory.ro), has completed shooting and is now in post-production.

The Turkish comedy Pak Panther, a parody of the Pink Panther films, completed filming on August 26.

Bulgarian animation director, writer, art director and VFX artist Velislava Gospodinova started working on the animated film The Blood Gospodinova is the director of animation film The Lighthouse currently making the rounds of the festival circuit.

Kukuriku: Woman Kingdom, a Turkish sex comedy about relationships in Turkish culture, completed filming on August 6 and has gone into postproduction. The 2.3 million dollar film is produced by Matla Film (www.matlafilm.com).

German director Hermine Huntgeburth is filming a new adaptation of Mark Twain's classical novel The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. The shooting starts on August 30 and will take place in Germany and Romania, where the Romanian countryside will stand in for the Mississippi Valley and Aunt Polly's farm.

Adrian Sitaru (Angling/Pescuit sportiv) starts shooting his second feature, From Love With Best Intentions/ Din dragoste, cu cele mai bune intenţii on September 9. The film is a story about growing up in contemporary Romania, and follows a successful young man confronted with the sudden illness of his mother and the impossibility of controlling everything in his life.

Áron Gauder, director of the internationally successful feature animation, Nyócker (The District) is in an advanced phase of his new project, a 3D animation with a complex visual world, Egill, the Last Pagan.