Forum Catalogue 2018

IDFA Forum Catalogue

14-25 nov 2018

International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam

The IDFA Forum 2018

Colophon IDFA Board Chairman – Derk Sauer Treasurer – Anton Kramer Members – Bessel Kok, Marischka Leenaers, Joumana El Zein Khoury

Organization Artistic Director – Orwa Nyrabia Festival Director – Cees van ’t Hullenaar Head of IDFA Industry – Adriek van Nieuwenhuijzen Head of Production & IT – Dirk Blikkendaal Managing Director IDFA Bertha Fund – Isabel Arrate Fernandez Docs for Sale & Guest Services Coordinator – Laurien ten Houten Senior Programmers – Joost Daamen, Laura van Halsema, Raul Niño Zambrano, Martijn te Pas Head of Education – Meike Statema Head of New Media│IDFA DocLab – Caspar Sonnen Head of Marketing & Communication – Martine van Duijn Head of Development – Martijn van Dijk IDFA Forum Staff Adriek van Nieuwenhuyzen – Head of IDFA Industry Yorinde Segal – IDFA Forum Coordinator Jenni Tuovinen – IDFA Industry Producer Veerle Egbers – IDFA Forum Producer Anneleen Naudts – IDFA Forum Producer Lara Sitruk – IDFA Forum Producer

IDFA Industry Office Industry Office & Talks Coordinator – Stien Meesters Editor DocTalks – Jelte Zonneveld Editor Industry Talks – Iwana Chronis Producer Industry Office – Nadine Maaraba

The IDFA Forum Catalogue Editing and Production – Veerle Egbers, Anneleen Naudts Lay-out – Gerald Zevenboom Cover Design – Sjoukje van Gool Print Management – Drukkerij Damen, Werkendam

Thank you!

Moderators Axel Arnö, Rudy Buttignol, Ingrid Kopp, Karolina Lidin, Myriam Sassine, Ove Rishøj Jensen Consultants Isabel Arrate Fernandez, Cecilie Bolvinkel, Martichka Bozhilova, Brenda Coughlin, Anja Dziersk, Yasmin Elayat, Claudia Iudica, Ove Rishøj Jensen, Milton Tabbot Matchmakers Christina Jul Gregerson, Cleo Veger, Daan Vermeulen IDFA Forum One-on-One Desk Nicole Akkermans, Rudolf Katz IDFA Forum Info Desk Evelien Frenkel, Alexandra Sint Nicolaas Pitch Trainers Mikael Opstrup, Paul Pauwels Crossmedia Pitch Trainer Louis-Richard Tremblay Pitch Reporters Veerle Boekestijn, Nikki Habraken Technicians Kees Fopma, Patrick Janssens, Wim Timmermans The pre-selection and final selection committee Salma Abdalla, Isabel Arrate Fernandez, Jorge Caballero, Vesna Cudic, Kristen Fitzpatrick, Luis González Zaffaroni, Serge Gordey, Klara Grunning, Ingrid Kopp, Marianne Levy-Leblond, Cecilia Lidin, Erkko Lyytinen, Joan Morselt, Adriek van Nieuwenhuyzen, Mikael Opstrup, Christian Popp, Jenny Raskin, Jessica Raspe, Yorinde Segal, Mélanie Simon-Franza, Robin Smith, Caspar Sonnen, Meike Statema, Janine Steel, Julianna Ugrin, Harm van de Ven, Daan Vermeulen © IDFA, 2018

International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam Frederiksplein 52 1017 XN Amsterdam The Netherlands T: +31 20 6273329 www.idfa.nl info@idfa.nl

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4 5 6 7 8 9 11 12 14 16 17 17 18

Meet the Forum Team Welcome to IDFA Forum!

General Information Services & Practical Information Daily Program Social Events Forum projects included in IDFA 2018 Daily Program Consultants Pitch Moderators EDN Pitch trainers Crossmedia Pitch trainer Matchmakers

Central Pitch

Table of Contents

Round Table Pitch | Crossmedia

22

Burden of Proof

113

The Almanac

24

Democrats 2 (working title)

116

The Longest Goodbye

26

he Happy Worker – Or How Bullshit T Took over the Workplace

119

Scheherazade Now

122

Wonder Women

Markay Media

Final Cut for Real Yellow Film & TV

Submarine Channel

Pagoda Productions, Motherlode Productions Lighthouse Reports

29

Iraq’s Invisible Beauty

32

Lash

35

Lost Childhood

125

Atomfa

38

Misha’s Story

128

Borno

41

Return to Raqqa

131

nerd_funk

44

The Revisited

47

The Rise and Curse of Lukas Graham

Las Belgas

Individual Meetings Project | Crossmedia

Gum Films

Met Film Production, Bright Yellow Films, Arts Alliance Productions Zeta Audiovisual, Minimal Films Oskouei Films Sonntag Film

Sisters on Track

53

Untitled Cuba Project

56

Sant & Usant

Hard Working Movies

The Yes Men Build a Wall

Gebrueder Beetz Filmproduktion Berlin GmbH & Co. KG

Central Pitch | Crossmedia

137

Conductivity

140

I’m in Love with Pippa Bacca

143

ONE, with Steve McCurry

Prison X

65

Shadow Game

Prospektor

Round Table Pitch

Dying To Divorce Ltc, Freak Films, Tigerlily Productions

160

A Gentrification Program

Lost & Found Film Studio, Ten Thousand Images, Jean Tsien

163

The Half Truths

Go Gigi Go Productions

166

Reunited

Magneto

169

When Tomatoes Met Wagner

80

The Hunt

83

Lords of Water

86

Oh Father, I Don’t Want to Hate You (working title)

89

The Other Half

92

The Platform

95

Rebel Hearts

98

School Shooters (working title)

101

Senseless

104

Stop Filming Us!

107

The Valley

110

The Way We Were

Rough Cut Project

Forget Me Not

Hidden Letters

Medieoperatørene as

157

77

Kids Cup

Memory Films

Dying to Divorce

Neufilm GmbH, expanding focus GmbH

By the Name of Tania

74

149

abinets of Wonder (WT) - Created C with, for and by Children

154

Crows are White

Polar Star Films S.L.

Invento Films

71

NACNE S.a.s.

Advocate (working title)

Children of Las Brisas

Tuffi Films

152

68

Archer’s Mark

Round Table Pitch | Youth

62

Pinches Gringos, United Notions Film LLC, UNF Pty Ltd, Caorosban

Ali Eslami

Being A Human Person

146

Ifeatu Nnaobi

134

Out4TheKast Temps Noir

Tiny City

Round Table Pitch | Arts & Culture

59

Red Corner

SeeSaw Pictures

50

Home Made Docs Clin d’Oeil films

Final Cut for Real

Pieter van Huystee Film Manjusha Films

Moving Documentary

Anemon Productions, Stefi & Lynx productions

BALDR Film

Toprak Film, COIN FILM GmbH Artefact Production Rebel Hearts LLC Final Cut for Real

Danish Documentary Production, Medalia Productions Doxy Films

Miramonte Film

Flare Film GmbH

IDFA Forum catalogue 2018

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Meet the Forum Team

Adriek van Nieuwenhuyzen

Yorinde Segal

Jenni Tuovinen

Veerle Egbers

Anneleen Naudts

Lara Sitruk

Rudolf Katz

Nicole Akkermans

Evelien Frenkel

Alexandra Sint Nicolaas

Head of Industry Office

Industry Producer

One-on-One Desk

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Forum Coordinator

Forum Producer

One-on-One Desk

Forum Producer

Info Desk

Forum Producer

Info Desk

Welcome to IDFA Forum!

IDFA 2018 is the first edition for our new Artistic Director Orwa Nyrabia, and we’re proud to present the festival program that came about under his leadership. It’s an edition with some new program components: both Luminous and Frontlight do justice to the pluriform representation of society by featuring filmmakers from all over the world.

Meanwhile, the familiar competition programs, which feature the most urgent and cinematic premieres of the year, hold films from all over the world. The Industry Program tackles contemporary issues and the future of the documentary genre with its talks and sessions, and of course the opportunity to listen to filmmakers speak about their work in the Doc Talks and Filmmaker Talks.

This year’s Forum selection contains 51 projects.

IDFA not only stands for gender parity, but also very emphatically strives for diversity in all its forms, and the Forum selection naturally reflects this ambition.

The projects hail from 24 different countries, including projects from filmmaker teams from Iran, India, China, Venezuela and Turkey. The projects deal with a great variety of subjects, present original ways of storytelling, and offer promising cinematic approaches to depicting reality.

As part of IDFA’s over-arching effort to prioritize inclusion, in gender, in geographical coverage and in artistic styles, we did encounter some difficulties, but we will not despair, we will keep on developing our approach to this matter year after year. It is clearer every year, that hybrid, genre-bending and unformatted films, and also film from the South, are becoming more and more successful on the international stage, winning major awards and getting released, broadcast and streamed to great reception. However, we also see that such films, when still in the making, are rarely well-packaged for the European and North American market standards. This is a two-way challenge: First, from our mediatory position in the industry, we see a need for revisiting our openness towards risk, to make sure we are looking for great projects, not only great pitches; and second, we see a necessity of supporting and empowering creative producers, globally, but especially in the South.

When it comes to bringing a film project to fruition, the power and value of creative producers cannot be sufficiently emphasized. A producer supports the filmmaker and gives him or her the freedom to research the visual language of the film. His or her knowledge of the market will help to find the financial means, and if needed, the co-producers to partner with. IDFA is an ardent advocate of international co-productions. However, we sometimes see co-productions suffer from unclear agreements or even unbalanced power relationships between producers. This issue will be addressed in the Industry Talk “Code of Conduct” which offers insights into a more ethical co-production approach.

The role of producers is getting more complex with the rapid changing landscape, and it’s all the more worrisome that producers around the world can barely keep their heads above water because of the constant decrease of funding. In addition to filmmakers, they’re necessary for a vital and innovative documentary industry.

The shrinking budgets from the public sector are unfortunately not the only threat. The traditional “release windows” system is long gone, and with this the financing structure has also become a lot more uncertain. These technology-driven changes require solutions, to ensure that filmmakers and producers can sustain themselves and continue to provide the world with great documentaries. Our complex and fragmented society needs pluriform, commercialfree media, and this includes documentary filmmakers’ reflection on reality. This is a crucial addition to the media supply. It’s clear that financial support from the public domain is necessary for a rich and diverse media offering. This is why it’s so hard to understand that there’s actually a decrease in public funding in many counties.

This year, the festival selection features 13 finished former Forum pitches, some of which have already been a hit at other festivals, and a number of which are premiering at IDFA. I want to thank the financiers of these films for their trust in these filmmakers and producers, and I wish the filmmakers a great festival experience.

I would also like to thank the selection committees.

They’ve read and viewed more than 750 projects, and they’ve experienced that there are beautiful stories all over the world. I thank you for the wisdom and knowledge with which you made your selection.

The 51 Forum projects deserve to be realized and to be seen by a large audience, whether as a series for the web, a VR project or a linear documentary.

They will stir up emotions, surprise, or offer new insights. The selection is varied in subjects and style, and it includes a nice representation of both young filmmakers and documentary masters. All of the film plans display an inquisitive view of the world, and there’s certainly something for everyone.

But before the films can reach audiences, filmmakers must gain the trust of financiers, and they have to find partners to co-produce and distribute. I sincerely hope that IDFA Forum can contribute to finding partners and the realization of these film plans.

I wish you a fantastic Forum and Festival!

IDFA Forum catalogue 2018

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General Information General Information IDFA Forum, our international cofinancing and co-production market, is one of Europe’s most important breeding grounds for new documentary projects, and an essential meeting place for filmmakers, independent documentary producers, television commissioning editors, documentary funders and other stakeholders. This 26th edition of the IDFA Forum will take place from November 18 to 21, 2018. Over the course of these four days, 51 projects will be presented to a group of commissioning editors and other decision makers from around the world.

Crossmedia projects Three Crossmedia projects will be presented in the Central Pitch set up.

As part of the Round Table pitches, we have selected four Crossmedia projects and three more projects in development phase will participate in the Forum oneon-one meetings. All these projects show how various multimedia techniques and alternative distribution methods can strengthen the content of projects and reach beyond the limits of traditional documentary filmmaking.

The IDFA Forum provides a platform for projects in various stages of development, funding and offers a variety of (public) pitch setups.

Arts & Culture projects It has become a Forum tradition to present Arts & Culture projects suitable for the arts slots of various broadcasters at IDFA. This year we have selected five projects in this category.

We will start off this year’s edition with the IDFA Forum kickoff drinks hosted by Documentary Producers Netherlands, on Sunday November 18 from 21.00 to 22.30 at Het Groene Paleis.

We are very pleased to welcome our Forum moderators Axel Arnö, Rudy Buttignol, Ingrid Kopp, Karolina Lidin, Ove Rishøj Jensen and Myriam Sassine. You will find their profiles on page 16.

Pitches 16 producer/director teams will pitch in the main hall on Monday and Tuesday morning. Some of the producers already have a commissioning editor or other funding partner on board, while others have no commitments yet. The teams take turns pitching their newest projects to a large audience of broadcasters and decision makers from around the world.

25 projects in all stages of production and different genres/categories will be pitched in the more intimate setting of a Round Table, to a smaller group of commissioning editors and decision makers.

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■■ T he Crossmedia Forum and IDFA DocLab are supported by the Netherlands Film Fund

Documentaries for Children The IDFA Forum also presents a pitch showcasing promising documentary projects aimed for audiences aged between 9–12 years. This year, two projects are presented as part of this pitch – Kids Cup, directed by Line Hatland and produced by Ingvil Giske and Mari Monrad Vistven (page 149), and Cabinets of Wonder (WT) – Created with, for and by Children – a Crossmedia project directed

by Susanne Kim and produced by Holm Taddiken and Alexander Herrmann (page 146).

This pitch on Wednesday morning November 21 kicks off a full day of industry program at the Compagnietheater, looking to stimulate international development and collaboration within the field of children’s documentaries. The day will feature for instance presentations of two children’s documentary series in production, followed by a discussion looking into what the possibilities are for this format, and whether serialized

storytelling could have a greater role in the future. The day also includes the public pitch for the new Dok Junior collaboration between The Netherlands Film Fund, HUMAN, Cinekid and IDFA, where two Dutch teams will present their ideas for a long-form kids documentary to a panel of children, and to attending industry professionals.

Rough Cut Project The Rough Cut Project section is a category for documentary projects in the last stages of production. For this category, seven projects were selected.

The Forum and Docs for Sale are partnering in this category which will include a secured video presentation online on the IDFA website and prearranged individual meetings at the Forum venue. On Sunday November 18, these projects will showcase their films in Tuschinski 4.

One-on-One Meetings Parallel to the Round Table sessions, we are holding one-on-one meetings between the pitching teams and various commissioning editors and other decision makers. The afternoons of the first two days and the entire third day of the IDFA Forum are reserved for approximately 1000 prearranged one-on-one meetings.

The Crossmedia projects also have oneon-one meetings on Tuesday morning.

Independent Filmmaker Project Since three years IDFA Forum has a partnership with Independent Filmmaker Project in New York. This year three projects that are presenting at IDFA were also part of IFP Week: Burden of Proof (page 22), The Hunt (page 80) and Misha’s Story (page 38).

For a detailed overview of the IDFA Forum program see the schedule on page 12.

Services & Practical Information IDFA FORUM SERVICES

Services

The IDFA Forum Information Desk The IDFA Forum Information Desk operates as a reception and information desk. During the three Forum days, the desk will be open to assist delegates and provide them with information. The IDFA Forum Information Desk also offers additional services, including pitch reports, contact with matchmakers, luggage depot and general festival information.

Consultancies Forum delegates can book meetings with a range of experts who offer specific advice on all aspects of the documentary business, such as distribution and sales, marketing and outreach, etc. The meetings can be booked at the Industry Office. We highly recommend that you take this opportunity to pick the brains of these international experts. You can find their profiles on page 14.

■■ O pen during IDFA Forum hours (see daily program) | Compagnietheater (ground floor)

■■ Monday, November 19 & Tuesday, November 20 | 14.45-18.00 | Wednesday, November 21 | 10.0017.00| NH Carlton Hotel-1st floor

Pitch Reports During your pitch, our pitch reporters will keep a record of the comments from decision makers. The day after your pitch, you can pick up your Pitch Report at the IDFA Forum Information Desk.

Matchmakers In addition to the Forum staff, there are three matchmakers on hand to provide assistance for all participants. This year’s matchmakers are Christina Jul Gregersen, Cleo Veger and Daan Vermeulen. Their role is to facilitate meetings between participants, and they can be contacted through the Forum Information Desk. You can find their profiles on page 18.

The IDFA Forum One-on-One Desk The IDFA Forum One-on-One Desk operates as a booking desk for the one-on-one meetings for the selected projects. Pitch teams and decision makers can request meetings or pick up their most recent schedule.

■■ O pen during IDFA Forum hours (see daily schedule) | Compagnietheater (first floor)

Moderator’s Hat A unique chance for one observer to pitch his or her project in the Central Pitch!

Those who wish to be eligible should put their business card in the Moderator’s Hat. During the Central Pitch sessions on Monday, a business card is drawn and the winner gets the opportunity to prepare and present a pitch the next day.

Dutch Clog All Forum delegates can vote during the Forum for their favorite pitch. The price is the Dutch Clog itself which will include nice perks. The best pitch prize will be announced during the Forum closing drinks.

Drinks and food at Compagnietheater Coffee, tea and cold beverages are free at Compagnietheater, except during lunch hours. During lunch hours, drinks, food and alcoholic beverages are available at the café at your own expense. Please note: cards only, no cash!

Lunch at Zuiderkerk The venue for our 3 course complimentary vegetarian lunch is the Zuiderkerk, which is the church on the other side of the canal when you stand in front of the Forum venue (Zuiderkerkhof 72).

Internet Access Wi-Fi is available throughout the building.

Access codes are available at the Information Desk and displayed near the bar (ground floor & first floor).

Guest Desk and Guest Box Office Here, accredited guests can pick up their festival pass, obtain tickets and get general information about the festival.

■■ ■■ ■■ ■■

November 13, 12.00-21.00 – Tulip November 14-22, 9.00-21.00 – Tulip November 23-24, 9.00-21.00 – E-floor November 25, 10.00-14.00 – E-floor

Industry Desk At the Industry Desk, we can help you with any questions regarding our program for professionals. We guide you through the industry side of the festival, connect you with other professionals in various disciplines, and keep you informed about our array of talks, meetings and sessions.

Members of the press can also request a room to conduct interviews.

■■ November 15-21, 9.30-13.00 & 14.00-18.00

Industry workspace A convenient and comfortable open space with a Wi-Fi connection for all accredited guests to work individually and communally.

■■ November 15-25, 9.00-18.00 | NH Carlton Hotel, E-floor

Meeting Room with screening facilities Accredited guests have the opportunity to reserve a meeting/screening room for groups of up to 10 people. Reservations can be made in advance by emailing nadinemaaraba@idfa.nl and during the festival at the Industry Desk.

■■ November 15-21, 09.30-18.00

Industry Office

The Industry Office offers an extensive program of services, sessions, talks and consultancies to inspire our professional guests and to keep them up-to-date on the latest developments in the documentary industry. The Industry Office is open to all pass-holders to meet up, network and do business.

Location NH Carlton Hotel (opposite Pathé De Munt cinema) Vijzelstraat 4 1017 HK Amsterdam E-floor and 1st floor

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Industry Program Talks and Sessions Various types of talks and sessions bring you up to speed on the latest developments in the industry. The Industry Sessions and Industry Talks at De Brakke Grond cover a broad range of topics. The newly introduced Filmmaker Talks put renowned filmmakers in the spotlight with hour-long conversations and master classes about their work.

Alongside the talks IDFA is organizing, there are a number of Industry Talks and Industry Sessions hosted by partner organizations. Detailed information and locations are available on idfa.nl.

■■ Industry Sessions: November 16-21 ■■ Industry Talks: November 17-21 ■■ Filmmaker Talks: November 15-21

Industry Meetups The Industry Office offers two types of consultancies: pre-registered one-onone meetings with experts in a specific field, and walk-in consultancies offering general advice. Detailed information and availability for all consultants is available at the Industry Desk and idfa.nl.

Pre-registered Consultancies Renowned industry experts are on hand for consultancies focusing on a different subject every day, such as handing film rights, impact producing, distribution and much more. Book your one-on-one meeting a day in advance at the Industry Desk.

■■ N ovember 16-21, 10.00-18.00 | NH Carlton Hotel, E-floor

Walk-in Consultancies Documentary experts Jannie Langbroek, Marijke Rawie and Esther van Driesum are on hand for daily walk-in consultancies, answering questions about various aspects of the documentary industry, such as possible co-production partners, funding possibilities, finding a sales agent or pitching a project.

■■ N ovember 15-21, 10.00-17.00 | NH Carlton Hotel, E-floor

Meet the Experts Various experts share their knowledge with small groups of participants in hourlong sessions guided by a moderator, offering first-hand insight into different subjects and creating networking opportunities. Accredited guests can register for these sessions one day in advance at the Industry Desk.

Press & Industry Screenings Films from the IDFA Competition for Feature-Length Documentary, IDFA Competition for First Appearance and the IDFA Competition for Dutch Documentary are screened during Press & Industry Screenings.

You don’t need a ticket to attend these screenings, but you will be required to present your IDFA Pass at the door. Seating is on a firstcome, first-served basis. The Press & Industry Screenings include several documentaries that were pitched at previous editions of the IDFA Forum. The complete program can be found on our website, in the program guide and the IDFA App. ■■ N ovember 16-19 | Pathé Tuschinski and Pathé De Munt

■■ N ovember 18-21, 13.30-14.30 | NH Carlton Hotel, 1st floor (Caruso Room)

Daily Program IDFA Forum

main location: Compagnietheater

SUNDAY Nov. 18

MONDAY Nov. 19

08.30-09.15

Producers’ Breakfast

11.30-17.40 21.00-22.30

Rough Cut Screenings location: Tuschinski 4

IDFA Forum kickoff drinks location: Het Groene Paleis

09.30-12.45

14.45-18.00

Central Pitches

12.45-14.45

Lunch

Central Pitches Crossmedia location: Zuiderkerk

TUESDAY Nov. 20

Central Pitches

Round Table pitches Round Table pitches Crossmedia One-on-One Meetings

Round Table pitches

Crossmedia One-On-One Meetings

Round Table pitches Arts & Culture One-on-One Meetings

WEDNESDAY Nov. 21

One-on-One Meetings (until 17.00)

Round Table pitches Youth One-on-One Meetings

DAILY

Industry Talks at De Brakke Grond (15.00-16.30)

Guests Meet Guests at Zuiderkerk (18.00)

Consultancies for observers at NH Carlton Hotel, Industry office (14.45-18.00, Wed. 10.00-17.00)

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Social Events

IDFA Forum kickoff drinks

Celebrating the future of documentary storytelling. The IDFA Forum is kicking off this year’s edition with an informal meetand-greet.

■■ November 18, 21.00-22.30 | Het Groene Paleis (Rokin 65) ■■ By invitation only

The Forum kickoff drinks is supported

by Documentary Producers Netherlands (DPN).

Documentary Producers Netherlands is the association of Dutch documentary producers. We represent the majority of Dutch documentary producers and promote their common interests. The Dutch film industry has a strong tradition in documentaries and is known for its open attitude towards international coproduction and distribution between Dutch documentary producers and international partners.

IDFA Forum Lunches

A welcome break from the busy pitch schedule, the daily lunches offer an informal setting to meet, greet, and eat.

years ago, we launched ChileDoc Conecta, the first documentary industry meeting in Santiago de Chile.

■■ November 19-21, 12.45-14.45 | Zuiderkerk

■■ Chiledoc.cl

he IDFA Forum Lunch on Nov 19 is T supported by Chicken & Egg Pictures.

To honor the 2018 Breakthrough Filmmaker Awardees, Chicken & Egg Pictures cordially invites you to join the Forum Lunch. Chicken & Egg Pictures is a US-based media organization that supports women nonfiction filmmakers whose artful and innovative storytelling catalyzes social change. We empower women directors from a range of diverse backgrounds and experiences to realize their artistic goals and visions, build sustainable careers, and achieve parity in all areas of the film industry.

■■ chickeneggpics.org

■■ Documentaireproducenten.nl

IDFA Forum Producers’ Breakfasts

Providing an informal setting for producers to meet. Pre-arranged table settings ensure they will be meeting colleagues with whom they would like to establish a relationship.

■■ November 19-21, 8.30-9.15 | Compagnietheater – Foyer Upstairs ■■ Forum pass-holders only, by pre-arranged enrolment. Registration in advance is required.

The Forum Producers’ Breakfasts are supported by KCA, RAPA, and DMZDocs Documentary filmmakers from various backgrounds in Korea will be attending IDFA and presenting their projects on Korean Pitching Day. Korean Pitching Day is programmed with the support of Korea Communication Agency, Korea Radio Promotion Association, and DMZ Docs Fund. Want to meet Korean filmmakers?

Sign up for the Producers’ Breakfasts!

■■ kca.kr | rapa.or.kr | dmzdocs.com

The IDFA Forum Lunch on Nov 20 is supported by Film Center Serbia.

Film Center Serbia (FCS), an institution under the Ministry of Culture, was established with the aim of strategically developing Serbian PINK the C76 M38 / BLACK K17 film industry. FCS creatively stimulates and administers financial support to Serbian cinema, through competitions for screenplay, project development, film production, and minority co-productions—equally for fiction, documentary, and animated films.

In partnership with the Serbian national broadcaster (RTS), FCS helped set up the first regular weekly slots dedicated to independently produced domestic and international documentaries.

■■ Fcs.rs

Forum Closing Drinks

Say farewell to your Forum friends and find out who wins the Dutch Clog Award for Best Cental Pitch and the Round Table pitch.

■■ November 21, 17.00-17.45 | Compagnietheater

The IDFA Forum Closing Drinks is hosted

by Uruguay Audiovisual, the National Film Institute of Uruguay - ICAU and DocMontevideo.

Uruguay Audiovisual wants to encourage you to discover the new talents, services and contents that are emerging from Uruguay. Meet the Uruguayan delegation at IDFA and come to visit us next July during DocMontevideo. Enjoy your drinks!

■■ Icau.mec.gub.uy | docmontevideo.com

Docs for Sale Happy Hour

The daily cocktail hour at Docs for Sale.

■■ November 16-20 | 17.00-18.00 | Arti et Amicitiae (Rokin 112) ■■ For Docs for Sale and IDFA Forum pass-holders

Guests Meet Guests

The daily cocktail hour of IDFA and its markets where all guests have the opportunity to meet up.

■■ November 15-16 | 18.00-19.30 | Café De Jaren (Nieuwe Doelenstraat 20-22) ■■ November 18-21 | 18.00-19.30 | Zuiderkerk (Zuiderkerkhof 72) ■■ For all pass-holders

The IDFA Forum Lunch on Nov 21 is supported by ChileDoc. ChileDoc is an organization launched in 2010 with the aim of helping producers get into the international market to find partners for their projects and films. Our work includes training for producers, networking, research, news, and distribution. Miradoc is a distribution program that since 2013 theatrically distributes 8 local films in a network of more than 20 small venues in 17 cities in Chile. In recent years, our documentaries have been strengthened; new projects and new gazes emerge strongly. Two

VENUES

IDFA Forum Compagnietheater - Kloveniersburgwal 50 Zuiderkerk - Zuiderkerkhof 72 Het Groene Paleis - Rokin 65 IDFA Festival Café Café De Jaren - Nieuwe Doelenstraat 20-22 Industry Locations and Cinemas NH Carlton - Vijzelstraat 4 Arti et Amicitiae - Rokin 112 Pathé Tuschinski - Reguliersbreestraat 26 Pathé De Munt - Vijzelstraat 15 De Brakke Grond - Nes 45 ■■ Festival Venues map on inside cover.

IDFA Forum catalogue 2018

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NEW GENERATION OF EUROPEAN DOCUMENTARY FILM PRODUCERS Lorenzo Cioffi Italy

Anamarie Antoci Romania

Anna Herza Tydlitátová Czech Republic

Kristof Bilsen Belgium

Wanda Adamík Hrycová Slovakia

Laura Collado Spain

Elin Kamlert Sweden Stanislaw Zaborowski Poland

Zoran Galić Bosnia & Herzegovina

Katja Lenarčič Slovenia

Viki Réka Kiss Hungary

Isabel Orellana Chile

David Lindner Leporda Germany

Victoria Thomas UK

Renata Sancho Portugal

Giedrė Žickytė Lithuania

Lelde Prüse Latvia

Organized & Curated by: Ji.hlava International Documentary Film Festival www.emergingproducers.com Georg Tiller Austria

EMERGING 2019 PRODUCERS 10 IDFA Forum catalogue 2018

Former IDFA Forum projects

included in the selection of IDFA 2018 ■■ Best of Fests

■■ Best of Fests

■■ Best of Fests

#Female Pleasure

Heartbound

Theatre of War

(Switzerland, Germany)

(Denmark, The Netherlands, Sweden)

(Argentina, Spain, Germany)

Director Barbara Miller

Director Janus Metz, Sine Plambech

Director Lola Arias

Producer Mons Veneris Films GmbH: Philip

Producer Magic Hour Films: Lise Lense-Møller

Producer Gema Films: Gema Juarez-Allen,

Delaquis,

Co-producer BALDR Film, Vilda Bomben Film AB.,

Alejandra Grinschpun

Das Kollektiv fur audiovisuelle Werke GmbH

Metz Film

Co-producer BWP, Sutor Kolonko, Sake Argentina,

Co-producer Indi Film GmbH

Involved TV Channel Danish Broadcasting

Involved TV Channel SWR/ARTE

Involved TV Channel SRF, RTS, RSI, ARTE G.E.I.E

Corporation, VPRO, SVT

Supported by Idfa Bertha Funds, World Cinema

Supported by Swiss Federal Office of Culture

Supported by Danish Film Institute, Swedish Film

Fund, INCAA

FOC, Eurimages, Zurich Film Fond, MFG Film

Institute, The Netherlands Film Fund, Eurimage, The

World Sales Lucero Garzón, Luz Verde Films

Fund Baden-Württemberg, Cultural Foundation

Netherlands Film Production Incentive, Nordic Film

Pitched in 2016

Suissimage

& TV Fond

World Sales CAT&Docs

World Sales Autlook Filmsales

Pitched in 2015

Pitched in 2014

■■ Frontlight

■■ IDFA Competition for Feature-Length Documentary & Focus Program Space

Director Sahra Mani

Los Reyes

Levigne; Afghanistan Doc House, Sahra Mani;

■■ Best of Fests

A Thousand Girls Like Me (Afghanistan, France)

Bellingcat - Truth in a Post-Truth World

Producer Les Films du Tambour de Soie, Nicole

(The Netherlands)

(Chile, Germany)

Marmitafilms, Martine Vidalenc; First Hand Films,

Director Hans Pool

Director Bettina Perut, Iván Osnovikoff

Esther van Messel and Gitte Hansen

Producer Submarine: Femke Wolting, Bruno Felix

Producer Perut + Osnovikoff: Maite Alberdi

Involved TV Channel RTS - Al Jazeera

Involved TV Channel VPRO

Co-producer Dirk Manthey Film: Dirk Manthey

Supported by Idfa Bertha Fund Classic and Europe,

Supported by NPO Fund, Netherlands Production

Supported by CORFO (Chile), Ministerio de la

Fork Films, Sundance Institute Documentary Film

Incentive, CoBO, DocSociety

Cultura (Chile), IDFA Bertha Fund Europe, TFI

Program, Open Society Foundation - JustFilms |

Pitched in 2016

Tribeca Film Institute

Ford Foundation, La Région Provence-Alpes-Côte

World Sales CAT&Docs

d’Azur (CNC), La Région Nouvelle-Aquitaine (CNC)

■■ Luminous

Pitched in 2015

World Sales First Hand Films

(Italy)

■■ Luminous

Butterfly

Pitched in 2016

Director Alessandro Cassigoli, Casey Kauffman

Marceline. A Woman. A Century

Producer Indyca: Michele Fornasero

(France, The Netherlands)

The Trial of Ratko Mladić

Co-producer RAI Cinema

Director Cordelia Dvorák

(United Kingdom, Norway)

Supported by Mibac, Media Creative Europe,

Producer Elda Productions: Christilla Huillard Kann,

Director Henry Singer, Rob Miller

Regione Campania e Campania Film Commission,

Corinne Delpech

Producer Sandpaper Films: Rob Miller, Henry

Piemonte Doc Film fund, Toscana Film Commission

Associate producer Windmill Film BV: Annemiek

Singer

Pitched in 2016

van der Hell

Co-producer Peggy Pictures, Sant & Usant

Involved TV Channel France 3, AVROTROS, TV5

Involved TV Channel BBC, WDR, VPRO, PBS, SVT,

Monde, SVT, SRF, TSR, Radio Canada et Ici RDI, AB

NRK, Yes Docu, RTS, DR

thématiques

Supported by Sundance, Bertha Doc Society, the

(Hong Kong)

Supported by CNC, PROCIREP, ANGOA, Fondation

Blavatnik Family Foundation, the Norwegian Film

Director Wang Xiaoshuai

pour la Mémoire de la Shoah, Direction des

Institute, Fritt Ord, The Sigrid Rausing Trust

Producer Chinese Shadows: Isabelle Glachant,

patrimoines, de la mémoire et des archives (DPMA),

World Sales Java Films

Front Films Co. Ltd: Liu Xuan

Ursula Lachnit-Fixson Stiftung, DEFA Stiftung

Pitched in 2014 & 2017

World Sales Asian Shadows

Pitched in 2017

■■ Masters

Chinese Portrait

■■ Best of Fests

Pitched in 2016 ■■ Luminous ■■ IDFA DocLab Competition for Digital Storytelling & DocLab Humanoid Cookbook

■■ Frontlight

Sakawa

What Walaa Wants (Canada, Denmark)

(Belgium, The Netherlands)

Director Christy Garland

Director Ben Asamoah

Producer Final Cut for Real: Anne Köhncke, Murmur

Producer Inti Producties BVBA: Peter Krüger

Media Inc.: Matt Code, Murmur Film: Christy

(France, Germany, The Netherlands, United States)

Co-producer Pieter van Huystee Film: Pieter van

Garland, National Film Board of Canada: Justine

Director Yuval Orr, Malika Zouhali-Worrall

Huijstee

Pimlott

Co-director Peter Murimi, Hyoe Yamamoto

Involved TV Channel VRT-Canvas, BNN Vara, YLE

Involved TV Channel DR, UR

Producer Upian: Margaux Missika, Alexandre

Supported by VAF, The Netherlands Film Fund,

World Sales Autlook Filmsales

Brachet, Gregory Trowbridge

DGD, EURIMAGES.

Pitched in 2015

Co-producer ARTE: Marianne Levy-Leblond, BR:

World Sales Rise and Shine

Earn a Living

Christiane Miethge, VPRO: Geert-Jan Bogaerts

Belgian Distributor Dalton Distribution

Involved TV Channel ARTE, BR, VPRO

Dutch Distributor Mokum Filmdistribution

Supported by Media Creative Europe, Tribeca Film

Pitched in 2016

Institute, CNC, Ville de Paris World Sales Upian: Margaux Missika Pitched in 2016

IDFA Forum catalogue 2018

11

Daily Program

Sunday November 18

11.30-17.00

Rough Cut Screenings

11.30 Advocate (working title)

12.15 Forget Me Not 13.00 BREAK 13.30 When Tomatoes Met Wagner

14.15 By the Name of Tania

15.00 The Half Truths

15.40 BREAK

16.15 Reunited 17.00 A Gentrification Program

session moderator Myriam Sassine

Tuschinski 4

Rachel Leah Jones, Philippe Bellaiche | Home Made Docs Sun Hee Engelstoft | Final Cut for Real Marianna Economou | Anemon Productions, Stefi &Lynx productions Bénédicte Liénard, Mary Jiménez | Clin d’Oeil films Hemal Trivedi | Manjusha Films Mira Jargil | Moving Documentary Renzo Martens | Pieter van Huystee Film

21.00-22.30

IDFA Forum kickoff drinks

Monday November 19

08.30-09.15

Producers’ Breakfast

Central Pitches

pre-arranged tables

Het Groene Paleis

Compagnietheater, Foyer Upstairs Compagnietheater, Grote Zaal

09.30 Welcome

Untitled Cuba Project

Lost Childhood

Return to Raqqa

Burden of Proof

First session moderators Axel Arnö & Rudy Buttignol

The Happy Worker - Or How Bullshit ...

11.15 BREAK

11.45 Moderator’s Hat draw

Prison X

Shadow Game

Out4TheKast

John Webster | Yellow Film & TV

Nanfu Wang | Hard Working Movies David Wachsmann | Gum Films Albert Solé | Zeta Audiovisual, Minimal Films Cynthia Hill | Markay Media

Second session moderators Ingrid Kopp & Karolina Lidin (Crossmedia) Violeta Ayala | Caorososban, Pinches Gringos, UNF Pty Ltd, United Notions Film LLC Eefje Blankevoort, Els van Driel, Sara Kolster | Prospektor Mathieu Rochet | Temps Noir

12.00-14.30

Industry Talk: World Film Heritage: Who Decides?

De Brakke Grond

12.50-14.45

Lunch

De Zuiderkerk

14.45-18.00

Consultancies for observers

NH Carlton Hotel, Industry Office

14.45-18.00

One-on-One Meetings for selected projects

Compagnietheater, Grote Zaal

15.00-16.30

Industry Talk: The Art of...Releasing: How to Bring Documentary to Theatres Successfully

De Brakke Grond

14.45-18.00

Round Table Pitches Zuilen Zaal

Compagnietheater, Zuilen Zaal

14.45 The Almanac

15.10 Wonder Women

15.35 The Longest Goodbye

16.00 Scheherazade Now

16.20 BREAK

16.50 Rebel Hearts School Shooters (working title)

Session moderator Ingrid Kopp (Crossmedia) / Karolina Lidin (after break) Michel Reilhac | Submarine Channel Celine Tricart | Red Corner Nir Sa’ar, Ido Mizrahy | Pagoda Productions, Motherlode Productions Mina Keshavarz | Lighthouse Reports

Pedro Kos | Rebel Hearts LLC

17.15

Round Table Pitches Kleine Zaal

15.10 Lords of Water 15.35 Children of Las Brisas 15.55 BREAK 16.25 The Valley 16.50 The Platform 17.15 The Way We Were 17.40 Oh Father, I Don’t Want to Hate You (w.t.)

18.00

Guests Meet Guests

12 IDFA Forum catalogue 2018

Lasse Barkfors, Frida Barkfors | Final Cut for Real

Compagnietheater, Kleine Zaal

Session moderator Axel Arnö Jerome Fritel | Magneto Marianela Maldonado | Invento Films Nuno Miguel Pereira Escudeiro | Miramonte Film Nino Orjonikidze, Vano Arsenishvili | Artefact Production Marten Persiel | Flare Film Dawood Hilmandi | BALDR Film De Zuiderkerk

Tuesday November 20

08.30-09.15

Producers’ Breakfast

09.30-12.45

One-on-One Meetings for selected Cross Media projects

Compagnietheater, Office Upstairs

Central Pitches

Compagnietheater, Grote Zaal

09.30 Misha’s Story

Democrats 2 (working title)

The Revisited

Moderator’s Hat pitch

The Rise and Curse of Lukas Graham

11.05 BREAK

11.30 The Yes Men Build a Wall

11.50 Iraq’s Invisible Beauty

12.10 Lash

12.30 Sisters on Track

pre-arranged tables

Compagnietheater, Foyer Upstairs

First session moderators Karolina Lidin & Rudy Buttignol Sam Hobkinson | Arts Alliance Production, Bright Yellow Films, Met Film Production Camilla Nielsson | Final Cut for Real Mehrdad Oskouei | Oskouei Films René Sascha Johannsen | Sonntag Film Second session moderators Axel Arnö & Rudy Buttignol Jan Tenhaven | Gebrueder Beetz Filmproduktion Mohamed Al-Daradji | Las Belgas Yoonsuk Jung | SeeSaw Pictures Corinne van der Borch, Tone Grøttjord-Glenne | Sant & Usant

12.45-14.45

Lunch

De Zuiderkerk

15.00-16.30

Industry Talk: SVOD – Repositioning the Documentary Film Market

De Brakke Grond

14.45-18.00

Consultancies for observers

NH Carlton Hotel, Industry Office

14.45-18.00

One-on-One Meetings for selected projects

Compagnietheater, Grote Zaal

14.45-18.00

Round Table Pitches Zuilen Zaal

Compagnietheater, Zuilen Zaal

14.45 The Hunt

15.10 Dying to Divorce

15.35 Crows are White

16.00 Stop Filming Us!

16.20 BREAK

16.50 Hidden Letters

17.15 The Other Half

17.40 Senseless

Session moderator Rudy Buttignol Michael Dweck, Gregory Kershaw | Go Gigi Go Productions Chloe Fairweather | Dying to Divorce Productions Ltc, Freak Films, Tigerlily Productions Ahsen Nadeem | Memory Films Joris Postema | Doxy Films

Violet Du Feng | Lost & Found Film Studio, Ten Thousand Images, Jean Tsien Ayse Toprak | Toprak Film, Coin Film Guy Davidi | Danish Documentary Production, Medalia Productions

14.45-18.00

Round Table Pitches Kleine Zaal Arts & Culture

14.45 ONE, with Steve McCurry 15.10 Conductivity 15.35 Being A Human Person 15.55 BREAK 16.25 I’m in Love with Pippa Bacca

18.00

Guests Meet Guests

Wednesday November 21

08.30-09.15

Producers’ Breakfast

09.30- 17.00 One-on-One

10.45 - 17.00

Session moderator Karolina Lidin Denis Delestrac | Polar Star Films Anna-Karin Grönroos | Tuffi Films Fred Scott | Archer’s Mark Simone Manetti | Nacne S.a.s.

pre-arranged tables

Meetings for selected projects

10.00 - 17.00 Consultancies

for observers

Round Table Pitches Zuilen Zaal Documentaries for Children

10.45 Kids Cup 11.10 Cabinets of Wonder (working title)

11.35 Presentations & panel - Series for children

14.45 Dok Junior Pitch

16.00 Wrap up Documentaries for Children

Compagnietheater, Kleine Zaal

De Zuiderkerk

Compagnietheater, Foyer Upstairs Compagnietheater, Grote Zaal Hotel Carlton, Industry office Compagnietheater, Zuilen Zaal

Session moderator Ove Rishøj Jensen (Documentaries for Children) Line Hatland | Medieoperatørene Susanne Kim | Neufilm GmbH, Expanding Focus GmbH hosted by The Netherlands Film Fund

12.45-14.45

Lunch

De Zuiderkerk

15.00-16.30

Industry Talk: Steve James and Claire Simon on Storytelling in Serialized Documentaries

De Brakke Grond

17.00-17.45

Farewell drinks

Compagnietheater

18.00

Guests Meet Guests

De Zuiderkerk

IDFA Forum catalogue 2018

13

Consultants Cecilie Bolvinkel

EDN Network and Partnerships Manager & Financing Guide Editor Cecilie holds a Master’s Degree in Film Studies, and before joining EDN she worked as a festival coordinator for shorts & documentaries at the Danish Film Institute. At EDN Cecilie is responsible for overall partnership coordination. Furthermore, she produces several events and workshops and coordinates EDNs involvement in the distribution network Moving Docs.

Cecilie is also the editor of the EDN Financing Guide, which contains detailed information on a wide range of financing and co-production possibilities in Europe. Besides her work at EDN Cecilie is the founder and organiser of a monthly documentary event in Berlin.

Brenda Coughlin

■■ Areas of expertise: Pitching and project presentation, how to operate on the international market, co-production and financing possibilities, opportunities in Asia.

Martichka Bozhilova

AGITPROP Martichka Bozhilova is producer of AGITPROP, Bulgaria. Her high-end author driven films have been selected and awarded at Cannes, Berlin, IDFA, Toronto, Sundance, Tribeca, Pusan and many others, and broadcast all over the world. Among her films are: Touch Me Not (Golden Bear Winner, Berlinale, 2018), Palace for the People (DokLeipzig 2018), Georgi and the Butterflies (Silver Wolf, IDFA), The Mosquito Problem and other stories (Cannes, Toronto), Corridor #8 (Berlinale), Omlette (Sundance), The Boy Who Was a King (Toronto), The Last Black Sea Pirates (Visions du Reel, HotDocs). Producer of the successful factual TV series for networks such as National Geographic and HBO. Producer of Father’s Day drama series for Bulgarian National Television. Member of the EDN Executive Committee and Chairperson of DokuFest, Prizren. Mentor at European Women’s Audiovisual (EWA) Network.

Commissioner at the Re-Act CoDevelopment and The Malik Bendjelloul Memorial Foundation’s Fund.

■■ Areas of expertise: Co-production, production, financing, training.

Sundance Institute Brenda Coughlin is Director of Producing and Impact Strategy at Sundance Institute. She leads the Institute’s artist-forward impact strategy focused on producing compelling work across documentary, fiction and emerging media; audience engagement; and, advocacy for independent art and media. She oversees Creative Partnerships, including Stories of Change, and the Documentary Film Program’s producing field-building initiatives, and advises on various funds.

Brenda’s projects as an independent producer include Academy Awardnominated Dirty Wars (2013), and director Laura Poitras’ last two features: Academy Award-winning Citizenfour (2014), about NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, and Cannes premiere Risk (2016), about Julian Assange. She produced Laura Poitras’ solo exhibition, Astro Noise, at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 2016, which featured six new immersive installations. Brenda has worked with multiple foundations and non-profits and now serves on the board of Lannan Foundation and as an advisor to ICA London’s Independent Cinema Council.

■■ Areas of expertise: Creative producing, philanthropic funding, international coproductions with United States, safety & security, distribution, impact strategy.

Anja Dziersk

Rise and Shine World Sales Anja Dziersk is the Co-Founder of Rise and Shine World Sales, one of the leading boutique sales agents for documentaries. With an average of 15 new films per year, Rise and Shine represents an exquisite catalogue of award-winning films and directors and takes them to all markets and platforms incl. TV, theatrical, non-theatrical and digital. As acquisition and festival manager, Anja is directly involved in the selection and distribution process and does everything to make our films Rise and Shine. Recent films: Raving Iran, Transit Havanna, Pre-Crime, A Modern Man, The Russian Job, Silvana, Genesis 2.0, Sakawa.

■■ Areas of expertise: World sales & festival strategies and co-production possibilities in Germany.

14 IDFA Forum catalogue 2018

Yasmin Elayat

Scatter Yasmin Elayat is an Emmy-award winning immersive director. Yasmin is Co-Founder at Scatter, an immersive entertainment and software company, where she heads content, production and marketing initiatives. Scatter is recognized for pioneering the emerging language of Volumetric Filmmaking through its original volumetric film productions and its AR/VR creativity tools. Scatter’s first product Depthkit is the most widely used toolkit for accessible volumetric video capture. Yasmin directed Zero Days VR (Sundance 2017) a documentary about cyber warfare and the Stuxnet virus, which won the Emmy for Original Approaches: Documentary. Yasmin co-directed Blackout: an immersive documentary inviting New Yorkers to share their stories in their own voice which premiered at Tribeca Film Festival 2017. She is the co-creator of 18DaysInEgypt, an interactive documentary about the Egyptian Revolution that was lauded as one the Moments of Innovation in Participatory Documentary. Yasmin’s work has won multiple awards and exhibited at various festivals including Sundance, Tribeca, SIGGRAPH, Festival de Cannes, and the World Economic Forum.

■■ Areas of expertise: VR/AR, immersive media, experience design, volumetric filmmaking, Depthkit.

Isabel Arrate Fernandez

Managing Director IDFA Bertha Fund Isabel finished her MA in Film Studies from the University of Amsterdam in 1996, and worked in festival production, programming and film financing. Since 2002 she is in charge of the IDFA Bertha Fund and responsible for the different support programs of the fund. She is a member of the selection committee and oversees the mentoring of the supported projects. Next to the Classic funding program the IDFA Bertha Fund runs a program for the support of the production and distribution of documentaries realized through co-production between European producers and producers form Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Middle East and parts of Eastern Europe, called IDFA Bertha Fund Europe. For 2019 the fund is looking to support the production of six feature length documentaries (deadline 1 April) and three distribution plans. (applications accepted between December 2018 and October 2019) ■■ Areas of expertise: All questions about the IDFA Bertha Fund Europe.

Consultancy meetings are only available for producers from EU, Norway, Iceland, and Bosnia Herzegovina interested in IDFA Bertha Fund Europe.

Claudia Iudica

Creative Europe Claudia Iudica has been working with the MEDIA programme since 2011 in the sector Development that has as aim to select and monitor projects intended for European and international markets presented by independent European production companies. Her tasks are varied and have changed over the years. She is now part of the selection team that is managing single and slate projects. She participates in the selection of the beneficiaries and at a later stage the preparation of the commitment of selected applicants, the preliminary payments, ensuring their correctness and monitoring of the procedures leading to the signed decision. Applications that are received are checked for eligibility then assessed by external experts. This selection process is a thorough exercise and she has been particularly involved in the collaboration with the experts, monitoring and managing their work/process.

■■ Areas of expertise: Creative Europe Media Funding, more specifically the Development sector which supports Single Projects (fiction, documentary and animation) and Slate Funding (groups of 3 to 5 projects).

Please note: consultancy meetings are only available for producers from all MEDIA participating countries: all EU countries, Norway, Iceland, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Albania, Republic of Serbia and Montenegro, interested in Creative Europe.

Ove Rishøj Jensen

EDN Film & Media Consultant For bio, see page 16 ■■ Areas of expertise: Pitching and project development, distribution strategies, international co-production and multi-platform narratives.

Milton Tabbot

IFP Milton Tabbot is Senior Director of Programming at the Independent Filmmaker Project (IFP) in New York.

He supervises all documentary programs including Spotlight on Documentaries of IFP Film Week, overseeing the documentary project selection; the documentary module of IFP’s Independent Filmmaker Labs for first-time feature directors. He served as the U.S. Consultant for the Locarno International Film Festival from 20062009 under Artistic Director Frédéric Maire and has served on multiple festival juries and review panels for P.O.V. and BritDoc Foundation’s Good Pitch.

■■ Areas of expertise: All aspects of documentary funding, broadcast, sales, festivals and distribution in the US market.

IDFA Forum catalogue 2018

15

Pitch Moderators Axel Arnö

Axel has been a commission editor at SVT since 1998. At SVT’s documentary department he deals with international current affairs, special series and creative documentaries. He has commissioned numerous award winning international co-productions.

In 2006, Axel was elected chairman of the EBU Documentary Group. He is a regular at the big documentary festivals and forums where he is frequently seen as moderator.

Axel is 55, married, has three kids, two cats, five bikes and lives just outside Stockholm.

Karolina Lidin

Rudy Buttignol

at Stanford and Harvard.

Rudy Buttignol is the President and CEO of Knowledge Network, British Columbia’s public broadcaster, and President of BBC Kids. As TVO’s Creative Head of Network Programming and Commissioning Editor from 1993-2006, notable commissions included The Corporation, Manufactured Landscapes and Emmy/Grammy-winner Yo-Yo Ma: Inspired by Bach. From 1975 to 1993, he worked as an independent writer, director and producer of children’s series and documentaries. Honors include the Hot Docs Doc Mogul Award and nine Canadian Academy Awards; he is a Member of the Order of Canada, and an Honorary Doctor of Letters. Buttignol is a graduate of the Faculty of Fine Arts, York University, and Executive programs

Ingrid Kopp

Ingrid Kopp is a co-founder of Electric South, a non-profit initiative developing virtual reality and emerging storytelling projects across Africa. New Dimensions, the first collection of VR films produced

by Electric South, have been shown at film festivals and museums around the world. Ingrid also curates the Tribeca Storyscapes program for interactive and immersive work at the Tribeca Film Festival. Along with MIT’s Open DocLab, she produces Immerse, a publication for Medium on emerging nonfiction storytelling. Ingrid started her career in the Documentaries department at Channel 4 Television in London before moving to NYC in 2004 and has been based in Cape Town since 2015.

16 IDFA Forum catalogue 2018

Ove Rishøj Jensen

Myriam Sassine

Karolina Lidin is a documentary consultant primarily engaged at Nordisk Film & TV Fond as Documentary Advisor and at Sheffield Doc/Fest as Executive Producer, Marketplace & Talent. In addition, Karolina Lidin is continuously involved in mentoring/training schemes, developing projects with international potential, lately with DocsPort Incheon, DocEdge Kolkata, Docs by the Sea and Dhaka DocLab. Karolina has previous experience as producer, film commissioner, distributor and as CEO of Nordisk Panorama and Nordisk Forum.

Karolina’s activities also include moderating the IDFA FORUM and numerous other film festival and market events - in addition to festival jury duty, panel & selection committee participation and tutoring worldwide.

Ove has been with EDN since Winter 2003 and is in charge of running workshops, pitching forums and seminars in both online and offline versions. This includes RealYoung, Dox in Vitro, outreach and audience workshops and much more. Ove has a Masters Degree in film studies with additional studying of cultural journalism and humanistic computer informatics.

Myriam Sassine majored in audiovisual studies and received an M.A. in cinema research. In 2012, she became a Producer at Abbout Productions working on several features and documentaries such as Tramontane by Vatche Boulghourjian (Cannes Critic’s Week 2016), Panoptic by Rana Eid (Locarno 2017), Amal by Mohamed Siam (Idfa 2017) and A Certain Nasser by Badih Massaad and Antoine Waked (Festival Lumière 2017). Myriam is the COO of Schortcut Films, dedicated to coproducing international features and the Executive Director of Maskoon Fantastic Film Festival, the first fantastic film festival in the Middle East.

EDN Pitch trainers

Crossmedia Pitch trainer

Mikael Opstrup EDN Head of Studies

Louis-Richard Tremblay National Film Board of Canada

Mikael started in the documentary business working with distribution and theatrical release of documentaries and as independent producer. He attended script writing c at the Danish Film School. From 1998-2002, he worked as Production Adviser at The Danish Film Institute. From 2002 – 2008 he was co-owner and producer at Final Cut Productions in Copenhagen where he produced a number of international documentaries. From 2005 - 2009 he was a Board member of EDN - European Documentary Network - and from 200809 in the function of Chairman.

Since January 2011 he is Head of Studies of EDN. Mikael is the editor of The EDN Co-production Guide.

Paul Pauwels EDN Director

Award-winning NFB producer LouisRichard Tremblay works on projects that combine editorial content, cutting-edge design and new technologies, where interactivity supports the creation of experiential and narrative universes exploring phenomena that transform individuals and society. After studying political science and making a brief foray into architecture, he developed a passion for radio in the early days of the Internet. In 2001, he joined the multimedia, cross-platform website and radio show Bande à part, where he directed several teams of digital creators and journalists for Société Radio-Canada. His most recent works play out in mobile, AR and VR environments. He is driven by the thrill of working with teams of creators who join forces to push the limits of their craft.

Paul Pauwels studied at RITCS film school in Brussels. He has 30 years experience in audiovisual production as unit manager, production manager and producer. In addition, he has always combined this with teaching/tutoring.

He worked in feature film production until 1987, when he founded his own production unit: Periscope Productions.

The company produced commercials, short feature films and prize-winning documentaries. In 2005, Paul sold his company to become Program Manager at the Flemish Public Broadcaster. There he was in charge of the science and history department and responsible for the relations with the independent producers and directors. From 2007 to 2011, he was director of the European Television and Media Management Academy in Strasbourg, France. In 2012, he became a managing director and later manager/owner/producer of Congoo bvba. In 2013, he became the director of the European Documentary Network; he is based in Copenhagen and Brussels.

During his active time as a producer, Paul Pauwels was a respected expert on matters of European documentary coproduction. Member of the General Assembly of the Flemish Film Fund (VAF) for whom he also acts as an expert reader for documentary projects. Paul is a member of the European Film Academy. He is teaching at the Luca, School of Arts in Genk, Belgium.

IDFA Forum catalogue 2018

17

Matchmakers Christina Jul Gregerson

Christina is the manager of Nordisk Panorama Forum for Co-financing of Documentaries, the main funding event for documentaries in the Nordic region.

Nordisk Panorama Film Festival presents the best Nordic shorts & docs and gathers the Nordic film community once a year. She has been organising NP Forum and promoting Nordic films and filmmakers since 2009.

Previously, Christina has worked within the film industry in various positions. She graduated as a producer from the Danish independent film school Super16 and also holds a master’s degree in French from University of Copenhagen.

Cleo Veger

Daan Vermeulen

Daan Vermeulen (1985) is in charge of marketing, public relations and acquisition of new documentaries at the Dutch film distributor Cinema Delicatessen. Before joining Cinema Delicatessen, he worked at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA), first as producer of its educational program IDFAcademy, later as producer of IDFA’s international cofinancing market the IDFA Forum. Vermeulen holds master degrees in Cultural Analysis and Film Studies from the University of Amsterdam.

Cleo Veger works as a Sales Executive at London based distributor and sales agent Dogwoof. Regarded as the foremost documentary specialist brand in the world, Dogwoof sells international rights, distributes theatrically in the UK, and invests in the production of creative feature docs and docseries. Cleo looks after TV sales for Dogwoof’s international sales department and also assists with acquisitions for their film slate. She has worked on films such as Dior and I, Matangi / Maya / M.I.A., and The Work as well as Oscar-nominated films Cartel Land and Life, Animated. Originally from The Netherlands, she spent time studying in Boston before moving to London to complete her degree.

TRAINING PROGRAM

FOR DOCUMENTARY PRODUCERS

3 ONE-WEEK SESSIONS IN 3 DIFFERENT EUROPEAN COUNTRIES

IMPROVE THE DEVELOPMENT OF YOUR DOCUMENTARY PROJECT

AND JOIN A NETWORK OF MORE THAN 1.000 DOCUMENTARY PROFESSIONALS FROM 60 COUNTRIES WORLWIDE

CALL FOR APPLICATIONS

2019

WWW.EURODOC-NET.COM @eurodoc.program @eurodoc

18 IDFA Forum catalogue 2018

EXTENDED DEADLINE: November 30th , 2018

ARE YOU LOOKING FOR THE BEST POLISH DOCUMENTARIES?

Festival by Tomasz Wolski & Anna Gawlita

Call Me Tony by Klaudiusz Chrostowski

THE BEKSIŃSKIS. A Sound and Picture Album by Marcin Borchardt

Idea Is Paramount. The Architectural Passions of Andrzej Wajda by Jacek Link-Lenczowski

JUST ASK! www.sp.kff.com.pl IDFA Forum catalogue 2018

19

March 9—15, 2019

EAST DOC PLATFORM

Forum Projects 2018

14-25 nov 2018

International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam

Central Pitch

Director Cynthia Hill Production Markay Media Status In Production Country United States

Burden of Proof Decades after his sister disappeared, a brother is determined to find the truth no matter the cost.

Synopsis & Project Description THE DETAILS OF THIS PROJECT ARE CONFIDENTIAL AND ARE THEREFORE NOT PUBLISHED. Further information about the project, including synopsis and project description, is available upon request.

22 IDFA Forum catalogue 2018

Format HD cam | 5 x 60

• Human Interest | Social Issues • Investigative Pitch Type Central Pitch

Genres

Production Details |

Biographies

Burden of Proof

PRODUCTION COMPANY Markay Media 1105 W Chapel Hill St 27701 Durham United States markaymedia.com

christine@markaymedia.com +1 9196320909

CREDITS Production

Director

Editor Production scheme Release Production status

Christine Delp Santuario (2018 | director | producer) A Chef’s Life, Seasons 3-5 (2015-2017 | associate producer) Road to Race Day (2017 | associate producer) Cynthia Hill A Chef’s Life, Seasons 1-5 (2013-2017 | director | producer) Road to Race Day (2017 | director | producer) Private Violence (2014 | director | producer) Tom Vickers October 2015 – February 2019 January 2020 In production

FINANCING Production budget Still required Broadcasters Funds and Institutes

Other Financiers

Budget €

€ 2.264.894 € 2.209.119 HBO | Nancy Abraham

Sundance Institute | Betsy Tsai Southern Documentary Fund | Naomi Walker Private contributions

| Burden of Proof

Development | Pre-Production Director 101.990 Producers (2) 183.582 Line producer 50.995 Associate Producer (2) 92.546 Consulting Producer 40.796 Fringe 94.613

€ 564.522

Production Director of Photography 50.995 Second camera 35.696 Audio 38.246 Stedi-cam and Aerial Operator 12.748 Production Assistants (6) 33.996 Camera Package 54.182 Audio package 25.497 Travel Drives and Media cards 7.224 Expendables 2.549 Production Travel 81.167 All Reenactment Costs (separate budget) 227.969

€ 26.077 € 12.912 € 2.582 € 14.204

€ 570.269

Post-Production Series Editor + Editors (2) 297.472 Assitant Editors 95.616 Post supervisor + Assistant 48.955 Off-line Edit Suites (3) + Prep Bay 59.494 On-line Editor & Suite 28.259 Hard Drives & Storage 8.499 Music + Archival 76.067

€ 614.362

Outreach and distribution Film Publicity 38.246 E&O Insurance 12.748 Deliverables 141.936

€ 192.930

Miscellaneous Administrative/office 61.194 Liability Insurance, legal, accounting 52.695 Production fee (10% total budget) 208.922

Total budget (summed)

€ 322.811 € 2.264.894

Christine Delp Producer Christine Delp is a documentary producer and director. She is currently producing the documentary feature, Burden of Proof, directed by Emmyand Peabody-winning director Cynthia Hill. She is also directing and producing the documentary short Santuario, which won Tribeca Film Institute’s IF/Then pitch in 2017. Christine has worked as an associate producer for Hill’s A Chef’s Life (PBS) and Road to Race Day (Verizon go90/Complex Networks). Christine has also worked as an outreach coordinator for Private Violence (HBO). Films produced by Christine have been supported by the Sundance Documentary Film Program, HBO Documentary Films, Tribeca Film Institute, Fledgling Fund, IFP, Big Sky Pitch, Sheffield Meet Market, and the Southern Documentary Fund. Christine is a New Orleans Film Society’s Southern Producer’s Lab Fellow, an associate of UC Berkeley’s Investigative Reporting Program, and a Phi Beta Kappa and summa cum laude graduate of Duke University, where she studied at the Center for Documentary Studies.

Christine Delp Producer

Cynthia Hill Director

Cynthia Hill Producer | Director Cynthia Hill is a documentary director and producer. Credits include Road to Race Day (Verizon go90/Complex Networks), A Chef’s Life (currently airing on PBS), Private Violence (broadcast on HBO in 2014), Tobacco Money Feeds My Family (broadcast on PBS in 2004), The Guestworker (broadcast on PBS in 2006), and February One (broadcast on PBS in 2005). Hill received a 2014 Peabody Award, a 2015 Daytime Emmy for Best Director of a Lifestyle/Culinary/Travel Program, and a 2018 Daytime Emmy for Outstanding Culinary program for A Chef’s Life.

Private Violence won Cinema Eye Honor for Excellence in Nonfiction Filmmaking for Television, the Candescent Award at Sundance Film Festival in 2014, the Kathleen Bryan Edwards Award for Human Rights at the 2014 Full Frame Film Festival, and the Silver Heart Award at the 2014 Dallas International Film Festival.

The film also received a 2015 Emmy Award nomination in the Outstanding Informational Programming – Long Form Category. Hill is the co-founder of the Southern Documentary Fund.

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Central Pitch

Director Camilla Nielsson Production Final Cut for Real Status Start Production Country Denmark

Democrats 2

Format 4K | 90’ & 52’ Genres

(working title)

Zimbabwe is at a crossroads.

The young opposition leader, Nelson Chamisa, challenges the old guard, ZANU-PF, lead by Emmerson Mnangagwa, in the first election since Robert Mugabe was ousted from power. How do they interpret principles of democracy in discourse and in practice in the new post-Mugabe era?

Synopsis & Project Description THE DETAILS OF THIS PROJECT ARE CONFIDENTIAL AND ARE THEREFORE NOT PUBLISHED. Further information about the project, including synopsis and project description, is available upon request.

24 IDFA Forum catalogue 2018

• Human Interest | Social Issues • Politics | Society Pitch Type Central Pitch

Production Details |

Biographies

Democrats 2 (working title)

PRODUCTION COMPANY Final Cut for Real Forbindelsesvej 7 2100 Copenhagen Denmark www.finalcutforreal.dk

Signe Byrge Sørensen Producer Producer Signe Byrge Sørensen is a two-time Oscar® nominee for producing The Act of Killing (2012) and The Look of Silence (2014). She began in SPOR Media in 1998 and co-founded Final Cut for Real ApS in 2009. She has an MA (Int. dev. & comm. Studies), did EURODOC (2003), EAVE (2010) and ACE (2018).

byrge@final-cut.dk +45 41184890

CREDITS Production

Director

Distributor/Sales Agent Production scheme Release Production status

Signe Byrge Sørensen Dreaming Murakami (2017 | producer) Land of the Free (2016 | producer) The Look of Silence (2014 | producer) Camilla Nielsson Democrats (2014 | director) Mumbai Disconnected (2009 | director) The Children of Darfur (2005 | director) Philippa Kowarsky | Cinephil

Final Cut for Real Production Company Final Cut for Real is dedicated to high-end creative documentaries and art house features for the international market. The company has also produced for example The Distant Barking of Dogs, Dreaming Murakami, Les Sauteurs, Land of the Free and Death of a Child and co-produced for example What Walaa Wants, Angels are Made of Light, That Summer and Strong Island.

November 2018 – February 2020 18th of April 2020 Start production

FINANCING Production budget Still required Broadcasters

Funds and Institutes

Other Financiers Own Investment

Budget €

€ 1.045.683 € 822.572 DR | Anders Bruus SVT | Axel Arnö NRK | Fredrik Færden Danish Film Institute | Anders Riis-Hansen Sundance Institute | Tabitha Jackson Danida, Danish Foreign Ministry | Aase Mikkelsen Final Cut for Real

€ 26.846 € 8.000 € 6.500 € 110.336 € 12.081 € 13.423 € 45.925

| Democrats 2 (working title)

Development | Pre-Production Development sum Financing costs

Online 24.510 228.310 4.698

€ 233.008

Production Hotels, travel & food 26.275 Production travel & expenses 10.940 Production personnel 92.211 Director 146.174 Technical staff 11.141 Equipment 14.161 Stock Material 5.235 Broadcast requirements 16.789 Gifts for cast 4.027 Translator + Director assistant 16.242

Post-Production Editor/editing system Sound design and mix Titles, Graphic, Colour grade,

€ 343.195

148.875 31.302

Music 32.483 Archival rights & reproduction 13.423 Translation, Subtitles 19.181 Master copies 6.711

Outreach and distribution Trailer editing

€ 276.485

3.356

€ 3.356

Miscellaneous Auditor, Prod.accountant, bankfees (for transfers) 11.141 Post prod. Coordinator

Overhead Overhead 5% Contingency 10% Administration 10%

Total budget (summed)

15.023

€ 26.164

32.695 65.390 65.390

Signe Byrge Sørensen Producer

Camilla Nielsson Director

Camilla Nielsson Director Camilla Nielsson was a Fulbright Scholar at Tisch School of the Arts, New York University (NYU), and has an MA from the Dept. of Anthropology (NYU), where she studied documentary filmmaking and visual anthropology from 1997-2000. She has directed the documentary trilogy Good Morning Afghanistan (2003), Durga (2004), and The Children of Darfur (2005), about children’s rights, and Mumbai Disconnected (2009), in the Cities on Speed series. Camilla Nielsson’s first feature documentary Democrats (2014), screened at more than 80 film festivals, and won 30 awards and nominations – incl. Best Documentary at Tribeca Film Festival 2015, and Best Documentary at Nordic Panorama 2015.

Henrik Bohn Ipsen Cinematographer Cinematographer Henrik Bohn Ipsen Born 1961. Henrik Bohn Ipsen is a cinematographer from the National Danish Film School. His work include Heartbound (2018), Motley’s Law (2015), Democrats (2014), My Afghanistan (2012), Football is God (2010) and The German Secret (2005).

Bohn Ipsen is the recipient of the Danish Roos Award.

€ 163.475 € 1.045.683

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Central Pitch

Director John Webster

The Happy Worker Or How Bullshit Took over the Workplace How empty corporate jargon, management fashions and selfserving bureaucracy masquerading as efficiency hijacked the purpose of work. How it came to be and above all; how we can break free from it.

Synopsis The heroes of our film have a steady, well-respected job that is not physically demanding and comes with a comfortable salary. They should count themselves lucky.

Yet they are among some of the most unhappy people working today.

On their morning commute to the office they dread the day ahead: They have a pile of work waiting for them, but they doubt they will get it done. Their day will be consumed by constant interruptions, pointless meetings, binfulls of irrelevant emails and ever more frequent unfathomable corporate mission statement briefings and ‘town hall’ proclamations. No sooner has one corporate restructuring finished than the next begins. The work that they need to be doing today will be pushed forward to tomorrow. So they take the work home where even the demands of family life seem like quiet bliss compared to the office.

A 2013 Gallup study conducted in 142 countries found that only 13% of workers felt motivated in their work. In a similar study in the US it was found that only 45% of office time was spent on doing the ‘real job’. In Britain, 37% of workers thought that their job was utterly meaningless.

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Production Yellow Film & TV Status Development Country Finland Format HD prores | 80’ Genre

• Human Interest | Social Issues

Pitch Type Central Pitch

This is a problem that affects hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of people.

And yet we should have all the reasons to be happier at work. In the 1930’s John Maynard Keynes, one of the greatest economists of the 20th century, predicted that within a century a higher level of education and the automation of the work place would mean that people would only have to work 15-hour weeks. The rest of our time could be spent on leisure and other activities.

We have made incredible advances in education and automation, yet most people struggle to get their work done within an 8-hour day. How is this possible? Why do we have less time to do our work, not more?

Project Description In the Simple Sabotage Field Guide from 1944 recently declassified by the CIA, citizens living in countries occupied by the Axis forces were given instructions on how to make their occupiers’ life difficult. Simple methods for disrupting work and making it less efficient included ‘Make as many interruptions to your work as you can’, ‘Hold conferences when there is more critical work to be done’ and ‘See that three people have to approve everything where one person would be enough’.

We will explore the reasons why these methods of disruption have today become not acts of terrorism and resistance but standard operating procedure in both public and private institutions. Anthropologist David Graeber posits that - just as Keynes predicted - there really is less work for highly educated people to do, and that we have unwittingly created a culture of work for the sake of work - just like the Soviet system the West used to ridicule - mainly through the development of rampant bureaucracy.

But these days it is not called bureaucracy, it is called ‘organisational change’. Over the past eight years alone the management consultancy industry has grown at a steady 5% per year and is now a booming 280 billion dollar global industry. Sure, there is ‘meaningful employment’ for some, but for all the other workers it drains the will to live.

We aim to find 3-4 compelling personal stories - both horrific and inspiring - with story arcs that span across the length of the film. We will also be using interviews and archival footage.This is a rich subject and in telling it we are almost spoiled for wonderful insights and stories: from the father and inventor of corporate jargon to the mind-set that turned workers into ‘human resources’, from the workers who fired their bosses to the boss who saved a factory by giving the workers a purpose. There are cognitive studies on the social contract that keeps people from calling bullshit, experiments in four-day working weeks producing surprising and profound results, and hilarious managerial training programmes such as leading a horse around a field where you can ‘experience breakthroughs that increase the depth of Emotional Intelligence’. Virtually everybody working today has some story of the bullshitization of the workplace.

At the centre of the film is the human experience and the meaning of work: by looking at the things that are wrong with working culture we can also see many things that are right about people. By showing how people are made unhappy at work we can tell a lot about the human condition: about the need for purpose and meaning in work, and seeing the results of your labour. Take that away and you take away an essential part of what makes us human.

Director’s Note My wife worked for Nokia - from the glory days through the decline and Microsoft takeover to the bitter end of the Nokia mobile story. She loved her work and the people she worked with, and I know the same to be true for most people who worked for the company. So I experienced closely - though second-hand - how these energetic and talented people were made miserably daily and their potential wasted by shamefully bad top management and corporate claptrap.

The Nokia-story is not just a one-off: I know many people who love their work but hate their job, and I am sure there are hundreds of thousands of people who feel the same. The bullshitization of the workplace is a problem that is often overlooked, perhaps because those affected are primarily educated, white-collar workers who make good money; there are a lot of people worse off in the world. This doesn’t change the fact that these people are very unhappy. It is an unnecessary suffering. And wasteful and tragic because it robs people of a sense that they are doing meaningful work.

I believe this is a subject that would resonate with a wide audience: those affected by business bullshit are typically also those who watch documentaries, and it will also be relevant for young millennials starting out on their careers for whom job substance and purpose is more important than the pay-check.

Humour is essential for this film: the audience has to be able to laugh! Either at the familiarity of the scenarios, or perhaps because somebody has it even worse.

Ultimately of course, I want the audience to understand how this system is made possible, and to be inspired to cut the bullshit and make a change.

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Biographies

Marko Talli Producer

Tomi Paajanen Producer

John Webster Director

Marko Talli Producer Marko Talli has been involved in film business for the past twenty years.

He is in a charge of feature films and documentaries at Yellow Film & TV. His latest works are a biopic feature film called The Ragged Life of Juice Leskinen (2018) and children’s feature film Super Furball (2018) and an ice-hockey movie 95 (2017). His first feature documentary called The Finnish Flash – A Teemu Selanne Story was a box-office hit in Finland. He has also produced many awarded drama and comedy series.

Tomi Paajanen Producer Tomi Paajanen is producer and COO at Yellow Film and has been involved in a variety of TV-shows for the past ten years. His latest works as a producer are Superstars Only and Eternal Glory. At the moment he is developing new documentaries and TV-series, and is responsible for the company’s domestic operations.

Yellow Film & TV Production Company Yellow Film & TV is an award-winning film and TV production company based in Finland and owned by its employees. Over the last 24 years we have become the largest independent production company in the Nordic region, producing hundreds of hours of film and television each year - both domestically and globally. Due to our unshakable commitment to excellence, we believe in developing the best content with the best talent, focusing on high-quality scripted drama, comedy, entertainment, sports, movies and documentaries.

During the past few years, we have put an emphasis on our international strategy, resulting in the development of multilingual, large-budget Co-productions, as well as dramatically increasing the number of formats and series we export.

John Webster Director Born in Finland of British parents, John Webster has been directing and producing documentary films for over 25 years. His films cover many subjects, but typical to his films are human-interest stories with strong central characters whose lives are followed over a long period of time. Over the years his films have been broadcast to a wide international audience, screened and awarded at festivals, and two of his films have received the Finnish Jussi award. Films include: Little Yellow Boots (2017), Recipes for Disaster (2008), Rooms of Shadow and Light (2001), Don’t Tell Daddy (1995) and Suckers (1993).

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Production Details |

The Happy Worker - Or How Bullshit Took over the Workplace

PRODUCTION COMPANY Yellow Film & TV Hermannin rantatie 10 00580 Helsinki Finland www.yellowfilm.fi

marko.talli@yellowfilm.fi +358 405146778 tomi.paajanen@yellowfilm.fi +358 404170123

CREDITS Production

Director

Executive Production Screenplay Editor Production scheme Release Production status

Marko Talli, Tomi Paajanen Marko Talli: The Ragged Life of Juice Leskinen (2018 | producer) Super Furball (2018 | producer) The Finnish Flash (2013 | producer) Tomi Paajanen: Vintage Nation (2017-2018 | producer) Eternal Glory (2017 | producer) Superstars Only (2017 | producer) John Webster Little Yellow Boots (2017 | director) Recipes for Disaster (2008 | director) Rooms of Shadow and Light (2001 | director) Olli Haikka | Yellow Film & TV John Webster, Eveliina Kantola Jussi Rautaniemi February 2019 – January 2020 January 2020 Development

FINANCING Production budget Still required Funds and Institutes

Own Investment

Budget €

€ 557.661 € 500.000 Finnish Film Foundation | Pekka Uotila AVEK | Outi Rousu Yellow Film & TV

| The Happy Worker - Or How Bullshit Took over the Workplace

Development / Pre-Production Writer 20.000 Producer | Director 10.000 Travel/subsistence 1.900 Other pre-production costs 7.104

€ 39.004

Production Archival rights & reproduction 10.000 Hotels, travel & food 19.400 Production travel and expenses 35.850 Production personnel 110.088 Director 82.400 Technical staff: 32.305 Equipment 23.500 Broadcast requirements 4.000

€ 12.000 € 10.000 € 35.661

€ 317.543

Post-Production Editor/editing system 66.783 Sound design and mix 26.240 Music 29.440 Archival rights & reproduction 11.000

Overhead Overhead Administration 5% Contingency 10%

Total budget (summed)

€ 133.463

22.550 45.101

€ 67.651 € 557.661

Central Pitch

Director Mohamed Al-Daradji Production Las Belgas Status Development Country Belgium Format HD digital | 52’ & 80’ Genres

• Investigative • Art | Music | Culture

• History Pitch Type Central Pitch | Arts & Culture

Iraq’s Invisible Beauty

Latif Al Ani photographed Iraq before the wars. Today he travels his country in search of the people and places in his pictures, sharing them with Iraqis who no longer recognise the world he reveals.

Mohamed is one of the most important ambassadors of modern cinema in Iraq. He wants to explore the history and culture of their country through Latif’s visual archive.

Together they will journey in Iraq and meet people who are constantly amazed by Al Ani’s images - of an Iraq that many of them have never known, or even didn’t know had existed.

Synopsis

The director will use his pictures as a way to conduct a dialogue with the past, and ask what happened to our country? In this conversation between past and present, two generations of visual artists, inspired by their country, ask profound questions about past and future, love and hate.

Latif al Ani, born in Baghdad in 1932 is known as the ‘father of Iraqi photography’. His work forms a unique visual archive of Iraq during its heydays from the 1950s to 1970s and are a profound insight into the country, mostly unknown to Westerners and even Iraqi people themselves. When Saddam took power, Al Ani stopped photographing. For a long time he had to hide.

In 2015, he received the prestigious Prince Claus Award, awarded annually by the Dutch Royal Family. This recognition has given Al Ani new confidence and a desire to reconnect with his work, his country and to travel the world like he did freely so many years ago.

Now, 15 years after the last invasion of the Americans, he is returning to Iraq with his pictures, in search of the people and the places that he photographed. He is receiving a warm welcome from the people he meets.

Accompanying him on his journey is the director, Mohamed Al Daradji, born in Baghdad in 1978, 46 years after Al Ani.

Project Description Director’s Note Like all my previous films, there is one reason that drives me to tell this story – it needs to be told. Over the last 40 years Iraq has been witness to three wars and two occupations. This has left my country exhausted and completely damaged. Like a dumped and a dying corpse. What remains is a ruin whose inhabitants hardly remember what it was like 50 years ago, before the decay began. It frustrates me to see how the majority of people on the streets are slowly but surely becoming immune to the current situation which offers no hope.

How did we get here? How has it become like this?

Our visual memory is disappearing, and the last living witnesses will soon be gone, not able to speak about the good times. Present and future Iraqi generations will forget. But Latif’s photographic images will continue the story, and despair can make room for hope in the future. With this film I want to raise questions and start a dialogue with our history through Latif’s photographic and visual archive.

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I would like to use his pictures as a way to question our past, and ask what is happening in Iraq today. Why have the moments that Latif captured been damaged so much? Why has his picture of Iraq in that moment not developed in the right way?

I plan to tell a story that will shock you and anger you, but then a moment later will make you smile, laugh and cheer – a story that reflects real life.

The camera will never be static, always moving. The film will be in shades of grey, with little colour in the beginning. Many of Latif’s colour negatives are gone, and our past is grey. But by the end the colour will return, to represent the hope we want to send with the film and this story.

I will not be on camera in the film. Latif will remain at the centre of the image, telling his story. My voice will be sometimes heard as I question him, to reason with the past and/or with the present. I will ask his generation, at the time he lived there, about the trips he made and I will raise the question of the second generation of Iraqi citizens: why and how did it come to this?

30 IDFA Forum catalogue 2018

Our angle will tighten on Latif when he is in action, we will explore what concerns him, his thoughts through close-ups on his face. When he drives through the streets of Baghdad, for example, we will see close-ups of Latif smoking a cigarette, of his hand shaking when he smokes, while we will see, through his eyes, the ruins of this beautiful city. The environment around him will be blurry, misty.

When he is motionless, we will clearly distinguish what he is looking at. Our visual style will be close to photography, pixelated to look like 35mm film.

In addition to the photographs, we will use rare film archives of Iraq in the 1950s and 1960s, some of it never seen before. This will also heighten the contrast between the present and the past.

Production Note: We have exclusive access to Latif Al Ani, and we are supported in this project by the Arab Image Foundation, who are helping to catalogue Latif’s work and to search for his missing pictures. They are also investing in the film.

Production Details |

Biographies

Iraq’s Invisible Beauty

PRODUCTION COMPANY Las Belgas Basdongenstraat 23 3120 Tremelo Belgium www.lasbelgas.be

Jurgen Buedts Producer Las Belgas was founded in 2014 by Jurgen Buedts to create and produce international documentaries. Iraq’s Invisible Beauty will be their 8th film on photography. Harry Gruyaert, Photographer, premiered at FilmFest Gent and DOKU ARTS Berlin and is currently in Belgian cinemas. The series Shot In Belgium, was nominated twice for best program of 2016, and best documentary series 2016 @docville in Leuven. OdysSea ran over 10 weeks in Belgian cinema’s and was broadcast on CANVAS (Belgium) and AVROTROS (Netherlands), distributed by DALTON DISTRIBUTIONS with over 3000 sold DVD’s.

jurgenbuedts@lasbelgas.be +32 486490114

CREDITS Production

Director

Created by Co-production Executive Production Distributor/Sales Agent Screenplay Editor Production scheme Release Production status

Jurgen Buedts Jurgen Buedts: Harry Gruyaert (2018 | producer) SAINT HUBERT (2017 | producer) Shot in Belgium (2016 | producer | writer | director) OdysSea (2013 | producer) Nick Ware: Rooting For Roona (2018 | producer) Bogdan’s Journey (2016 | producer) Mohamed Al-Daradji The Journey (2017 | writer | producer | director) Gift of My Father (2015 | director) Kingdom of Garbage (2015 | director) Happy Birthday (2014 | director) Jurgen Buedts | Las Belgas Faites un Voeu – Catherine Siméon, Nick Ware – France Jurgen Buedts | Las Belgas Gitte Hansen | First Hand Films Jurgen Buedts, Mohamed Al-Daradji Hervé de Luze January 2019 – March 2020 March 2020 Development

FINANCING Production budget Still required Funds and Institutes

Budget €

€ 705.000 € 684.580 Vlaams Audiovisueel Fonds | Myriam De Boeck Procirep | Angoa | Maxime Owyszer

| Iraq’s Invisible Beauty

Development | Pre-Production Writer 18.000 Producer | Director 15.000 Travel/subsistence 20.000 Researcher 15.000 Teaser 10.000 Rights 10.000

€ 88.000

Production Archival rights & reproduction 50.000 Hotels, travel & food 24.000 Production travel and expenses 22.000 Production personnel 25.000 Director 40.000 Technical staff 80.000 Equipment 30.000 Stock Material 10.000 Broadcast requirements 8.000

€ 12.500 € 7.920

€ 289.000

Post-Production Editor/editing system 50.000 Sound design and mix 35.000 Titles and animation 12.000 Music 25.000 Archival rights & reproduction 15.000

Overhead Overhead. 10 % Contingency 10%

€ 50.000

70.500 70.500

Other

Total budget (summed)

Nick Ware Co-producer

Mohamed Al-Daradji Director

€ 137.000

Outreach and distribution

Mohamed Al Daradji Director Mohamed Al Daradji was born in Baghdad in 1978. In 2003, Mohamed made his first feature film Ahlaam, which was screened at over 125 international film festivals, received over 23 awards, and represented Iraq for the Oscar and Golden Globe Consideration in 2007. Son of Babylon (2010) went on to screen at Sundance and Berlinale, receiving the Amnesty International Peace Prize, a BIFA, Netpac and 30 more awards and was Iraq’s official entry for the 2011 Academy Awards. In 2010, Mohamed received the award of Variety’s Middle Eastern Filmmaker of the year when his documentary In My Mother’s Arms that premiered at Toronto IFF and won the Asia Pacific Screen Academy Award for Best Documentary. In 2013, he began working on his 5th feature In the Sands of Babylon. The film launched at Abu Dhabi IFF and won Best Film from the Arab World. Mohamed is currently in development with his next fiction film The Journey, it was selected for Cannes IFF, L’ATELIER 2011 and received the Kocca Development Award at Busan IFF.

Jurgen Buedts Producer

€ 141.000 € 705.000

Nick Ware Co-producer Nick Ware is a former BBC commissioning editor and channel manager, he produced and co-authored many successful documentaries, including Becoming Cary Grant (Showtime/Arte/ BBC) with Yuzu Productions which premiered at the 2017 Cannes Film Festival.

Faites un Voeu Co-production company Faites un Voeu produces ambitious documentaries for cinema and television. The feature documentary Sour Grapes (Arte France, Netflix, VPRO, SVT, DR, YLE) was premiered at Hot Docs Toronto. Burma, the Power of the Monks (Arte France, Public Sénat, KRO-VPRO, Deutsche Welle), was presented in preview at FIGRA 2017.

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Central Pitch

Director Yoonsuk Jung Production SeeSaw Pictures Status In Production Country South Korea Format 4K | 90

Lash

Genres

• Human Interest | Social Issues • Art | Music | Culture • Politics | Society Pitch Type Central Pitch

A journey in search for humanity.

Synopsis Lash follows two lines: one vertical line distinguishes humans from non-humans and the horizontal line that cross the path of the East Asia heading from China to Korea, then to Japan. As mankind evolves, we lose our hopes in humanity and seek for something beyond.

What makes a human human? We will have to answer this question where these two lines intersect.

Project Description Lash started in 2016 when the fashion magazine VOGUE, celebrating its 20th anniversary of the first edition in Korea, asked Director Yoonsuk Jung to make a short film on any subject in fashion, and he chose mannequins and the laborers in the factory. Fascinated by the scene of humans creating ‘humans’ and the desires that we project on them, he developed a feature documentary project when the AI robot Sophia came under the spotlight.

Although he is an atheist, he found himself saying ‘humans now dare to covet god’s domain.’ With his two award-winning films, he explored the line that divides the territory between friend and enemy, right and wrong, definite and indefinite. Beyond the catchy subjects such as serial killer and eccentric band, what he really wanted was to mock the lines that divide us.

For Lash, he chose things that resemble humans, in the hope to approach the line that defines what it means to be human. Why do we want to make something that resembles our body and mind? If they are not humans, what makes us so? To quote his own words, ‘I thought it would be a film that searches for the line to shake it.

But, I have to admit that I am the one who is shaken from witnessing that all the lines between humans and dolls, life and death, are blurred.’

32 IDFA Forum catalogue 2018

We decided to set the location of the film in the three countries of East Asia – China, Korea, and Japan where discussion around this issue is the most heated, and the three countries put a different complexion due to the distinctive phases the societies are going through. The countries account for three parts of the film: birth, death, and life.

Birth: China is experiencing an economic boom and people enjoy a higher standard of living. Philosophical questions such as why humans make humans do not seem to bother the sex-doll factory workers in Shenzhen.

A female worker struggles to remove a doll from its metal cast. It looks like a scene of a painful childbirth. The doll slowly incarnates in human form after delicate finishing touches. She explains, ‘The hardest part is the lashes.

It doesn’t look like a human with the slightest wrong touch.’ Feng Bo, the owner, says his vision is to create an AI sex-doll that can walk, talk and communicate with their customers.

Death: In Korea, where the system is collapsing since the 90s after the rapid economic growth, we interview two men who sustain their lives within an inch from death. We first meet the former Korean National Forensic Service (NFS) Director Nak-Eun Chung who puts every ounce of his energy in identifying the victims of incidents with mass casualty. He wishes to speak for the dead; not only how they died but also who they were. Then we move on to Wan Kim, who specializes in cleaning up crime scenes, garbage houses, and sites of lonely deaths. At these gruesome sites, Kim finds the ‘pieces of life’. From the Holy Bible in the bookshelf of a lady who committed suicide, to the knives next to the bed of a couple who died hand in hand; what they left behind creates the ‘shape of life’.

Life: Japan went through a serious economic recession since the Bubble Collapse, and reality became too severe to bear. People lost hope and started dreaming of something beyond humanity. Senji Nakajima, 63, has been living with sex-dolls for the past 10 years. The dolls mean more than satisfying his sexual desires, they are his companions. In April 2018, Matsuda Michihito ran for Mayor of Tama City in Tokyo with a robot to the fore.

He works in the IT industry and always thought politics need AI more than in any other fields. He believes AI will increase efficiency and effectiveness in politics, because it wouldn’t get corrupted like politicians.

We secured all the access to the factories filmed last winter. Also, we obtained consent and trust from all the protagonists. Thanks to their cooperation, we could visit their high-security workplace such as suicidal sites or forensic labs.

For Japan, we travel to Tokyo every month to follow the protagonists and stay for a week or two to capture not only major events but also subtle moments. As for visual approach, Lash focuses on the humans participating in the process as much as the objects that resemble human.

In part 1, As all objects and actions hold ambivalence, the film aims to make use of slow motion focusing on hand movements. These human-like objects too can ‘express’ and audiences project their own emotions on them. Thus, we would become dependent on pre-verbal language.

In part 2, it shows real faces of humans. Despair and anguish that the two men show on a close-up shot contrast against the faces of sex-dolls.

In part 3, we take audiences to the home of a man living with sex-dolls in a outskirts of Tokyo. His home is filled with soft sunlight and his soliloquy. His memories/delusions are be performed in role plays with dolls and we aim to capture the thinning line between reality and delusion of his own.

The film also encloses various archives ranging from historical events to video games. When the rhythm from the moving and still images meet rich archives, the film draws an oriental landscape of today’s dehumanized world.

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Biographies

Heejung Oh Producer

Yoonsuk Jung Director

Heejung Oh Producer Heejung Oh worked at a global consulting firm helping European companies enter Korean and Asian markets. With her passion for film, she decided to help build bridges between the East and West. She was a sales agent specialized in the Asian market and started producing feature documentaries in 2016.

She has been working closely with strong Asian talents and is experienced in domestic distribution as well as international Co-production.

Her first feature documentary For Vagina’s Sake (2018) has won many awards in Korea, and The Plan (2017) scored several millions of online views. Her recent Co-production of The Intention (2018) is ranked the third biggest box office in the history of Korean documentary.

Yoonsuk Jung Director Yoonsuk Jung has a BFA in Visual Arts Studies and a MFA in Documentary Film making from the Korea National University of Arts.

As an artist and a filmmaker, he has been asking critical questions about the public nature of the state and society through the form of art and documentary. His artistic projects and short films were exhibited at the Vancouver Film Festival (2010) and the Gwangju Biennale (2012).

His first feature, Nonfiction Diary, which deals with Korea’s first serial murder case in the 1990s, won various awards including the NETPAC Award at Berlinale (2014), the Official Noves Visions Best Feature Length Non-Fiction Film at SITGES –International Fantastic Film Festival of Catalonia (2014) and the Mecenat Award for the best Korean documentary at the Busan International Film Festival (2013).

His second feature documentary Bamseom Pirate: Seoul Inferno was invited to renowned film festivals such as Rotterdam, BFI London, FIDMarseille.

Production Details |

Lash

PRODUCTION COMPANY SeeSaw Pictures 105-201, Mokdongdong-ro 12-gil Yangcheon-gu 08008 Seoul South Korea www.seesawpictures.kr

hj.oh.film@gmail.com +82 10 4090 4621

CREDITS Production

Director

Co-production Production scheme Release Production status

Heejung Oh Intention (2018 | co-producer) The Plan (2017 | producer) For Vagina’s Sake (2017 | producer) Yoonsuk Jung Non-Fiction Diary (2013 | director) Bamseom Pirates: Seoul Inferno (2017 | director) 70s Production Limited – Yin Cheung Yam – Hong Kong December 2017 – June 2019 August 2019 In production

FINANCING Production budget Still required Funds and Institutes

Other Financiers

Own Investment

Budget €

€ 321.300 € 176.800 Korea Film Council | Dae-o Kwon Seoul Film Council | Mihyang Yoo Busan International Film Festival | Jooyoung Lee Seoul Culture Foundation | Wahn Young Korea Creative Content Agency | Taeyoung Son Vogue Korea | Meehye Lee Ilmin Museum of Art | Miseok Huh Yin Cheung Peter Yam Heejung Oh

| Lash

Development | Pre-Production Producer | Director 11.700 Travel/subsistence 3.800 Test shoot in Korea & China 6.200

€ 21.700

Production Hotels, travel & food 21.100 Production travel and expenses 7.800 Production personnel 27.300 Director 21.100 Technical staff 15.600 Equipment 23.400 Stock Material 14.200 Broadcast requirements 3.900 Assistant Director 7.800

€ 142.200

Post-Production Editor/editing system 29.700 Sound design and mix 15.200 Music 13.200 Travel/subsistence 10.600 Titles and animation (credit) 6.300 Archival rights & reproduction 11.700 Translation & subtitles 6.300 Post-Production Lab 17.200

Outreach and distribution Expenses for pitching

€ 110.200

6.700

€ 6.700

Miscellaneous Accounting 1.800 Legal Advisor 4.300

Overhead Overhead 6% Contingency 6%

Total budget (summed)

34 IDFA Forum catalogue 2018

€ 39.100 € 15.600 € 15.600 € 7.800 € 11.700 € 7.800 € 7.800 € 31.300 € 7.800

€ 6.100

17.200 17.200

€ 34.400 € 321.300

Central Pitch

Director David Wachsmann Production Gum Films Status Development Country Israel

Lost Childhood Approximately 700 Palestinian children are imprisoned each year

by Israeli security forces in the West Bank. The film presents the mechanism behind the detention of minors through points of view of the parties taking part in the system and a disturbing documentation from the interrogation rooms.

Synopsis About 700 Palestinian minors are arrested and jailed every year by the Israeli security forces in the West Bank.

They are taken from their homes and interrogated, with mental and physical pressure, which violate international law. Almost all of them are convicted and sent to prison.

The most common offence is stone throwing; but behind the official reasoning, there’s an underlying systemic motive to these mass arrests of children: it’s efficient mechanism to deter the population and preserve Israel’s 50 years occupation of the West Bank. The security forces exploit this fragile point of Palestinian resistance to curb any uprising, mostly in the villages closest to Jewish settlements.

Most children, aged 11 to 17, are pushed to confess and turn in their friends. They agree to plea bargains, and most serve a prison term without having their day in court.

Format HD | 60’ Genre

•P olitics | Society

Pitch Type Central Pitch

From the perspective of Israel’s security system, mass juvenile arrest is an extremely effective and relatively non-violent measure.

For Palestinian society, the damage is permanent. 75% of jailed minors are bound to return to prison. There is no rehabilitation system, and their opportunities for a better life are extremely limited.

The dramatic core of the film is video recorded interrogations, which are as chilling as they are monotonous and dry.

Years later, as young men, they reflect on the ways this experience had shaped them. These heart wrenching stories will be framed with poignant interviews with the people who run the system: a soldier who detained children, the judge who ruled on their case, Israeli and Palestinians lawyers who represent them and the West Bank’s chief prosecutor. Along with the interviews and archive materials will show juvenile arrests in real time.

Lost Childhood shows the inner workings of the system: a demonstration or stone throwing in a nearby road is the pretext for a wave of nightly arrests of children.

The threat of arrest also serves to recruit new informants. Thus, the youth is coerced into collaborating with security forces, further tearing the social fabric of the village and crushing solidarity.

The film will depict the widening circles of trauma, touching not only the detained children themselves, but Anyone who takes part in the system. Through the film we will pose difficult questions: Do mass arrests really contribute to security? And is this course of action legitimate, from a legal and moral standpoint?

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Project Description Lost Childhood will combine interviews, archival material, documentation of children’s investigations and interviews when they are already young men. The film will describe the phenomenon of Palestinian minors’ detention as a chronicle of trauma. It will show the point of view of members of the Israeli bureaucracy of all ranks, the settlers and Israeli society in general.

“The idea to imprison children from the villages adjacent to the settlements and put them in jail is part of the method... to crush the village and make them submissive”, says Neri Ramati, an Israeli lawyer who has represented hundreds of children over the past decade.

The filmed interrogations of the children are difficult to watch. There are children who are denied the most basic rights and are under pressure to confess to acts they did not commit. “A child who returns from prison stops listening to his parents, he is no longer a child”, says Salam Jawad, the principal of a school near the village of Beita. Jawad is a Palestinian educator who presents the impact of child arrests on Palestinian society as a whole.

Most parents do not encourage their children to resist the occupation, knowing that the price will be heavy.

According to Salam Jawad most of the arrested children drop out of school.

“The military courts are not there to educate the youth and adults but are there by virtue of the law that determines that the military government has the authority to judge those who oppose the system”, says Jonathan Livny, a former military judge. He describes how most cases end in confessions and plea bargains.

“I’m not ashamed of what we did... it was a good arrest, an important arrest” Years after serving in the army, Matan Kolka is still dealing with the psychological consequences of his service in the West Bank.

Ehud Alsham, a former resident of the settlement of Yitzhar: “They are not children, they are terrorists in every way, and if the army does not stop them, they will grow up to be something I’m afraid to think about”.

Ehud describes the confrontations with the Palestinian youths from the nearby villages. The perception that sees children as a security risk, current or potential, is also echoed in the words of a former chief military prosecutor.

During his time thousands of Palestinian minors were arrested and imprisoned. “I truly believe that the military system of law enforcement in Judea and Samaria meets all the standards required by international conventions”.

Neri Ramati, the lawyer representing the minor’s quotes: “Most of the children do not throw stones out of a decision to fight the occupier because they have been exposed to propaganda or are part of any organization; They do it because they are children who live in an impossible reality, and naturally, they rebel”.

Muhammad alSalhi and Amar Arafat from a refugee camp near Nablus were arrested and held in prisons when they were 16 and 17 years old. “The Israelis took our childhood away from us, We were born into the world as adults”. They fought the IDF as an extreme group under the leadership of the Fatah and in certain periods even refused to disarm when the leadership called on them to do so.

Through the interrogation room we will get to know the children and be exposed to their character and the story of their lives. The depressing and disturbing documentation of that last moment of childhood; The moment when the child loses his innocence and freedom under the pressure of the interrogators, just before he goes to jail.

Director’s Note The first time I entered the military court at the Ofer detention facility was in the summer of 2014. I joined Neri Ramati, an Israeli lawyer who focuses on the release of Palestinian children. A prison guard entered the court and was followed by two children dressed in prison uniforms with handcuffs on their hands and feet. They were 12 and 14 years old. The young boy’s eyes were confused, and he looked for his mother’s glance next to me while the tears ran down her eyes. On leaving the courthouse, Neri told me that there was no way to release these children without them admitting to the act.

Even if they did not do anything, the only way home is if they admit.

The arrival at the court and the encounter with the harsh reality brought me to a situation where I had to understand the widespread phenomenon of arrests of children in the West Bank. It was inconceivable that an hour’s drive from my house, children who were supposed to be in school, study and play with friends, were behind bars.

For many years I attended demonstrations in the West Bank and Jerusalem, in the belief that activism could change. Over the years, cinema has become a central voice in my life and enables me to express my social and political views. I believe in the power of the gaze and the power of the camera to create a deep, fascinating and uncompromising dialogue. I believe that this film has the power to raise serious questions among the viewers and to highlight the complex phenomenon that many people are unaware of in Israel and around the world.

36 IDFA Forum catalogue 2018

Production Details |

Biographies

Lost Childhood

PRODUCTION COMPANY Gum Films 18 Ben Avigdor street 652110 Tel Aviv Israel www.gumfilms.com

Yoav Roeh Producer Yoav Roeh, owner of Gum Films, graduated the Sam Spiegel film school, and is in the art and business of making movies for over 15 years. To date Yoav has produced more than 10 narrative feature films, several TV series, and many documentaries. Yoav is also a graduate of Management of Art and Culture institutes at Tel Aviv University Faculty of Business Management.

yoav@gumfilms.com +97 2523365572

CREDITS Production

Director

Executive Production Distributor/Sales Agent Screenplay Editor Production scheme Release Production status

Yoav Roeh One Last Bedtime Story (2017 | producer) Third Person (2015 | producer) The Lab (2013 | producer) David Wachsmann Acre Dreams (2017 | screenwriter) Freedom Runners (2016 | director) Reconstruction (2013 | director | screenwriter) Esther van Messel, Gitte Hansen | First Hand Films Esther van Messel | First Hand Films David Wachsmann David Reinlieb

David Wachsmann Director David Wachsmann studied at the Sam Spiegel film school. He is a Filmmaker living and working in Tel-Aviv.

Among his projects are The Tour Guide (2018, Work in progress | director | co-producer), Acre Dreams (2018, feature film | writer), Freedom Runners (2016, documentary film | director | DOP | co-producer). He participated with his current film Lost Childhood in 2017 GreenHouse Documentary development program.

January 2019 – May 2019 October 2019 Development

Yoav Roeh Producer

David Wachsmann Director

FINANCING Production budget Still required Funds and Institutes Own Investment

Budget €

€ 335.880 € 260.000 The New Fund for Cinema and TV | Dorit Inbar Gum Films | Yoav Roeh

| Lost Childhood

Development | Pre-Production Producer & director 60.000 Travel/subsistence 10.000 Research 15.000

€ 85.000

Production Archival rights & reproduction 5.000 Hotels, travel & food 7.500 Production travel and expenses 7.500 Production personnel 5.000 Assistant Director 7.500 Technical staff 32.000 Equipment 18.000 Stock Material 7.500 Broadcast requirements 12.000

€ 50.000 € 25.880

Post-Production Editor/editing system 65.000 Sound design and mix 22.000 Titles and animation 7.500 Music 7.500 Archival rights & reproduction 20.000

Overhead Overhead 5 % Contingency 7 %

Total budget (summed)

€ 122.000

11.200 15.680

€ 26.880 € 335.880

€ 102.000

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Central Pitch

Director Sam Hobkinson Production Met Film Production,

Bright Yellow Films, Arts Alliance Productions

Status Development Country United Kingdom

Misha’s Story

Format HD | 90’ Genres

• History • Investigative Pitch Type Central Pitch

A holocaust memoir is revealed to be fake, written to mask an even more audacious deception.

Synopsis When she was seven, Misha Defonseca escaped the Nazis, crossed Europe on foot, lived with wolves and endured unimaginable hardship in search of her deported parents. Her Holocaust memoir took the world by storm and a Hollywood studio came knocking. But a fallout with her publisher who turned detective, revealed Misha’s story as an audacious deception created to hide an even darker truth.

In the early 1990s, Misha Defonseca broke a 50-year silence, telling friends in the Jewish community of Massachusetts about her terrible experiences as a young girl during the Holocaust: Stripped of her identity, and ‘hidden’ in the house of a Catholic family, she decided to run away, walking east across Europe, eating earthworms and insects, befriending wolves and living by her wits in search of her deported parents. On hearing this incredible account, local publisher Jane Daniel persuaded Misha to write her story as a memoir.

Before the book was even written, the buzz began. The press picked up the story, Disney bought the film rights and translation rights were being sold around the world.

By the time the book was finished, Oprah’s Book Club came calling, and their involvement guaranteed an international bestseller.

38 IDFA Forum catalogue 2018

Then something strange happened. Misha grew uncooperative and refused to go on the live TV show.

Thus began a year-long feud between Jane and Misha that ended in court. Misha told the jury how Jane had taken advantage of a Holocaust survivor. The jury was disgusted. The judge ordered Jane to pay damages of $33 million.

In an effort to rebuild her reputation, Jane Daniel went back through her attorney’s research. At the bottom of a file of accounts she found a bank slip, written in Misha’s hand, giving her mother’s maiden name and her own place and date of birth. This was information Misha always claimed not to know, saying her true identity had been lost during the war. If Misha had lied about this, what else in her story might be untrue?

Project Description This is a documentary about untruth and fabrication, about history and imagination. Just like Sam Hobkinson’s recent feature film collaboration with Damien Hirst, Treasures from the Wreck of the Unbelievable, it will locate the viewer in the uneasy space between truth and fiction, and raise questions about how and why we believe stories we are told.

Misha’s Story is a stylish cinematic narrative that will unfold like a fast paced thriller. In the style of The Imposter or Capturing the Friedmans, the film will play with the viewers’ sympathy as the story twists and turns.

Misha will go from victim to villain and, depending on how the viewer sees it, back to victim again.

In keeping with its subject, the story will be told with elements both fabricated and actual: • I nterviews with the key participants.

•A rchive film, photographs and documents from the Holocaust/ WWII era.

•N ews and TV archive (of both the initial discovery of Misha’s story, and the revelations that it was made up) •A bstract recreations of certain scenes in the trial and the archive search for Misha’s identity.

• I nterview and actuality sequences with an actor playing the ‘fictional’ version of Misha (only when the hoax is uncovered will these sequences be revealed as fabricated and this character as ‘playing a role’ by showing the sets | costume | makeup behind the fiction).

Like Stories We Tell, this film will be playful with the notion of truth. Subverting the documentary form, hinting at, but only revealing late that Misha is played by an actor — her home recreated in a studio and the scenes of her telling her story in the synagogue, shot as ‘fake archive’ using the same actor.

Visually the film will look like a cinematic documentary — composed to-camera interviews, observational sequences with our characters, archive film, photographs and documents, and subtle abstract reconstructions when needed.

What feels like a conventional history documentary, quickly becomes a fast-paced detective thriller that questions the notion of memory and truth.

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Biographies

Al Morrow Producer

Al Morrow Producer Al is a producer at Met Film Production. Her films include Sour Grapes, How To Change The World, Donor Unknown, Town of Runners, Men Who Swim, Village at the End of the World and Deep Water. Al is currently in production on Last Breath (Creative Scotland, BBC Scotland, ZDF/ARTE) and Reason I Jump (BFI, Vulcan).

Poppy Dixon Producer Poppy is a producer whose films include The Imposter, Inside the Hunt for the Boston Bombers, Silk Road: Drugs, Death and the Dark Web, The Prince of Pennsylvania and Bart Layton’s American Animals.

Poppy Dixon Producer

matt wells Producer

Matt Wells Producer

Sam Hobkinson Director

Matt Wells Producer Matt is a producer and filmmaker at Arts Alliance Productions and Park Circus. He was executive producer on Sam Hobkinson’s most recent film Treasures from the Wreck of the Unbelievable. He has produced numerous short documentaries for partners including BFI, Sony Music, and Warner Bros featuring talent including Monty Python, Sir Ian McKellen and Jonas Kaufmann.

Sam Hobkinson Director Sam Hobkinson’s most recent work is Treasures from the Wreck of the Unbelievable, a feature film collaboration with artist Damien Hirst, set for theatrical release in late 2017 and Netflix in 2018. He has written and directed a broad range of documentary and drama for British and American television, and has twice been recipient of the ‘Grierson’ British Documentary Award; in 2007 for Who Cares About Art, a film about the life changing effects that works of art have on those who spend most time around them — the gallery guards, cleaners and caretakers — and, in 2012, for The Love of Books: A Sarajevo Story, the dramatic and moving tale of a group of book lovers who risked their lives to save a priceless collection of Islamic manuscripts during the Siege of Sarajevo. His work spans landmark arts documentary series, such as Venice for the BBC, to war-zone documentaries and testimony-led films, such as the feature length film, Inside the Hunt for the Boston Bombers, which won the Real Screen Award.

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Production Details |

Misha’s Story

PRODUCTION COMPANY Met Film Production Ealing Studios, Ealing Green W55EP London United Kingdom www.metfilmproduction.co.uk

al@metfilm.co.uk +44 7768315579

2ND PRODUCTION COMPANY Bright Yellow Films United Kingdom brightyellowfilms.com

poppydixon@gmail.com +44 07768315579

3RD PRODUCTION COMPANY Arts Alliance Production 5 Young Street W8 5EH London United Kingdom

matt.wells@ArtsAlliance.com +44 7840140940

CREDITS Al Morrow, Poppy Dixon, Matt Wells Al Morrow: School In The Cloud (2018 | producer) Sour Grapes (2016 | producer) How To Change The World (2015 | producer) Director Sam Hobkinson Treasures from the Wreck of the Unbelievable (2017 | director) Inside The Hunt for the Boston Bombers (2015 | director) For The Love of Books: A Sarajevo Story (2012 | director) Executive Production Torstein Blixfjord | Arts Alliance, Vesna Cudic, Stewart Le Marecha, Jonny Persey | Met Film Production, Aidrian Sibley | Bright Yellow Films Distributor/Sales Agent Vesna Cudic | Met Film Sales Production

Production scheme Release Production status

January 2019 – October 2019 January 2020 Development

FINANCING Production budget Still required

Budget €

€ 1.000.434 € 1.000.434

| Misha’s Story

Development | Pre-Production Writer 9.000

€ 9.000

Production Hotels, travel & food 20.000 Production travel and expenses 17.130 Production personnel 50.825 Director 66.000 Technical staff 55.940 Equipment 32.000 Producers 133.000 Location Facilities 54.000 Recon Shoot (art dept, construction, cast, materials etc) 95.000

€ 523.895

Post-Production Editor/editing system 118.139 Sound design and mix 40.000 Titles and animation 3.000 Music 40.000 Archival rights & reproduction 30.000 Picture post 50.000

€ 281.139

Miscellaneous Fees and charges 64.000 Insurance 16.400

Overhead Overhead 2.5 % Contingency 8 %

Total budget (summed)

€ 80.400

25.000 81.000

€ 106.000 € 1.000.434

Central Pitch

Director Albert Solé Production Zeta Audiovisual,

Minimal Films

Status Development Country Spain Format 4K | 80’

Return to Raqqa Return to Raqqa chronicles what was perhaps the most famous kidnapping event in history, when 19 journalists were taken captive by the Islamic State, as told by one of its protagonists: Spanish reporter Marc Marginedas, who spent seven months in captivity and was the first captive to be released.

Synopsis Marc Marginedas was a very experienced journalist.

He had covered several conflicts for El Periódico de Catalunya, spoke fluent Arabic and was already well versed in the war in Syria. He had decided to return to this Arabic country in the summer of 2013, despite warnings about the emergence of a more violent al-Qaeda splinter group and a very sophisticated media strategy: the Islamic State (ISIS). He immediately realised that he had fallen into the trap. What followed from that moment on was an ‘in crescendo’ in the insanity of the kidnappers and a fierce fight for survival among the kidnapped. After spending a few weeks alone in an ISIS prison in Aleppo, he was reunited with the other 18 Western journalists in what would end up becoming the biggest media kidnapping in history.

There, in a house in the city of Raqqa, the Syrian capital of the terrorist group, he spent several months in total hardship with some of the journalists who would eventually be beheaded, such as Jim Foley or Steven Sotloff.

The latter experienced the entire kidnapping handcuffed to Marc and would end up becoming his best friend:

Genres

• Politics | Society • Human Interest | Social Issues Pitch Type Central Pitch

they passed months together sharing confidences and supporting each other. As Marc explains, the most difficult thing was not resisting the torture to which they were subjected, but attempting to maintain the group’s spirit of resistance and not falling into the sadistic provocations of the kidnappers, the so-called ‘Beatles’.

In addition to constant beatings, he claims the worst thing was the hunger: Marc lost 30 kilos in just two months. The kidnappers tried everything to break the group’s resistance. What pained him most was to see the vileness that human beings subjected to situations of maximum stress can reach. When Marc was released, he was able to deliver the letters that the other hostages had secretly written to their families.

Return to Raqqa is a physical journey that will take us to Moscow, where Marc is currently working, to the USA, to meet the families of his murdered former kidnapping companions, to Barcelona, where his newspaper colleagues and family live, to Istanbul, and finally to the house in Raqqa where he lived in captivity. Each of these places possess a cathartic power to unlock his memories: those of the biggest ordeal in Marc’s life, although even this has not destroyed one iota of his passion for journalism.

Project Description The career of Spanish journalist Marc Marginedas spans more than twenty years in some of the most turbulent arenas of our century. From Chechnya to Algiers, from Iraq to Afghanistan, Marginedas has become an outstanding eyewitness to civil wars and ethnic clashes.

But when he was kidnapped by ISIS terrorists in 2013 during an incursion into Syria, the journalist went from being an informant to making news himself.

Thus began a period of captivity that lasted almost six months, during which Marginedas lived with his captors

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and journalists such as James Foley or Steven Sotloff, who sadly became famous after being publicly executed in videos that shocked the world.

Marc Marginedas was released in 2014 and now lives in Russia, a country that seems to be the complete opposite of Syria in terms of both its culture and even landscape, but also the best entry point back into the Middle East region. And he does indeed want to return.

Return to Raqqa will commence with Marc Marginedas’ desire to return to Syria, to once again see the faces and places that, like ghosts in his memory, attest to the reality of his months of captivity. The documentary will accompany the journalist to the USA, where he will meet the relatives of James Foley and Steven Sotloff, and will also travel to Spain to find out how people like Marginedas’ sister and his friends and work colleagues experienced his months of kidnapping.

This emotional and yet also physical journey that we are going to embark on with Marginedas will be his firsthand testimony to help us learn about the six months he spent in a terrorist prison: the sanitary conditions, the psychological warfare of the captors towards the hostages, the coexistence with his unfortunate companions, marked at times by solidarity, but at other times also by the tension of circumstances...

By using dramatized sequences of his captivity, always supported and based on his own experience, we will closely experience what that particular hell meant as we focus on Marginedas’ undertaking: to return to Raqqa, to the house where it all happened.

Accordingly, Albert Solé’s work will consist of providing Marc Marginedas with a platform to help him express in words, as well as images, all that he has not been able to recount until now. Solé is an expert filmmaker in portraying complex life stories of extraordinary characters who have often been prominent figures in their own

42 IDFA Forum catalogue 2018

historical circumstances, and Marginedas already has a prominent place in this area. But this filmmaker and this journalist have also known each other since their early days in the profession and this close relationship will help to make the documentary’s protagonist open up in front of the camera and reflect on some of the major issues that he carries around with him.

What are the best, and also the worst, feelings that are brought out in a human being by a situation such as the one he experienced? How do you overcome a trauma such as this? Why was he the first to be released?

How did he feel when he witnessed the murder of his colleagues Foley and Sotloff, which quickly became the most viral event in history?

With these threads and questions, the documentary will follow Marginedas to the house in Raqqa, the scene of an emotional catharsis that will culminate this return to Syria, which is simultaneously a return to the darkest landscape of his memory.

Return to Raqqa is the story of a journey, but also a defence of a wounded yet necessary profession: that of journalism. In a time of post-truths and fake news, when being a journalist has become not only a risky, but also a precarious profession, figures like Marc Marginedas remind us just how important his profession really is. His accounts of a complex geopolitical reality do not come from the comfort of an office, but from the front line of battle, the same territory that Foley and Sotloff so often traversed to tell us that the events in places as far away as Syria or Iraq also concern and affect us. The horror of seeing journalists becoming human targets, becoming the victims of these conflicts, reminds us that we, like them, have a responsibility for what is happening. Albert Solé’s documentary aims to highlight the work of those who challenge us and help us to understand our society with their chronicles and photographs. And sometimes they pay a high price for it.

Production Details |

Biographies

Return to Raqqa

PRODUCTION COMPANY Zeta Audiovisual O’Donnell 12 08009 Barcelona Spain

Zeta Audiovisual Production Company Zeta Audiovisual is a production and distribution company founded in 2005.

Its experience covers both fiction and documentary feature films, TV series and entertainment programs (quizzes, reality shows, magazines, coaching-shows). Among its most outstanding projects, its first cinema production was Mortadelo y Filemón, Misión Salvar La Tierra (2008) by Miguel Bardem, who achieved an important blockbuster with over a 1.3M spectators in Spain and El Hombre de las Mil Caras (2016) directed by Alberto Rodríguez who had eleven Goya Awards nominations. Zeta Audiovisual has just released Netflix’s new TV series Élite which has already been renewed for two additional seasons.

As for documentaries, it is currently producing Abusos en la Iglesia, Causa General by Albert Solé and Return to Raqqa.

ijuaristi@zetaaudiovisual.es +34 91 586 36 36

2ND PRODUCTION COMPANY Minimal Films 5 Fotiou Patriarchou 11471 Athens Greece minimalfilms.com

albert@minimalfilms.com +34 935134110

CREDITS Production

Director

Screenplay Production scheme Release Production status

Iñaki Juaristi, Albert Solé Iñaki Juaristi: Élite (2018 | director) La Enfermedad del Domingo (2018 | producer) Un Otoño sin Berlín (2015 | producer) Albert Solé Joan Miró, the Inner Fire (2018 | director) Jarabe Against Cancer (2017 | director) Frozen memories (2013 | director) Albert Solé March 2019 – January 2020 March 2020 Development

FINANCING Production budget Still required

Budget €

€ 334.680 € 334.680

| Return to Raqqa

Development | Pre-Production Writer 12.500 Producer | Director 15.000 Travel/subsistence 6.000 Technical staff (teaser) 7.000 Translations 1.000

€ 41.500

Production Archival rights & reproduction 15.000 Hotels, travel & food 10.000 Production travel and expenses 7.000 Production personnel 50.000 Director 29.000 Technical staff 60.000 Equipment 9.500 Broadcast requirements 6.000 Actors (recreations) 14.300

€ 200.800

Outreach and distribution Prints and advertising 6.000 Distribution 5.000

Miscellaneous Production miscellaneous

Overhead Overhead 7% Contingency 5% Bank interest

Total budget (summed)

€ 11.000

7.180

€ 7.180

22.000 16.700 5.000

€ 43.700 € 334.680

Iñaki Juaristi Producer

Albert Solé Producer | Director

Minimal Films Production Company Minimal Films is a production company specialising in the documentary field that was founded in Barcelona in 2008

by Albert Solé. Its projects encompass very diverse themes and viewpoints, including historical and social issues, science, culture, adventure and music.

Its first cinema production was the documentary feature Bucharest, Memory Lost, winner of national (Goya Award for Best Documentary) and international film festivals.

Other productions include The Sound of Raval, Voices of the World, an international documentary series co-produced with Chile, Terra, Australis, Incógnita, The Silent Death (TVE), The Final Escape (coproduced with TVE and TV3), winner of national and international film festivals such as Málaga Film Festival (Spain - Silver Biznaga) or Guadalajara Film Festival (Mexico - Audience Award), Frozen Memories (TVE and TVC), Gabor, with the support of MEDIA (Silver Biznaga for Best Director at Málaga Film Festival and Gaudí Award for Best Documentary), Sex, Maracas and Chihuahuas (TVC, TVE), Jarabe Against Cancer (Movistar +, TVC). And its latest documentary Miró, the Inner Fire (CPB, ARTE, TVC, AVRO, IB3).

Post-Production Editor/editing system 14.000 Sound design and mix 4.500 Titles and animation 7.000 Music 5.000

€ 30.500

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Central Pitch

Director Mehrdad Oskouei Production Oskouei Films Status Rough Cut Stage

The Revisited Patricide in Tehran! 5 girls are in a youth correctional facility for murder; 3 of them conspired with their mothers to kill their fathers.

The 3 mothers await execution in a maximum security prison.

Synopsis Five girls under 18 are in a youth correctional facility.

Three of them killed their fathers with the help of their mothers, who are in prison awaiting execution.

We follow the story of these girls and their mothers. We look into their past and at the reasons for killing their fathers, as we witness their daily lives behind bars.

Before the girls are taken in handcuffs to see their mothers in prison, our film crew gives them an opportunity to make a statement for their mothers on camera.

They say all the things they never had an opportunity to say. After the mothers see the films of their daughters, they too are given a chance to record messages for their daughters and say their last words and advice. These last words have the essence of a last will and testament.

Project Description Gaining access to my characters is one of the most important issues I am faced with in making my new film. I have had to surmount many obstacles in order to gain the proper licenses to film in prison. When I finally signed an agreement that under no circumstances would I ever show the film in Iran, I was granted permission to begin shooting. Just in these last two weeks, I finally entered the women’s prison and began filming.

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Country Iran Format Full HD | 75’ Genre

• Human Interest | Social Issues

Pitch Type Central Pitch

The red tape involved in gaining official entrance into the women’s prison was much more complicated than what was required by the Corrections and Rehabilitation Center (CRC) for detainees under 18 years of age.

I have been acquainted with some of the characters since making my previous films and I have even kept in touch with some of them. Mahsa and Somayeh were in my first films and were both sentenced for assisting their mothers to kill their fathers. While I was communicating with the daughters, aiding them financially and helping with their education in the CRC, I was also contacting their mothers who were serving time in prison for killing their husbands. In this way we were able to bond and they, in return, did what they could to facilitate my filming inside those high walls topped with barbed wire.

People are curious about how I have been able to gather the information to tell their stories and how is it possible for these women to openly discuss their inner most secrets. Well, many of the characters in my new film were also in Starless Dreams, a 76-minute film edited from 90 hours of footage. Many details of their stories are clearly explained in those extra 89 hours. Also, my countless interviews with them have all been aimed at getting them to discuss their pasts. I need to be in touch with their world in order for me to actually understand them and then pass what I have learned on to my audience.

An innovation used in this film is the direct dialogues of mothers and daughters accused of murder without the presence of any film crew (the camera is the sole witness).

The reason this came to be was at some point I realized that even though the girls had told their story to judges, correctional facility representatives, to me and many others, they had never had the opportunity to speak to

their mothers in complete privacy. In Iran, convicted murderers are only allowed one face-to-face visit every three months, and these visits are limited to a very short time and are watched very carefully. This was why the girls never had an opportunity to speak to their moms un-chaperoned.

After a few of my own interviews with these girls I came to the conclusion that they needed to have a final conversation with their mothers. I realized that through recorded messages for their moms they could get out these words that had been stuck in their throats for so many years, which if left unsaid would end up becoming traumatic.

We prepared a room for them with a peaceful environment, we assured them no one would interrupt them and they could stay in the room with the cameras as long as they wished. After they were ready they could push record. Even my crew and I wouldn’t enter this personal/ private space. When they finished we transferred their video messages to DVD and took it to the adult prison where the mothers sat in a room by themselves and watched their daughters speak to them. Then we made the same preparations for the mothers to make a video for their daughters.

The focus of this film is on murder. We seek answers to the following questions: What gives a human being the ability to kill another human being? How do a mother and daughter decide to join forces and do away with the ‘man’ (their husband or father) in their lives? What actually motivated them to go through with it? Did they not have any idea of what would be the outcome of this act? What happened to make them commit murder knowing what the result would be? What are the views and motivations of an adult who commits such a crime?

How does a child look at murder? How can these two separate worlds, that of the child and that of the adult, be brought to light?

The girls see their murders differently now after so many years. It seems the murder they were found guilty of as children is no longer just the murder of their father, but a murder of themselves and the life they knew. Now, when there is no longer a father, the mother is on death row, and the girls are on the verge of being pardoned, where will the girls go? They are now outcasts of society and shunned by their families. They are now more alone than ever, and their biggest complaint against their mothers is how could they have let this happen to them.

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Biographies

Mehrdad Oskouei Producer | Director

Siavash Jamali Executive Producer

Mehrdad Oskouei Producer | Director Mehrdad Oskouei is an Iranian filmmaker, producer, photographer and researcher born in Tehran in 1969 and later graduated in film direction from the University of Arts. His films have been screened at numerous festivals both at home and abroad to great critical acclaim, making him one of the major Iranian documentary makers. In 2010 Oskouei received the Dutch Prince Claus Award for his achievements. His latest film Starless Dreams has won 37 awards and participated in more than 120 film festivals. He won the Amnesty International Prize at the Berlinale (an award he shared with the festival’s Golden Bear winner, Fire at Sea). He also has been honoured as the recipient of the festival’s True Vision Award at True/ False Film Fest in Missouri.

Production Details |

The Revisited

PRODUCTION COMPANY Oskouei Films C/O DreamLab Films 14 chemin des Chichourliers 06110 Le Cannet France

mehrdad.oskouei@gmail.com +98 9123904919

CREDITS Production

Director Co-production Executive Producer Distributor/Sales Agent Screenplay Editor Production scheme Release Production status

Mehrdad Oskouei Starless Dreams (2016 | director | producer) The Last Days of Winter (2011 | director | producer) It’s Always Late for Freedom (2007 | director | producer) Nose, Iranian Style (2005 | director | producer) The Other Side Of Burka (2004 | director | producer) Mehrdad Oskouei Indie Film – Carsten Aanonsen – Norway Siavash Jamali | Emrooz film Nasrine Medard de Chardon | DreamLab Films Mehrdad Oskouei Amir Adibparvar May 2017 – March 2019 May 2019 Rough cut stage

FINANCING Production budget Still required Distributors Funds and Institutes

Other Financiers Own Investment

Carsten Aanonsen Co-producer

Budget €

€ 144.024 € 54.924 Dreamlab | Nasrine Médard de Chardon Sorfond IDFA Bertha Fund | development Crowdfunding Oskouei Films

| The Revisited

Development | Pre-Production Writer 5.000 Producer | Director 6.000 Travel/subsistence 3.000 Producin a trailer 1.374 Office expenses 3.000 Researcher 3.000

€ 21.374

Production Hotels, travel & food 1.239 Production travel and expenses 2.061 Production personnel 18.537 Director 12.300 Technical staff 10.307 Equipment 4.741 Stock Material 330 Producer 9.366 Shooting allowance costs 183

€ 59.064

Post-Production Editor/editing system 9.162 Sound design and mix 4.215 Titles and animation 1.374 Music 4.123 Subtitling and translation 4.581 Color grading 2.748

€ 26.203

Outreach and distribution Trailer and marketing material 5.038 DCP and film festivals entery fees 10.993 website 2.752

€ 18.783

Miscellaneous Office rental and supplies Co-production costs (Indie film)

Overhead Contingency 8 %

Total budget (summed)

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€ 30.000 € 33.500 € 5.000 € 9.162 € 11.438

5.245 3.350

€ 8.595

10.005

€ 10.005 € 144.024

Central Pitch

Director René Sascha Johannsen Production Sonntag Film

The Rise and Curse of Lukas Graham When blows the charts and results in a Grammy-nomination, it looks like success for Lukas, only he wrote the song about the loss of his father. How do you recover from immense grief when the whole world is singing along to your sorrow?

Synopsis Over the course of five years we follow Lukas Forchhammer a 20-year-old kid from freetown, Christiania in Denmark. One day he gets the shocking news that his dad has died of a heart attack. Lukas is devastated and while grieving he writes the song 7 Years about his loss. The song becomes the biggest international hit in Danish music history and for his band Lukas Graham, it’s the key to a contract with media giant Warner Music US. Lukas Graham tours the world, but along with the new found attention comes what Lukas predicts as his biggest personal nightmare: when writing autographs and interacting with fans everybody want to share their own personal losses with Lukas who can’t cope with it.

Their pain reminds him of his own loss.

Pressure mounts as Lukas is about to become a dad himself. He has created an alter ego that is equal to his fans - its part of his hippie upbringing not to put himself on a pedestal. But on a personal level he can’t live up to his own expectations of how to deal with fame, and a year into the success, Lukas breaks down and Warner has to cancel his Asian tour.

Status Development Country Denmark Format RED,HDV | 58’ & 90’ Genre

•A rt | Music | Culture

Pitch Type Central Pitch | Arts & Culture

The breakdown feeds a new doubt about himself and his place in the world. Maybe its not just the fans but also himself that is holding on to the pain as inspiration for his songs? When you have managed to live all your dreams and you’re still not happy - where do you go looking for happiness?

As baby Olivia is born, family is Lukas’ focus. Finding the balance of being a rock star, and now a father as well, with 3 Grammy nominations, the ambivalence of playing a Justin Bieber song in front of 80.000 people at Wembley Stadium - the audience of your dreams, staying friends with your colleagues when you want to be the biggest star in the world are all issues that are part of the rise and curse of Lukas Grahams 7 Years.

Maybe Lukas was never really a kid but he becomes a man in the process while he grows from rags to riches.

Project Description Director’s Note I started filming Lukas Graham when they first arrived in NYC and Los Angeles to play their first showcases in 2012. Already then they created a lot of hype in the music business and I had no doubt Lukas was a big star but I also soon realised that he’s a very special and complex character. The song ‘7 Years’ was in the works at this point and not recorded yet.

I researched and learned that Lukas was born to be a star in the sense that when he was a baby, he got the acting role of a little brother, Grunk in a widely popular Danish family series. So as long as Lukas remembers, he has had the attention of the public eye. That attention has created a special character with an alternate relation to his surroundings and if you ask Lukas today he hates Grunk with a passion. The character in many ways ruined his childhood and has made his life difficult. It’s hard for him to trust new people, as he never knows what they

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want from him and socially he has an urge to always be center of attention and the wisest person present.

Lukas is aware that he is addicted to the public attention even though he hates it, but as he says he ‘doesn’t know any alternative’. To make it even more complicated he was raised in a hippie commune, Christiania where you’re not supposed to have a big ego and for Lukas to balance the preaching of what he was taught in the freetown against his alter ego and his other ego being fed by the ever growing success, can be quite confusing to witness. Definitely also to Lukas.

I’ve followed the group fly-on-the-wall style from intense studio sessions in Los Angeles to creative conflicts with Warner who didn’t believe in 7 Years as a single. I’ve filmed Lukas on the tour bus crying from the exhausting pressure of writing 300 autographs after shows and talking to every single fan about how they lost another family member ‘just like him’, but also the euphoria from 30.000 fans singing along on his lyrics and the ambivalent moment when they played for the dream audience at Wembley. 80.000 people where there and Lukas was bound to play a Justin Bieber song which was against everything he believed in and still had to. When they where nominated for 3 Grammies there was nothing in the world that could break them until they didn’t win any prizes and Lukas walked out pissed while cursing at his A&R. I’ve documented one party tour bus turn into three busses with a nanny, wife and baby in one of them. At present I’m waiting for him to finish the design of his new house in Copenhagen where his mother in law, wife and a couple of friends are moving in.

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Producer’s comment Observational documentaries on arts and culture that invites the audience into new territories have a special place in my heart. With experience from Big Time (architecture) and Bobbie Jene (modern dance) my focus is not only to invite the audience into a fascinating world of arts but to build up a strong character-driven story that invites a mainstream audience into the story.

René has that special talent to dives in deep with his characters and constructs his story by creating strong story-driven scenes that give a unique insight into life’s difficult human challenges.

By shying away from obvious talking heads, René is taking inspiration from fiction films and a strong cinematic tradition where he lifts the story both aesthetically and narratively.

This gives us a chance to exceed the normal music documentary-audience and resonate with a greater universal story about being a modern human being in 2019 combining being a great artist, a husband and a father.

Production stage We have 90% of the footage secures and will complete the last shootings before new year. Editing has started parallel to the shooting and we have selected key scenes ready. The editing process will begin in January 2019 end a completed film is expected to be ready end 2019.

Production Details |

Biographies

The Rise and Curse of Lukas Graham

PRODUCTION COMPANY Sonntag Film Pilestraede 52C 2nd Floor 1112 Copenhagen K Denmark www.sonntagpictures.com

sara@sonntagpictures.com +45 28964414

CREDITS Production

Director

Production scheme Release Production status

Sara Stockmann Bobbi Jene (2017 | producer) Mercy Mercy - a Portait of a True Adoption (2012 | producer) Armadillo (2009 | producer) René Sascha Johannsen The Red Chapel (2016 | editor | cinematographer) The Wolfpack (2015 | co-editor | co-cinematographer) Destination Oh Land (2011 | director) January 2019 – September 2019 November 2019 Development

FINANCING Production budget Still required Broadcasters Funds and Institutes Own Investment

Budget €

€ 744.159 € 665.128 DR Danish Broadcasting Corporation | Anders Thomsen € 33.557 Danish Film Institute | Anders Riis-Hansen € 28.859 Sonntag Pictures | Sara Stockmann € 16.615

| The Rise and Curse of Lukas Graham

Development | Pre-Production Writer 10.067 Producer | Director 3.220 Travel/subsistence 2.208 Editor 3.700

€ 19.195

Production Archival rights & reproduction 18.500 Hotels, travel & food 12.500 Production travel and expenses 11.500 Production personnel 78.000 Director 115.000 Technical staff 36.450 Equipment 35.210 Stock Material 15.750 Broadcast requirements 17.500 location 2.013

€ 342.423

Post-Production Editor/editing system 43.220 Sound design and mix 36.250 Titles and animation 17.500 Music 32.100 archival rights & reproduction 46.979

€ 176.049

Outreach and distribution Artwork, promotion, partnerships, SoMe 34.500

€ 34.500

Miscellaneous Insurrance, audit 9.500 legal 17.500

€ 27.000

Overhead Overhead 28.998 Contingency 10% 57.997 Administration fees 10% 57.997

Total budget (summed)

Sara Stockmann Producer With a great passion for storytelling, founder of Sonntag Pictures, Sara Stockmann’s main focus is on highend, director-driven documentaries for a broad international audience.

Sara Stockmann has produced several award-winning feature documentaries with strong global distribution results, lately Tribeca winner 2017, Bobbi Jene as well as Cannes- and Emmy-Awardnominated Armadillo, 2011 and IDFAwinner 2015 At Home in the World. In 2017 Sara released five international documentaries including Big Time, the documentary about Danish start architect Bjarke Ingels. The film have been released in all mayor territories and been a strong international hit on all platforms.

Stockmann holds a Master’s Degree in Media Science from The University of Copenhagen and University of Amsterdam and is chairman for the council of documentaries at the Danish Film Institute appointed by the Cultural Minister of Denmark.

Sara Stockmann Producer

René Sascha Johannsen Director

René Sascha Johannsen Director René Started early and has more than 15 years of professional experience.

René has filmed and edited more than 200 hours of broadcasted tv and documentaries. Has been nominated and awarded at international film festivals more than a dozen times. Most famous is Mads Brüggers Sundance awarded The Red Chapel (DOP, Editor) for which René was also nominated The Golden Frog at Camerimage film festival 2010. But also the Lukas Graham, 7 Years music video which has been played more than 700 million times on youtube. René is credited Co-producer, additional editor and additional DP on the Sundance 2015 awarded The Wolfpack documentary which he worked on closely with director Crystal Moselle. René wrote the first structure and edited the first feature cut before Kotva Film picked it up for production and distribution. The Rise and Curse of Lukas Graham is René’s first international feature film as director. He is based in LA.

€ 144.992 € 744.159

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Central Pitch

Director Corinne Van der Borch,

Tone Grøttjord-Glenne

Production Sant & Usant Status Development Country Norway

Sisters on Track This is a coming of age story set in New York, about hope, sisterhood and belonging as the three young homeless sisters Tai, Rainn and Brooke race against all odds and circumstances towards a brighter future.

Synopsis Three homeless sisters, Tai (13), Rainn (12) and Brooke (11), are by chance discovered by the Jeuness Track Club for girls in Brooklyn, the hardest working team on the East coast. Without any former sports experience, they start practicing together with coach Jean and within a year all three girls win medals at the National Jr Olympics. Or as Brooke puts it: When I had lost all hope and thought we would have to be homeless for the rest of our life, Coach Jean nominated us for Sports illustrated Kids of the year and we won! And then everything changed. Overnight they become America’s darlings and are introduced to a new world of TV shows and celebrities, a world far away from their everyday life, living in a shelter with their single mother Tonia.

We follow the Sheppard Sisters, pursuing theirs dreams of becoming Olympic gold medalists and trying to enter the best schools America has to offer, to ultimately break the cycle of poverty that they find themselves in. We meet the sisters at the homeless shelter just before America discovers them and we follow them through their crucial teenage years into becoming young women. With a fierce competition, such high dreams and expectations, will all three of the sisters manage to stay on track? This Brooklyn story is set in the era of President Trump where women’s empowerment continues to grow all over the world.

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Format HD | 80’ Genre

• Human Interest | Social Issues

Pitch Type Central Pitch

Coach Jean from Jeuness Track team: Women in America (and a lot of other places in this world) are devalued. And then as a woman of color you have it extra tough. I tell my girls, one day you will be a black woman in this society. People already have a lower expectation of you. So you have to be better. You have to be great, just to get an average position.

Real girl power, a change maker and the importance of a supporting team; Is it enough for the girls to break all the statistics and turn their life around?

Project Description Tonia works long shifts for minimum wage and the girls spend the afternoon with different sitters. There is little structure in their lives and even if Tonia is trying to break out of their situation, living at the homeless shelter, chaos seems to define their world. One day, coach Jean, scouting for new talent, sees the girls run and soon after all three are part of the Jeuness track team.

Coach Jean runs the team with a big heart and an iron hand. For her, education is everything and her goal is for every girl on the team is to run themselves into the best high-schools (and thus Colleges) in the country. For the sisters, the goal of the team and the lifestyle they lead proves to be a hard combination and there is frustration when chaos and structure meets.

When the sisters are elected “Sports Kids of the Year” Whoopi Goldberg invites the girls, Tonia and coach Jean to her TV Show The View. Their life in the shelter, their hard work to change their life around and their future needs are presented to America in an overwhelming 20-minute program.

Jean knows that to live in a shelter and keep the grades and the dedication to run at a high level is almost impossible. She also knows that Tonia can’t turn their life around by herself.

Help comes from unexpected corners. Hollywood actor Tyler Perry offers to cover the costs of an apartment for the next two years, and gives Jean the long longed funding so she won’t have to pay for the team out of her own pocket anymore. The sport performance of the girls has now brought a new dimension to Tonia’s life and to coach Jean and Jeuness. Can they keep it up?

It seems like the circumstances finally are on the Sheppard’s side so the girls can stay ‘on track’. In this part of the film we follow the sisters closely as they all start to enter their most vulnerable teenage years. The role of Tonia will be important, will she be able to help them progress or will her way of life work against their dreams?

In the last part of the film Rainn and Tai are preparing to go to high school. To get into the best schools, you will need to stay on top of schoolwork like no other. We see Rainn, standing in front of coach Jean, being told off and benched until her grades get better, big tears rolling down her cheeks. ‘There’s no place for dummies on this team!’. This is the year that the financial help from Tyler Perry comes to an end. Will they manage to stay on top of rent and expenses when they are on their own again? Will the girls and their mom be able to continue to be symbols of hope in the national media and is coach Jeans’ ‘education’ enough for them to fully enter the new world they are being exposed to?

Tai Sheppard (13) the oldest sister is the most diligent and academically gifted of the three. Tai comes across as a childish girl living in a make belief world, longing for the loving attention of the grown ups around her.

While singing in the shower, Tai dreams of going to Yale, becoming a lawyer and breaking an Olympic world record.

Rainn Sheppard (12) is a real tomboy and wants only one thing in life and that is to run. Her dream is to set a world record at the New York City marathon. As the middle sister, she is the glue in the family and the most grounded of the three. Although in the same grade, academically she will never be able to catch up to her sister Tai. Brooke Sheppard (11) was scared that they might never leave the shelter and if they would they might be separated. She loves the ‘new’ world that the girls are exposed to, and seems like a natural on the red carpet.

Her dream is to become an artist, sign a sponsor deal with Nike and be an Olympic high jumper.

The access to Tonia, the girls and Jeuness is unique and unlimited and allows us to capture the rawness and immediate feeling also in the visual style. The camerawork shifts from observational cinema verite to situations where the characters tell the camera small secrets.

The camera tries to be in the middle of the action and stays handheld. On the track, we allow the camera to create smooth shots with a gimbal and/or a drone. A sense of the competition being ‘larger than life’.

Teenagers grow up fast, but perhaps nowhere else quite so rapidly as in New York City. This film touches upon these vulnerable years, when you long for someone who has your best interest at heart, someone you can confide in, someone you look up to. The years when your body changes and you are constantly balancing the drama and the reality of life as it unfolds. For many children, the most important role models are their parents and caregivers. Other children look outside their families and that shows the benefits children can have of community centers, churches, sport teams and so on, where they can meet safe grown ups that can advise them as they are growing up and make them feel of value.

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Biographies

Anita Rehoff Larsen Producer

Corinne Van der Borch Director

Tone GrøttjordGlenne Director

Annemiek van der Hell Co-producer

Production Details |

Anita R. Larsen Producer Anita R. Larsen started working as a producer for Norwegian and international directors in 2010. Educated in film and TV production from the UK, and developed as producer at EURODOC in 2012. Her previous films consist of Varicella (2015) by Victor Kossakovsky (awarded at IDFA), Dancing For You by Erlend E. Mo (awarded at Chicago int. Filmfest & ECFA award).

PRODUCTION COMPANY Sant & Usant St. Olavsgate 9 0129 Oslo Norway www.santogusant.no

Director

Corinne van der Borch Director Dutch director Corinne van der Borch graduated from the New York School of Visual Arts in 2009.

She established Wondertime Films in order to create ‘ordinary magic’, by collecting intimate stories and visuals. Corinne’s feature debut was Girl With Black Balloons, with Alan Berliner committed as consulting editor and Albert Maysles as her mentor. The film won the main award at DOC NYC in 2011.

Production status

Windmill Film Co-production Company Annemiek van der Hell started working as a producer since 2010 with her company Windmill Film.

Windmill Film from The Netherlands develops and creates distinctive documentaries and films for cinema and TV. Recent titles are: Silence of the Tides by Pieter-Rim de Kroon, MEL(INE) by Inna Sahakian. Playing God by Karin Jurschick premiered at HotDocs 2017. Won the Prix Europa in 2016 with the film Little Angels by Marco Niemeyer.

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anita@santogusant.no +47 95033305

CREDITS Production

Sant & Usant Production Company Sant & Usant is a Norwegian company well established in the European documentary landscape, producing films for recognized filmmakers and new strong voices.

Their films have been distributed on all platforms and premieres in all the major international film festivals.

Recent titles: Exit premiered at CPH:DOX 2018, and 69 Minutes of 86 Days awarded at CPH:DOX, HotDocs and Sheffield 2017.

Tone Grøttjord-Glenne Director Tone Grøttjord-Glenne is a Norwegian director. Her debut film was the award-winning film Prirechnyy from 2007. Tone established Sant & Usant Documentary Film in 2005 working as a producer and director. She holds a Master in Directing from National Film and Television School in London. Tone is currently in the editing of her latest film The Girl in the Mirror selected for Good Pitch Europe 2018.

Sisters on Track

Co-production Executive Production Production scheme Release

Anita Rehoff Larsen Varicella (2015 | producer) Dancing for You (2015 | producer) I am Kuba (2014 | producer) Corinne Van der Borch, Tone Grøttjord-Glenne Corinne van der Borch: Ethels Magical Hands (2015 | director) Una Mirada, Dos Realidades (2014 | director) Girl with Black Balloons (2011 | director) Tone Grøttjord-Glenne: 69 Minutes of 86 Days (2017 | producer) Prirechnyy (2007 | director) Brothers (2006 | director) Windmill Film BV – Annemiek van der Hell – The Netherlands Samuel D. Pollard January 2019 – May 2020 September 2020 Development

FINANCING Production budget Still required Funds and Institutes

Budget €

€ 714.860 € 616.644 Norwegian Film Institute | Helle Hansen Creative Europe Fritt Ord | Bente Roalsvig

| Sisters on Track

Development | Pre-Production Directors 40.397 Producer, Line producer and production assistants 44.740 Travel/subsistence 27.170 DOP and Editor 26.898 Sound recorder 4.930 Equipment 39.160

€ 183.295

Production Hotels, travel & food 16.417 Production personnel 101.858 Director 98.606 Technical staff 30.389 Equipment 13.690 Translations 4.704

€ 62.820 € 25.000 € 10.396

€ 265.664

Post-Production Editor/editing system 64.828 Sound design and mix 33.925 Music 26.225 Online and grading 31.470

Outreach and distribution Poster and design Press agent

€ 156.448

6.983 10.490

€ 17.473

Miscellaneous Administration 49.889 Accounting and audit 29.372 Legal advisor and insurance 12.719

Total budget (summed)

€ 91.980 € 714.860

Central Pitch

Director Nanfu Wang Production Hard Working Movies Status In Production Country United States

Untitled Cuba Project When a Nobel Peace Prize-nominated Cuban civil rights activist is killed under suspicious circumstances, his daughter commits her life to exposing the truth of his death.

Synopsis Rosa Maria Paya was 23 years old when she learned that her father was dead–killed, the Cuban government said, in a car accident. But Rosa didn’t trust the official narrative and set out to uncover the truth: she believed that her father, Oswaldo Paya, was murdered.

Oswaldo Paya dedicated his life to fighting for civil liberties in Cuba. His struggle to oppose Cuba’s one-party rule earned him recognition from all over the world, including five Nobel Peace Prize nominations. But his efforts also brought the scorn of the Cuban government, which repeatedly harassed and intimidated Paya and his family. Fidel Castro described Paya’s efforts as a western conspiracy against Cuba, and the government arrested activists working on Paya’s pro-democracy projects en masse. Then, on a July afternoon in 2012, Oswaldo Paya was killed in a car wreck on a deserted road in a remote part of Cuba.

Format HD | 85’ Genre

•P olitics | Society

Pitch Type Central Pitch

In the driver’s seat that day was a young activist from Spain named Ángel Carromero. He was traveling with Paya and two other activists when, the government said, he lost control of the car and hit a tree. Carromero survived and was convicted of vehicular homicide and sentenced to 4 years in prison for the death of Paya and another passenger. Under an agreement between the Cuban and Spanish governments, Ángel served most of his sentence in a Spanish prison. When he was released in Spain, he immediately set out to tell the real story of Oswaldo Paya’s death in a book he titled Death Under Suspicion.

The film will use Carromero’s book as a basis for dramatic recreations of Ángel’s experience in Cuba and his observations of the government’s intimidation tactics.

Along with Carromero’s interviews and the recreations based on his written account, this film will integrate verite footage of the continuing civil rights activism of Paya’s daughter, Rosa. Rosa has taken on her father’s work of seeking democratic reforms in Cuba. The film will follow her as she continues to seek justice for her father and as she advocates for democracy in Cuba, meeting with other dissidents within Cuba as well as traveling the world to appeal to governments and international human rights organizations.

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Project Description Nanfu Wang’s films are both effectively political and extremely artistic. In Untitled Cuba Project, Nanfu will take her filmmaking style a step further by combining intimate storytelling and investigation with a bigger cinematic scope. Part political thriller and part artistic look at the complex situation in Cuba from a personal perspective, Untitled Cuba Project is a dynamic combination of interviews and recreations, interwoven with on the ground verité action. As she has done in past projects, Nanfu risks her own well-being to follow characters such as Rosa and fellow Cuban activists and artists, as they avoid government surveillance and extend their mission to unearth the truth and extend the rights of average citizens.

Set against the backdrop of the first years after Raul Castro steps down from power, this film will give audiences an unsanitized glimpse of Cuba. It will show the risks taken by people who seek a freer, more open Cuban society. It will demonstrate the West’s willingness to accept the Cuban state’s narrative about Oswaldo Paya’s death despite calls from civil society to pressure Cuba for a vigorous investigation. Finally, it is Nanfu’s unique access to Rosa and her community of activists that guarantees that this film will provide audiences with an unprecedented, human account of Cuba’s current civil rights situation.

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Production Details |

Biographies

Untitled Cuba Project

PRODUCTION COMPANY Hard Working Movies 119 8th Street Suite 311 11215 Brooklyn United States www.hardworkingmovies.com

Lori@hardworkingmovies.com +1 6463835971

CREDITS Production

Director

Editor Production scheme Release Production status

Lori Cheatle Matangi/Maya/M.I.A (2018 | producer) I Am Another You (2017 | producer) Kiki (2016 | producer) Nanfu Wang I Am Another You (2017 | director) Hooligan Sparrow (2017 | director) Nanfu Wang January 2017 – December 2019 January 2020 In production

FINANCING Production budget Still required Own Investment

Budget €

€ 838.703 € 775.703 Little Horse Crossing the River Hard Working Movies

| Untitled Cuba Project

Development | Pre-Production Producers 112.114 Travel/subsistence 14.747 Development Costs 11.418

€ 138.280

Production Archival rights & reproduction 58.009 Hotels, travel & food 14.704 Production travel and expenses 9.918 Production personnel 52.047 Director 110.000 Technical staff 73.624 Locations 11.349

€ 329.652

Post-Production Editor/editing system 160.280 Sound design and mix 29.753 Titles and animation 17.248 Music 26.735 Online & Deliverables 25.355

€ 32.000 € 31.000

€ 259.371

Outreach and distribution Publicity

17.033

€ 17.033

Miscellaneous General & Office Expenses 5.433 Legal Costs 15.567 Insurance 13.367

€ 34.367

Overhead Contingency 60.000

Total budget (summed)

€ 60.000 € 838.703

Lori Cheatle Producer Lori Cheatle is the founder of Hard Working Movies and a producer of over 20 award-winning films. She produced MATANGI/MAYA/M.I.A., winner of the Special Jury award at Sundance 2018 and Opening Night film for New Directors/New Films, it is currently in theatrical release around the world.

She has also produced Nanfu Wang’s previous film I Am Another You, which won two jury awards at SXSW and is released by FilmRise and Independent Lens; KIKI by Sara Jordeno which premiered at Sundance 2016, won the Berlin Teddy Award and is distributed

by IFC Films/Sundance Selects; CAPTIVATED: The Trials of Pamela Smart, directed by Jeremiah Zagar for HBO/Sky Atlantic, which premiered at Sundance and was released in over 80 countries; Amy Hardie’s Edge of Dreaming and the BAFTA nominated Seven Songs for A Long Life; Doug Block’s critically acclaimed 112 Weddings, The Kids Grow Up and 51 Birch Street, named one of New York Times 10 Best Films of the Year.

Lori Cheatle Producer

Nanfu Wang Director

Nanfu Wang Director Nanfu Wang is an Emmy-nominated and Peabody-winning filmmaker based in New York City. Wang’s feature debut Hooligan Sparrow was shortlisted for the 2017 Academy Award for best documentary feature. Since its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in 2016, Hooligan Sparrow has won over twenty awards internationally including two Emmy Nominations, a Peabody Award, a Cinema Eye Honor for the Best Debut Film, the George Polk Award for the journalistic achievement, an IDA award, and the Truer than Fiction Award at the Independent Spirit Awards. Hooligan Sparrow opened theatrically across North America and was later released on POV, Netflix, Amazon, and iTunes. Her latest feature documentary I Am Another You premiered at the SXSW Film Festival in 2017 and won two awards including the Luna Chicken & Egg Award for Best Feature directed by a woman and the Special Jury Award for Excellence in Documentary Storytelling.

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Central Pitch

Director Jan Tenhaven Production Gebrueder Beetz

Filmproduktion Berlin GmbH & Co. KG

Status Development Country Germany

The Yes Men Build a Wall An explosion in wall-building is separating nation, race and class— physical symptoms of psychological division. Societies are broken. The Yes Men want to know why, and how to put them back together.

Synopsis Across the globe, barriers are being erected, slicing our world into smaller segments. Scapegoating politics are driving hostility between countries, neighbourhoods, races and religions, whilst the left wing’s apparent impotence is only strengthening this crisis of alienation. All of this division is evident in the growing number of walls going up all over the world. The Yes Men are here to get to the root of the matter.

There are currently 20 completed border barriers in the world, seven under construction, one planned and five proposed. And that’s just along international borders.

The number of gated communities is skyrocketing, separating slums from affluent areas, and the invisible gap between rich and poor—propagated by the failings of neoliberalism—widens daily.

As the film begins, the Yes Men consider this world—the rising walls, the distrust between nations, the barely concealed discrimination. It’s clear to them that times have worsened since they last made a documentary, and that their signature brand of activism has become almost obsolete. How can they hoax a system that is itself so absurd? How can they find value in a lifetime of political activism? What should they do next?

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Format 4k | 90’ Genres

• Politics | Society • Human Interest | Social Issues Pitch Type Central Pitch

They reach a decision: if you can’t beat them, join them.

It may seem like an odd idea, but, they reason, they may as well try to understand the mindset of their adversaries. Trump, of course, is an obvious preoccupation for the Yes Men. So they head to the beating heart of the President’s campaign: the prototypes of his Mexico/US border wall in the San Diego desert.

This trip is a lightbulb moment: they realise wall-building might be symptomatic of something much deeper, that understanding walls might help them better understand the world. So they don the guise of greedy contractors and plan to build their own wall.

This sends them all over the world on a research mission, from the West Bank to Wall Street. In each location they encounter those living in the shadows of the world’s borders and barriers, as well as those building them.

They pick up some tips for their super-wall, occasionally carry out a signature Yes Men hoax, and hear the stories of wall-people. It becomes clear that physical walls are doing nothing to solve the deep-rooted fear at the heart of our global society.

Of course, their super-wall fails. Their prototype has grown to such monstrous proportions, it’s become an absurd parody of the idea of a wall, and the Yes Men realise they aren’t cut out to be greedy contractors at all. Their journey has shown them that the world doesn’t have to be this way, that most people they have met are interested in a politics of fairness and inclusivity. So, still as contractors of sorts, they determine to build a different kind of world.

Project Description Why another Yes Men Film?

This documentary differs from the three previous Yes Men films in its simplicity and overarching narrative. It is an urgent exploration of a single theme: Walls, and what they are symptomatic of. The Yes Men’s characteristic brand of humour gives us a chance to address this serious topic in an entertaining way, approaching deeply concerning issues with a fresh perspective. Their guise as greedy, avaricious contractors is a device that allows us to do this.

In their desire to get to the roots of division, fear of the other, the failings of neoliberalism and the ensuing rise of populism, the Yes Men riff on some surprising new research. Accepted wisdom is that fear and greed are the most ancient and powerful of human urges, and that walls are an inevitable byproduct of these instincts.

But their journey around the world shows them this may not be the case. In fact, influenced by recent work by George Monbiot (Out of the Wreckage, 2017) and Yuval Harari (21 Lessons for the 21st Century, 2018), they recognise that rampant individualism is a neo-liberal myth.

Most people they meet, regardless of what end of the political spectrum they sit on, are ultimately interested in cooperative and collaborative politics.

So this film is not just aimed at a left-leaning audience, and will not moralise or cast judgement on the protagonists it encounters. It tells the story of the state of our world through the lens of wall-building, with humour, and in doing so suggests a new narrative based on a world with far fewer physical and psychological walls.

The Yes Men The Yes Men are an American social activist duo comprising of Jacques Servin and Igor Vamos (stage names: Andy and Mike). They have spent the last 20 years pulling off public hoaxes to draw attention to systemic greed and corruption. They’re known for their impersonations of politicians and representatives of multinational corporations—personas they adopt to draw media attention to the social and environmental wrongs.

This has ranged from Dow Chemical to the US Chamber of Commerce.

So far the Yes Men have produced three films, all of them premiering at A Festivals: The Yes Men (2003), The Yes Men Fix the World (2009) and The Yes Men are Revolting (2014).

Visual Approach This film combines various visual approaches: Vérité Storytelling: hand held camera work and even iphones and spy cams used by the Yes Men as part of their ‘research’ as contractors. This will capture spontaneous events and encounters, and contribute to the pace of the film.

Beauty shots: we visit extraordinary and visually arresting locations. The journey will be framed by stunning camera work that captures the beauty of the landscape and the disturbing site of the walls cutting through it.

Interviews: as well as on-the-go conversations, we will conduct interviews with protagonists and experts.

Director’s Statement - Jan Tenhaven I grew up in a divided Germany. As a child, the border was a fact of life. Then the Berlin wall fell. I was euphoric.

A new epoch dawned and I believed this freedom could continue. Walls and border fences seemed destined for scrapheap of history. But it turned out differently. The world has changed again. Nationalism is on the rise. New walls are being built. The dream of open borders seems now to be naive idealism.

Walls are symptomatic of the global rise in nationalism, populism, racism, social inequality and the excesses of neoliberalism. Much has been written on the subject, but the literature isn’t the most engaging to a broad audience. With this Yes Men film, we will tackle complex themes in an entertaining and accessible manner, negotiating complicated and often nebulous ideas with something very concrete: a humorous plan to build the ‘best’ wall of all time. Of course, this is a device to get to the bottom of the global trend towards wall-building... to isolate fear of the ‘other’ and interrogate its origin.

I’m immensely grateful that the Yes Men not only want to participate in this film, but have also made it their own project and are committed to the whole creative journey.

Indeed, in their own country, the USA, political divisions are particularly stark. Trump is intent on building his Mexico/US border wall. Could this be a portent for what awaits us in Europe?

This film could not be more poignant, both to me personally, as the child of a divided nation, and on a global political scale. This film imagines a world in which we build bridges, not barriers.

Other protagonists This film will not paint a black and white picture of society. We meet people from all ends of the political and social spectrum to understand why it is they believe in, or disagree with, wall building. From refugees at the Hungarian Border Fence, to the national guard controlling the US/Mexico border, from humanitarian NGOs in Palestine to developers building gated communities in Brazil.

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Biographies

Christian Beetz Producer

Jan Tenhaven Director

Christian Beetz Producer As executive director of gebrueder beetz filmproduktion, Christian Beetz has been producing documentary films for the national and international market since GBF’s founding in 2000. According to the industry leader ‘Realscreen’ gebrueder beetz ranks among the 100 most important independent production companies worldwide.

The companies’ productions regularly screen in the competition of large international A-festivals and have won multiple renowned awards, such as the Grimme Award, the Cinema For Peace Award, the Prix Europa, the German Television Award, the Hot Docs Filmmakers Award, the British Independent Award and the Special Jury Award at IDFA. In 2013 their Co-production Open Heart was nominated for the Academy Award® and in 2014 the cultural documentary The Wagner Files was nominated for the international Emmy® Award.

The cinema coproduction The Land of the Enlightened was awarded the Special Jury Award for Best Cinematography at Sundance Film Festival 2016. And most recently their cinema documentary films Dream Boat (Berlinale 2017), The Cleaners (Sundance 2018) celebrated their world premieres at A-festivals. GBF coproduced The Yes Men are Revolting (TIFF, Berlinale) and produced films by Jan Tenhaven (Autumn Gold Hotdocs, IDFA).

Jan Tehaven Director Jan Tenhaven is an award-winning writer and director of documentaries. He has a passion for exploring the stories of most fascinating people in our society and telling them in a respectful and unique way. When not exploring the human condition, he also specialises in creating programmes that focus on nature and our surrounding environment, science, and travel.

With his very first theatrical, featurelength documentary Autumn Gold, Jan received a number of awards, including the Filmmakers Award at the Hot Docs Film Festival 2010 in Toronto, the IDFA Youth Jury Award at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam 2010, and the Grand Prize of the Jury at the Guangzhou International Documentary Festival 2010 in China, plus numerous Audience Awards around the world. His most recent film, Silicon Valley Revolution, won the Audience Award at Berlin and Beyond Film Festival, San Fransisco (2017).

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Production Details |

The Yes Men Build a Wall

PRODUCTION COMPANY Gebrueder Beetz Filmproduktion Berlin GmbH & Co. KG Heinrich Roller Straße 15 10405 Berlin c.beetz@gebrueder-beetz.de Germany +49 3069566910 www.gebrueder-beetz.de CREDITS Christian Beetz The Cleaners (2018 | producer) Dream Boat (2017 | producer) The Land of the Enlightened (2016 | producer) Director Jan Tenhaven This Colourful Germany — the Courage after the Flight (2017 | writer | director) Silicon Valley Revolution — How a Few Nerds Changed the World (2017 | writer | director) Autumn Gold (2010 | director) Co-production Primitive Entertainment – Michael McMahon – Canada,

Grifa Filmes – Maurício Dias – Brazil Screenplay Jan Tenhaven Production

Production scheme Release Production status

May 2019 – June 2020 September 2020 Development

FINANCING Production budget Still required Broadcasters Own Investment

Budget €

€ 1.283.789 € 1.120.000 ZDF/ARTE | Martin Pieper Gebrueder Beetz Filmproduktion

| The Yes Men Build a Wall

Development | Pre-Production Writer 10.000 Producer | Director 45.000 Travel/subsistence 10.400

€ 65.400

Production Archival rights & reproduction 31.500 Hotels, travel & food 102.245 Production travel and expenses 21.700 Production personnel 153.200 Director 75.000 Technical staff 93.900 Equipment 208.300 Broadcast requirements 11.000 Main Cast 130.000 Social Security costs 37.663

€ 120.000 € 43.789

€ 864.508

Post-Production Editor/editing system 63.800 Sound design and mix 67.300 Titles and animation 10.500 Music 20.000 Colour Correction and Mastering 35.060

€ 196.660

Outreach and distribution PR 5.000

Overhead Overhead 7,5 % Contingency 5 % Financing Costs

Total budget (summed)

€ 5.000

84.373 56.248 11.600

€ 152.221 € 1.283.789

Central Pitch | Crossmedia

Director Mathieu Rochet Production Temps Noir Status Start Production Country France

Out4TheKast Atlanta. Larry is appointed by the God of Rap to save the world from an epidemic of Trap Music.

How? By finding South most acclaimed band: OutKast. Larry finds himself immersed in Atlanta’s rap scene, ending up doing an accidental hip hop portrait of Atlanta, the New Mecca of rap.

Synopsis The story takes place in Atlanta. Larry, a dish washer who works nights, is in the middle of a cigarette break when he suddenly has an apparition. Rap God, the God of Rap himself, announces that he has chosen Larry to save the world from an epidemic of Trap music, “the worst rap music ever created by mankind”.

‘How?’ asks Larry. ‘It’s easy,’ replies Rap God, ‘you bring back OutKast and you save Rap; you save Rap and you save the kids; you save the kids and you save the World.’

Larry doesn’t know anything about the legendary duo from Atlanta, he doesn’t know anything about rap at all, and, somewhat under duress, he passes himself off as a documentary filmmaker and goes off to meet all the key players of the Atlanta musical scene in order to find OutKast.

In Larry’s Ford Crown Vic (1987 model, worth $1,500) he slowly and dangerously traces the trail of the group.

In any case, he can’t turn back; the Ford’s reverse gear is broken!

Larry is a pathetic investigator, without a doubt the worst possible person to find the group... But his accidents, blunders, and the way he repeatedly takes the wrong track make him the best person through whom to discover Atlanta, crisscrossing back and forth through

Format Digital Series | 10 x 6’30” Genre

•A rt | Music | Culture

Pitch Type Central Pitch | Crossmedia

the city, from the threshold of the current Trap music scene to the vestiges of the Dungeon Family – the name given to the pioneering crew who gave birth to Dirty South music, which OutKast came from.

Larry will dig into Atlanta’s musical roots, its uniqueness: his quest will lead him to meet the biggest producers of trap such as Coach K or the Grammy-awarded singer and producer Tasha Catour, who will enable him to meet major rappers like Gucci Mane and Big Gipp.

On the road, Killer Mike will explain what the city represents politically, at Morris Brown College Kelly Fanning will present his unique marching band that inspired this musical trend. Larry will even find himself immersed in the strip club culture in Magic City, and, at each stage, he will meet and chat with the inhabitants of the city.

The entire picture of the musical hip-hop history of Atlanta will unfold through Larry’s naive eyes.

Thanks to his adventures, we’ll discover how Atlanta became the third coast of rap today, imposing its own style worldwide.

Project Description Out4TheKast is: •T he first ever digital series mixing documentary and comedy, narrating the investigations of a fake journalist embedded into the hip-hop culture of Atlanta, the New Mecca of Rap. •T he overseas adventures of Larry, (played by Kody, a Belgian comedian) who discovers a culture that fascinates both him and his public: the US Hip Hop scene, illustrating an overall picture of Atlanta.

•A digital series (10 episodes of 6’30 minutes), with every episode being a complete story in itself, conceived and produced for the web by an innovative production team specializing in New Digital Writing, Résistance Films (Fipa d’or with WEI or DIE, producer of the web series BBOYS and Capturing a Culture - Arte France) and Temps noir.

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59

•A n immersion that leads us to Dirty South legends such as: Cee Lo Green (Gnarls Barkley’s frontman), Gucci Mane, Big Gipp (Goodie Mob), Killer Mike (Run the Jewels), Mr DJ, DJ Toomp (the creator of trap music), and the New York legend Masta Ace (playing the role of Rap God).

•A documentary adventure for a trendy urban public – an audience that is as vast as it is hard to please – and signed by Mathieu Rochet, one of the creators of several remarkable web series (New York Minute, Lookin4Galt, HellTrain) and the magazine Gasface.

•A broadcasting strategy based on legitimacy and buzz.

In concentric circles, the targets aimed at are: - the platform of our broadcasters: ARTE France, who already specializes in urban programs with Arte creative, but also web platforms of international broadcasters which have succeeded in reaching a young audience; - the Hip Hop community and YouTubers; - urban culture sites and their influencers; - general cultural media

Out4TheKast: A Documentary Comedy The digital series Out4TheKast follows the journey of an outsider – Larry, originally from Paris – into a world in which he is lost, as he has no idea of the codes: the US Rap codes. Pretending to make a documentary, he navigates through unfamiliar, rough waters in search of Outkast.

Episode by episode, interview by interview, his investigations (and his guesswork) lead him into ATL Hip Hop scene.

By doing so, fiction meets reality and the comedy, which relies on the empathy with his awkward main character, becomes a real documentary. During his quest, the fictional Larry, who doesn’t really know much about rap and asks clumsy questions, meets with true legends of Dirty South and rising stars of Trap Music. Of course, they have not been told about the narrative structure of the project. They respond honestly to what they think to be a professional documentary interview, making the most educational parts of the series into comic scenes. Rather than a report providing information about a musical genre, the series immerses the spectator into the Atlanta Rap world, showing both the city and the ones who make it famous in a funny and unexpected way.

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The visual treatment is reminiscent of the style of ‘fake documentaries’ such as “The Office” or “Parks and Recreation”. An active camera interacts with the characters who look at and speak to it. Just like a witness of Larry’s adventure, the camera, held by someone we will never know, reacts but never answers them vocally.

Atlanta: from dirty South to Trap music A little background: during the New York | L.A. scene in the middle of the 90s, OutKast revealed a whole new musical dimension to Rap fans worldwide; a whole new Eldorado of Hip Hop music with a deep Soul groove, live brass and psychedelic rock: the South, aka the Dirty South. Atlanta was its epicenter and OutKast its driving force. Over the following 10 years, the duo became the most experimental and the hottest selling group in Rap history, making Atlanta the New Mecca of this innovative sound.

And then, when the duo was at their peak... they simply disappeared from the face of the Earth, leaving their place for the rappers T.I, Future, Gucci Mane: heavy hitters in Trap music, a music trend that originated in Atlanta and spread worldwide, becoming the most influential genre of Hip Hop today.

A large audience Reaching a large audience on the web is not an easy thing to do. But we were able to measure the exceptional potential of web projects about urban cultures with our previous digital productions (BBOYS, Capturing a Culture or En Selle) and the mobile app Beatbox Maker (France Télévisions), which has reached more than 170,000 downloads.

Hip Hop is the most popular musical genre in the world among people under 40 (and sometimes over) and Trap its most popular trend. Outkast still holds the record for the best-selling album in Rap history (14 million copies, for Speakerboxxx/The Love Below).

That said, the band has been missing for over 10 years, so we might doubt its appeal right now... But the rumors of their comeback each year ignite the web, and prove that the combo remains very present in pop culture mind. The EP released by Andre 3000 for Mother’s Day (last May 13th) made the front page of all the musical websites, even though it only contains two tracks, one of which features Andre playing the clarinet!

Webcast, designed directly for mobile phones, is of course the best way to reach this audience.

Production Details |

Biographies

Out4TheKast

PRODUCTION COMPANY Temps Noir 13 Quai de l’Oise 75019 Paris France www.tempsnoir.com

Sara Brucker Producer After graduating in International Law at Paris II, Sara Brucker founded her production company Résistance Films in 2002, producing TV documentaries and new media projects.

In 2010 she joined the production company Temps Noir. She produces documentaries both with Temps noir and Résistance Films, addressing historic, artistic and cultural issues, such as Tattoos by Marc- Aurèle Vecchione (ARTE), No Gods no Masters (ARTE), Le Défi de Réformer

by Mathilde Damoisel (France 3), as well as new media projects: Jour de Vote and WEI OR DIE (Fipa d’Or in 2016) by Simon Bouisson and Olivier Demangel, Beatbox Maker, a mobile app by Florent Maurin and the digital series BBOYS and Capturing a Culture

by Marc-Aurèle Vecchione.

sarabrucker@tempsnoir.com +33 155283387

CREDITS Production

Director

Created by Executive Production Screenplay Production scheme Release Production status

Sara Brucker No Gods no Masters (2016 | producer) Photos Rebelles (2016 | producer) WEI OR DIE (2015 | producer) Mathieu Rochet Helltrain (2015 | director) Kubrick & the Illuminatis (2014 | director) Looking4Galt (2013 | director) Mathieu Rochet Sara Brucker | Résistance films | Temps noir Mathieu Rochet November 2018 – April 2019 June 2019 Start production

FINANCING Production budget Still required Broadcasters Funds and Institutes Other Financiers Own Investment

Budget €

€ 318.768 € 77.000 ARTE France | Marianne Lévy-Leblond CNC | Anna Charrière Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes Region | Catherine Puthod Temps Noir | Sara Brucker Résistance Films | Sara Brucker

| Out4TheKast

Development | Pre-Production Writer/director 10.000 Producer 3.000 Travel/subsistence 12.703 Crew (including social security contributions) 18.382 Equipment (pilot) Post-Production (pilot)

1.968 4.320

€ 50.373

Production Archival rights & reproduction (music) 24.000 Hotels, travel & food 20.410 Production travel and expenses 3.610 Production personnel 28.882 Director 19.750 Technical staff 21.933 Equipment 14.025 Broadcast requirements 2.430 Comedians 9.578 Filming location 1.300 Producer 15.000

€ 135.000 € 74.500 € 10.000 € 11.134 € 11.134

Post-Production Editor/editing system 27.894 Sound design and mix 4.000 Titles and animation 3.500 Music 3.500 color grading and exports 2.800

Mathieu Rochet Director Mathieu Rochet is a French scenarist and director. After cofounding the Hip Hop Magazine Gasface, he directed his first digital documentary series, New York Minute, one of ARTE’s biggest online successes. Mathieu directed several digital series: Looking4Galt (2013) Kubrick & the Illuminatis (2014) Helltrain (2015, ARTE) and is developing solo projects, among which a feature film, Jacques Martien, which was selected in competition in Valence’s International Scenarists Festival.

Sara Brucker Producer

Mathieu Rochet Director

€ 41.694

Outreach and distribution Translation/communication 4.000 Subtitling 975

€ 4.975

Miscellaneous Accounting 2.500

Overhead Overhead : 15 % Contingency : 7% Financial fees : 2%

Total budget (summed)

€ 2.500

36.443 17.007 4.859

€ 58.309 € 318.769

€ 160.918

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Central Pitch | Crossmedia

Director Violeta Ayala Production Pinches Gringos, United

Notions Film LLC, UNF Pty Ltd, Caorosban

Status Development Country Bolivia, Australia,

United States, Chile

Format VR | 6x5’

Prison X Inspired by a Bolivian jail; Prison X is a collection of interactive stories, hand-painted in VR. A world of magic realism sucks you in; you have to keep the devil drunk so she can’t steal your soul.

Synopsis Seven hundred years ago, the Spanish arrived to destroy the world as we knew it, they imposed religion to control us and God and the devil to instill fear in us. We tried their God but nothing changed, so we made a deal with the devil and that’s how magical realism was born.

Putting on the headset, heavy doors open up and you’re sucked into a hand painted world, created in virtual reality where you become part of life inside one of Bolivia’s infamous prisons through the journey of six characters and a devil that has a mind of her own.

You hear a story while you’re presented six characters: Inti (Sun), Quilla (Moon), Shane (Magpie), Supay (Condor), Juki (Jukumari/Bear) and Nuna (Coca Leaf)...

‘In a world far-far away where dreams and nightmares become friends, the line between reality and fantasy is blurred. In the blink of an eye your freedom is going to be taken away from you.’

The aim of Prison X is to survive inside this dark magical space where you need to keep the devil drunk so she doesn’t steal your soul. Devils in our (Andean) collective imagination aren’t western devils, our devils are cheeky and wicked and live amongst us.

Prison X engulfs everyone who sets foot inside its walls, it resembles a small city, built around a courtyard, each

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Genres

• Art | Music | Culture •E xperimental Pitch Type Central Pitch | Crossmedia

side is made up of 3 floors containing many sub floors; small and narrow corridors form passageways turning the prison into a labyrinth.

The prison is dark and claustrophobic and only the courtyard sees the sun. Light will be used to highlight changes throughout the experience, from full of life through the day to dark and heavy in the evening.

Each character’s story will be told with narration, hand drawn scenes in VR presented with sound and music, together with interactive story elements and last 10-minutes.

In 2010 we started making a documentary film in San Sebastian Prison and always wanted to share the feeling of this unusual, chaotic and schizophrenic place, a microcosm of the world outside.

We have a core team of female creators, who want to imagine our future, represent our present and look back at our past from our own Neo-Andean perspective, where our dreams, myths and dark tales co-exist with our modern world.

Project Description Concept Plan The story of Prison X follows the Andean myth of the devil, otherwise known as ‘tia’ (auntie), who you have to get drunk so she forgets to steal your soul. While the experience happens inside the prison, it will coexist in a parallel reality, where the devil and magical situations come to life as a matter-of-fact inclusion.

As soon as you set foot inside Prison X, the story will lure you with interactive game elements such as trying your luck at playing ‘cacho’, if you win you can bribe the police and leave the dungeon or finding a place to spend your first night in prison so you don’t get your clothes stolen.

The prison world will be interactive in a traditional sense with missions for you to achieve, while the Neo-Andean world will draw you into another reality and take on dreamlike qualities, as you watch yourself become part of the story that plays like an immersive short film in VR.

Characters 1) Name: Inti, 20 Amulet: Sun Story: Inti, was caught on the border of Argentina with cocaine, pleading guilty he’s sentenced to 8 years. Inti arrives and is pushed inside the prison, he’s afraid, he sees the faces of all the prisoners and imagines they’re monsters, astonishing devils just like he saw in carnival when he was a child, he breaths heavily and walks right into the middle, he feels like an ant in the middle of a thousand monsters. He looks up and reads on the wall ‘Cell for sale, with TV, DVD, Stereo, bunk bed and a view of the street,’ he is even more confused. Inti goes on to buy his own cell. He hears the story that another inmate was killed the night before, ‘His enemy cut his neck, because he didn’t follow the rules’ Inti sees blood spurting from the man’s neck and wakes up from his nightmare. “Inti, to the front gate, you have a visitor’ he hears over the load speaker. He grabs his necklace, with his amulet, and runs to the door.

2) Name: Quilla, 17 Amulet: Moon Story: Quilla is Inti’s younger sister. The first time she enters the prison, she is confused. Inti arrives to the front gate and Quilla follows him into the labyrinth, they wind their way through the maze up to Inti’s room. He opens his red fridge and gets two eggs and some meat while she’s cutting onions with tears rolling down her face. As she tosses the onion in a little frypan on Inti’s small stove, her tears turn into little silver moons. They eat over his bed, talking about their childhood and their life in the jungle, Quilla remembers when they both were climbing trees, laughing, she tells him that she will do everything to get him out of the prison.

3) Name: Shane, 27 Amulet: Magpie Story: Shane is a filmmaker from Sydney and was caught buying cocaine while backpacking through Bolivia. He’s led into the holding cell, there are several other people

sitting in the cramped space that isn’t high enough to stand up in. The rules say you have to stay in the holding cell for three days, but if you bribe the police with a bottle of Coca-Cola you can enter directly to the main prison. Every day Shane makes plans to escape, drawing ideas by candlelight; he always signs his escape plans by drawing a magpie. He bribes Supay to bring him beer and drinks it himself leaving the devil angry to create his mischief.

4) Name: Supay, 30 Amulet: Condor Story: Supay is a prison guard with a stern face who rarely smiles. She wears her hair so tight her head could explode. She has her amulet pinned to her uniform.

Every morning she walks around the courtyard, she goes up and begins to randomly search the different rooms.

Her intention isn’t really to find contraband, she’s looking for money to buy alcohol. Supay competes with the devil for alcohol. Supay goes up to her little room on the roof to spy on the prisoners. Later in the evening she goes to the courtyard and calls ‘La lista,’ the roll call.

5) Name: Juki, 40 Amulet: Jukumari Bear Story: Juki is an indigenous Bolivian, caught working in a cocaine factory and sent to prison without a trial. He’s the prison’s cleaner and knows all it’s darkest secrets.

Juki, goes to school and is learning to read, he believes in dreams, he sees his family in his dreams and a river separating them. Juki, wants his trial to happen and writes letters to the media and the judge but his trial keeps getting delayed.

6) Name: Nuna, 90 Amulet: Coca Story: Nuna goes to the prison every morning with her small cart loaded up with oranges and her special juicer, every step she takes, you can hear the creaking of her bones. Nuna is almost furniture in the prison and knows the place like the back of her hand. Her face is a map of wrinkles, she’s always smiling and blessing everyone but secretly she is the devil’s best friend, she sings in Quechua and wears her coca leaf amulet around her neck.

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Biographies

Violeta Ayala Producer | Director

Daniel Fallshaw Producer

Violeta Ayala Producer | Director Violeta Ayala is a Bolivian/Australian filmmaker of Quechua descent.

She’s best known for directing the award winning documentaries Cocaine Prison (2017), The Fight (2017), The Bolivian Case (2015) and Stolen (2009). Her films have premiered at A-List film festivals including TIFF, screening in hundreds of festivals worldwide. Violeta has won 42 awards, including a Walkley and nominations for the prestigious IDA and Rory Peck. In 2018, Violeta won the Jaime Escalante medal-of-honor. She’s a founding member of United Notions Film.

Olivia Barron Producer | Illustrator Olivia Barron is a Bolivian/Swedish visual artist. Her family was exiled from Bolivia during the 80’s dictatorship. She grew up in Lund, Sweden.

Olivia studied Interior and Product design at the Accademia Italiana in Florence, Architecture at the UPB (Universidad Privada Boliviana) and Fashion Design at the Art Institute in California. Olivia is hand painting Prison X in VR.

Production Details | PRODUCTION COMPANY Pinches Gringos 179 Lanza Edificio Ariel, Of 1 Cochabamba Bolivia www.pinchesgringos.org

Olivia Barron Producer

Camila Claros Producer | Programmer Camila Claros is a Chilean/Bolivian programmer of Quechua descent.

She teaches robotics at the Andres Bello University in Santiago, Chile.

In 2016, Camila won the Nasa Space App Challenge with a drone simulation designed to work in micro-gravity and in 2017 she won the People’s Choice Award with a prototype of a Jet Pack that could work on Mars. In 2018, she won the Jury Award with an Early Warning System for Fires. Together with Victor Treviño, Camila leads up Caorobsan Productions, a creative and tech studio based in Santiago/ Chile that specializes in VR, narrative gaming and prototype simulations.

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v@unitednotionsfilm.com +59 144227462

CREDITS Production

Director

Created by

Daniel Fallshaw Producer | Designer | Art Director Daniel Fallshaw is an Australian producer, who makes films to shift the balance of power. His credits include Cocaine Prison (2017) that premiered at TIFF, The Fight (2017) published by The Guardian for which he won a Walkley Award (Australia’s equivalent to the Pulitzer), The Bolivian Case (2015) that premiered at Hot Docs and was nominated for Premios Platino and Premios Fenix and the multi-award winning Stolen (2009). Dan has an Honours degree in Visual Communications from the University of Technology, Sydney and Saint Martin’s College in London. He is a founding member of United Notions Film.

Prison X

Screenplay Production scheme Release Production status

Violeta Ayala, Redelia Shaw, Daniel Fallshaw, Camila Claros, Victor Triviño, Olivia Barron Violeta Ayala: Cocaine Prison (2017 | director | producer) The Fight (2017 | director | producer) The Bolivian Case (2015 | director | producer) Stolen (2009 | director | producer) Dan Fallshaw: Cocaine Prison (2017 | producer) The Fight (2017 | director | producer) The Bolivian Case (2015 | producer) Stolen (2009 | director | producer) Redelia Shaw: Cocaine Prison (2017 | producer) The Bolivian Case (2015 | producer) Stolen (2009 | producer) Violeta Ayala Cocaine Prison (2017 | Director | Producer) The Fight (2017 | Director | Producer) The Bolivian Case (2015 | Director | Producer) Stolen (2009 | Director | Producer) Violeta Ayala Violeta Ayala March 2019 – October 2019 November 2019 Development

FINANCING Production budget Still required Broadcasters Funds and Institutes

Budget €

€ 422.000 € 400.493 Screen NSW | Sofya Gollan Tribeca | Zeina Abi Assy

| Prison X

Development | Pre-Production Writer 2.500 Producer | Director 3.485 Travel/subsistence 3.174 Illustration and photography 2.800 3D Model | Architectural model 12.073 Interactive development 4.978

€ 29.010

Production Hotels, travel & food 15.018 Production travel and expenses 61.234 Production personnel 65.653 Director 18.669 Technical staff 56.007 Equipment 37.091 Broadcast requirements 6.223 Testing 6.223 Motion Capture 6.223 Narration 4.978

€ 12.904 € 8.603

€ 277.320

Post-Production Sound design and mix 20.000 Titles and animation 3.112 Music 15.000

€ 38.112

Outreach and distribution Design 6.223 Packaging 3.112 PR and Festival expenses 17.000

€ 26.335

Miscellaneous Legal 6.223

Overhead Overhead % Contingency %

Total budget (summed)

€ 6.223

30.000 15.000

€ 45.000 € 422.000

Central Pitch | Crossmedia

Director Eefje Blankevoort,

Els van Driel, Sara Kolster

Production Prospektor Status Development Country The Netherlands Format Webseries, Game, Film | 9 x 5’ Genres

• Youth • Politics | Society • Human Interest | Social Issues Pitch Type Central Pitch | Crossmedia

Shadow Game Play is normally a safe adventure.

For child migrants ‘The Game’ is a dangerous attempt to cross European borders in search of a better life - while growing up alone on the road. is a coming-of-age story, an interactive odyssey through Europe with these resourceful youngsters as our guides.

Synopsis Shadow Game follows a group of minor migrants on their journey through Europe. Fleeing poverty and war, they - and their families - have fixed their hopes on Europe: there it is safe and prosperous, people are kind and respect human rights. But once in Europe, these minors find things aren’t quite as idyllic. Within Europe walls and fences have sprung up. Reaching their final destination has become increasingly difficult.

Some reach their destination, but many of the children get entangled in a shadow world of detention centres, smuggling gangs, prostitution and modern slavery. And when they reach their destination, they often do not find what they were hoping for. During their journey, these children become adults. In order to survive and stay motivated, these teenagers develop a complex identity in which their past, present and (possible) future are all idealised in a variety of ways.

For most people child migrants are invisible: a second reality far away from ours. But if we open up our eyes, we can see them. They are literally under the surface, hiding under the bridge we daily cross. This invisible Europe

forms the playground of the interactive web documentary, game and documentary Shadow Game: not the Europe where everyone can travel freely, but the Europe that closes its gates.

‘Prison Island’, ‘The Pass of Death’ and ‘The Talking Fence’: on their journey through Europe these youngsters face obstacles of mythical proportions. On these various ‘game levels’ in Europe, we meet our main protagonists and dive into their world: Asif from Afghanistan, Pakistani Ali and Durrab in Serbia, a group of Sudanese friends in Ventimiglia, the Nigerian Hope in Palermo and the Syrian Adam on Lesbos.

We follow them in their daily lives, where they survive in illegal labour, try to break the next dangerous barrier in their journey or are about to give up. But they are also children, who play, have fun, and even make crossing the border into a ‘game’. Their journey is dangerous, but also an exciting adventure. They are vulnerable, but also determined and fearless. In search of a better life, they keep trying, their hope is bigger than their fear. But in this game of chance, what are their odds?

Project Description Components: Shadow Game consists of a feature length documentary film, a mobile game and an interactive web documentary series. The overarching theme is coming of age in extreme circumstances. The film tells a mosaic story of several different characters. It has an adventurous feel, visualising their odyssey, their hopes and dreams. Film has – as no other medium – the power to immerse the audience in an unknown world. But the film stops at a certain point, leaving the audience wondering what has become of the child migrants. Where the film ends, the web documentary continues. It can be watched inde-

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pendently from the film, but also functions as a follow-up and background story of the characters. In the interactive web-documentary we want to involve the viewer more, among others by gradually confronting him/her with their own role: are they just voyeurs or do they take action? With the mobile game we take interactivity one step further: it turns viewers into players, forcing them to follow the rules, which makes confrontation inevitable.

The mobile game can be played alone, but can also be used as a conversation starter in both educational and festival settings.

Web documentary The web documentary offers a cinematic in-depth portrayal of a number of children we meet on different locations in Europe. Visitors can choose a character, dive into their story and follow them on their journey. Through film scenes and images the children make themselves, we get to know them, learn about their background and motivation. The documentary unfolds as a series and thrives on the question: did they pass the obstacle we last saw them? During the series we get to know our protagonists better: each episode offers a new puzzle piece of their fragmented lives and identity. Parts of the game will be integrated in the web documentary as short interactive elements in between documentary scenes.

They serve as an interactive simulation of this neverending struggle, but at the same time they comment on the detachment we have created from migrants as individuals pursuing a better life.

Mobile game With their on-going attempts to cross the border into their next destination country, these kids take enormous risks, climbing over mountain ranges in the middle of the night or walking on busy highways. Many fail, some get injured and some even get killed. Yet, they keep trying on a daily basis. This never-ending struggle reminds us of the game Frogger, where a bunch of frogs try to get from one side of a river to the other, facing all kinds of obstacles. Some make it, others don’t. And the game goes on and on.

The mobile game is a mix of obstacle-run or clickergame levels and documentary film scenes. Each game starts with a normal gameplay, but during the game the player is confronted with documentary scenes that show the reality behind the game. In this way the safe, virtual game-environment intertwines with the harsh world of these youngsters on the road.

The game exists of different levels or worlds, based on locations (obstacles) in Europe: The Minefields, Prison Island, The Mountains, The Talking Fence, The Crossing and The Pass of Death. They serve as a metaphor: an enlargement or different perspective of the situation on the ground. Each ‘world’ has its own gameplay, but they are all based on the mechanics of a simple mini-game: an obstacle-run or clicker game. They function as an abstraction of reality, evoke a dilemma or serve as a confrontation. Some use the perspective of migrants, others from ‘Europe’.

Main Protagonists The main characters reflect the range of unaccompanied minors coming through Europe. Mostly boys, some girls, coming from war zones like Darfur, Afghanistan and Syria, and from countries where people are fleeing from poverty, like Pakistan. During our research we have already filmed Durrab from Pakistan, whom we met on the Serbian-Hungarian border, and Fiaez from Sudan, who was stuck on the French-Italian border with his friends.

Motivation | Director’s Note By making this cross-media project, we aim to both inform and confront the audience about the current situation in Europe. The phenomenon of children fleeing alone to Europe is not a new one. But the extent to which it is happening, as well as the associated risks, are greater than ever before – partly because many European countries have closed their borders. It is estimated that more than 85,000 unaccompanied children entered Europe in just one year (2015). Some are reunited with family members eventually; others manage to obtain a (temporary) residence permit. But many of these children disappear into a shadow world of smugglers, prostitution or illegal labour. Without asking it explicitly, the project poses the question: who is responsible for these minors? The children themselves, their parents, the country of origin, Europe, us?

Using a game to tell their story may sound harsh, like a way of using their trauma for entertainment. However, we think the metaphor | medium is justifiable for several reasons. Our protagonists survive in the harshest conditions, yet they remain children. Playing games, having fun is one of their survival tools. Secondly, playing ‘the game’ (crossing borders illegally) is what these kids are forced to do. In that sense, the game is also a metaphor for the current state of European asylum policy, which has become a game of chance. Some make it and some don’t. Lastly, the metaphor of a game also offers hope: against all odds you can still win. This is a feeling that keeps these children going.

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Production Details |

Biographies

Shadow Game

PRODUCTION COMPANY Prospektor Utrechtsedwarsstraat 95 1017 WD Amsterdam The Netherlands www.prospektor.nl

eefje@prospektor.nl +31 624607966

CREDITS Production

Director

Created by Co-production Executive Production Production scheme Release Production status

Eefje Blankevoort Eefje Blankevoort: The Migrant (2018 | producer | director) The Asylum Search Engine (2016 | producer | co-director) Imperial Courts (2015 | producer | director) Eefje Blankevoort, Els van Driel Els van Driel: Films & Cross Media projects Outside In (2018 | director) Safia’s Summer (2017 | director) The Asylum Search Engine (Web documentary | 2016 | director) Sara Kolster: A Temporary Contact (2018 | director) When I was Five (2017 | director) Drawing Room (2015 | director) Eefje Blankevoort, Els van Driel, Sara Kolster Witfilm – Iris Lammertsma – The Netherlands Laura Verduijn

Still required Funds and Institutes

Budget €

€ 438.058 € 413.058 Creative Industries Fund NL | Syb Groeneveld

€ 19.350

Production Archival rights & reproduction 1.500 Hotels, travel & food 25.000 Production travel and expenses 5.000 Production personnel 8.750 Director 8.750 Technical staff: (DOP/Sound/ Light) 22.500 Equipment 18.750 Graphic and UX design 30.000 Front- and backend development, Testing & Debugging 45.000 Implementation content in cms

€ 25.000

| Shadow Game

Development / Pre-Production Writer 4.200 Producer | Director 3.500 Travel/subsistence 2.500 Interactive concept & scenario 5.600 Camera 2.325 Sound 1.225

3.500

€ 168.750

Post-Production Editor/editing system incl spotting & direction 60.700 Sound design and mix 4.000 Titles and animation 2.000 Music (composition) 4.500 Colour correction 2.100 Translation, Transcription & Subtitling 12.000

Outreach and distribution Impact strategy Impact producer (s) Campaign (online & offline)

Sara Kolster Interactive Director Sara kolster (NL, 1978) is an interactive director specialized in digital storytelling. As an independent maker she realizes interactive stories such as the award winning Virtual Reality Drawing Room (2015, IDFA Doclab Award), mobile messaging-doc A Temporary Contact (2017, VeryVeryShort), web documentary Love Radio, (2014, IDFA Doclab, Zilveren Camera) and interactive video Hidden Wounds (2013, IDFA Doclab, Reflecting Images 2013). www.sarakolster.com

Eefje Blankevoort Producer | Director

Els van Driel Director

Prospektor Production Company Prospektor is a journalistic production agency founded by Eefje Blankevoort and Arnold van Bruggen. Prospektor creates (multimedia) documentaries, exhibitions, books and social impact campaigns.

March 2019 – September 2020 November 2020 Development

FINANCING Production budget

Eefje Blankevoort Producer | Director Els van Driel Co-director Eefje Blankevoort (1978) and Els van Driel (1976) have collaborated on several film and Cross media projects on the theme of migration, such as The Asylum Search Engine (De Asielzoekmachine, 2016) and the film The Deal (2018). They also share a lot of experience in working with minors.

€ 85.300

Witfilm Production Company Witfilm is the production company of director Boudewijn Koole (a.o. Beyond Sleep and Little Bird) and producer Iris Lammertsma. Witfilm focuses on creative, social and youth documentaries, its key assets being concept development and intensive counseling of filmmakers, resulting in innovative, visually powerful films of artistic nature dealing with subjects that are thought-provoking at all times. Witfilm (co-) produces both nationally and internationally. www.witfilm.nl

Sara Kolster Director

Iris Lammertsma Co-producer

10.000 40.000 50.000

€ 100.000

Miscellaneous Project management 35.000 Representation 1.000

Overhead Overhead 2% Contingency 5%

Total budget (summed)

€ 36.000

8.188 20.470

€ 28.658 € 438.058

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Round Table Pitch

Director Marianela Maldonado Production Invento Films Status In Production Country Venezuela Format 2 K Camara | 100’

Children of Las Brisas Eight years in the making. Four children dream of becoming classical musicians in Venezuela, a country on the brink of collapse.

Can music save them?

Synopsis Las Brisas is a chaotic and dangerous neighborhood in the overpopulated slums of Valencia, Venezuela. A small but significant change came the day that musician Luis Silva opened a new academy of El Sistema.

Canvasing the neighborhood, Luis recruits potential children for the new school. Dissandra, a persevering 9-year-old who had recently lost two sisters, had her grandmother sign her up to help alleviate her sorrow.

Close by lives Edixon, who starts his musical journey reluctantly after his grandmother enrolled him to keep him off the streets. She has been raising him since his father was gunned down only a few blocks away.

Edixon and Dissandra study with Yoel, a talented 8-yearold whose father is passionately dedicated to seeing his son achieve a dream he couldn’t make for himself.

As the children grow, they get promoted to a youth orchestra, where they meet Wuilly, the talented and peculiar concertino, who after being nearly locked up in a church for eight years by his fanatic parents, discovers and learns to play the violin by watching YouTube videos.

After years of hard work, the children feel they may be able to overcome poverty and leave the barrio, some of them are invited to perform in the Salzburg Classical Music Festival with the renowned conductor Simon Rattle.

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Genres

• Art | Music | Culture • Human Interest | Social Issues • Politics | Society Pitch Type Round Table Pitch

By 2014, the Chavista regime has lead the country into a phase of quick deterioration and the children face severe economic difficulties as some parents begin to question the importance of pursuing the musical dream.

Yoel loses his enthusiasm, ends up abandoning the orchestra. His father falls ill losing more than 40 pounds due to the food shortages.

The society erupts in protest and Wuilly joins the masses on the streets. In one of these events, the military kill a young viola player from El Sistema. In response, Wuilly starts playing his violin at the frontline, dodging gas bombs and projectiles, he instantly becomes a symbol of the resistance.

In contrast, Edixon decides to quit music and joins the Army, as he found no other way to survive, especially after the orchestra stopped paying his already insignificant salary. With the help of HRW, Wuilly flees the country and ends up playing his violin in the NYC subway to make a living. On the same path, and amidst tears, Dissandra leaves the country for Peru, where she is now a music teacher.

Project Description Background and context Across Venezuela, the national orchestra organization, globally known as El Sistema, gave instruments to children to improve their lives through the study of classical music. Over the past decades, this organization has been slowly hijacked by the Chavista government, which allocated vast resources to the program, expanding it tenfold. El Sistema soon became a worldwide phenomena, but on a darker note, an instrument for propaganda.

In the beginning -42 years ago-, the vision was to offer musical education to those who longed to be musicians.

When the Chavista regime took over, it became mandatory that everybody should have access, and suddenly thousands of children had an instrument on their lap.

The goal was to have one million children involved; 500,000 was reached, but only 600 orchestra positions are available in the country.

When we started filming this documentary we believed that El Sistema was a noble and beneficial social program. Thanks to it, many children had the opportunity to dream, to grow, to learn. Nevertheless, as the years passed and Venezuela began its descent into a failed state, the musical journey became unsustainable. All of our characters ultimately had to abandon the orchestra, although they had attained quite a high degree of competence as musicians.

This is a story that explores the individual dreams as a representation of the collective fantasy that lost touch with reality and sold a social narrative that had no conclusion. After all, flooding a society with thousands of violinists looking for jobs might not be the best idea for a country that can barely keep its children well fed.

Director’s Statement In 2009, I had the opportunity to enter Las Brisas and speak with its inhabitants about their lives and their involvement with El Sistema, an institution I had always been curious about. I wanted to find out what happens when impoverished communities are exposed to high art. Does it really make a difference in their lives? What happens in the intimate sphere of those families?

El Sistema had already been glorified in a few documentaries, so I wanted to show something that hadn’t been seen before. Therefore, I set out to find the individuals that could take part in this project and was lucky to meet a few kids from the first class of Las Brisas orchestra.

During the years of filming, one thing we learned is that dreams can help people overcome terrible obstacles and suffering. However, when the children insisted in continuing their musical journey despite having too many basic needs to be met, the dream seemed unattainable and at times even irresponsible. On the other hand, we believe that the discipline and mental fortitude that they acquired through their musical education gave them the skills that enabled them to survive beyond the context of orchestras and institutions. The film asks its audience to contemplate the complexities of the roles of art and dreams within the context of a dysfunctional society.

Dissandra Viloria (9-18) Dissandra is a diligent and focused girl who is deeply transformed by being part of the orchestra. She lives on a dangerous street where three rival gangs confront each other with gunshots on a daily basis. At 12, she is selected to go to Salzburg Music Festival and this experience inspires her to follow her musical dream. At 16 she is working seven days a week, but she doesn’t make more than four dollars a month, so she decides to move abroad. After a grueling bus trip, she arrives to Lima where she manages to send money back home.

Edixon Yañez (13-21) Edixon wants to pursue music as a career, despite his grandmother’s disapproval. Although she was the one who enrolled him in the music academy, she never thought her boy would end up devoting himself entirely to music. They also have strong political differences, as he doesn’t understand how she maintains her support to the corrupt government. Edixon never gets the letter he needed from the state orchestra to be able to scale up, so he becomes very frustrated and, without telling anyone, leaves El Sistema and joins the Chavista army.

Wuilly Arteaga (17-23) For eight years, Wuilly and his family were captive of a doomsday cult and were not allowed to leave the church grounds. After getting expelled, he finds a job in a cyber cafe, where he discovers the violin. He buys a cheap instrument and begins to teach himself through the internet. His progress is impressive, almost miraculous.

He is spotted by one of the founders of El Sistema, who appoints him as his concertino. In 2017, he joins the street protests, and soon gets incarcerated and tortured.

He escapes to NYC, where he currently survives by playing his violin.

Yoel Ojeda (8-17) In his early years, Yoel is a sweet boy with a happy disposition, but when he doesn’t get chosen to go to Salzburg, he looses interest and becomes rebellious.

He knows that his father has gone through an enormous sacrifice to keep him in the academy and doesn’t want to disappoint him, but the colossal effort to succeed is also making him tired and frustrated. Yoel ends up leaving the orchestra, but his music teacher gives him a violin to help him continue his music career.

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Biographies

Luisa De La Ville Producer

Marianela Maldonado Director

Andy Glynne Co-producer

Luisa de la Ville Producer Luisa is a New York City based Venezuelan producer with 40 years of experience in film and television. She has produced four fiction feature films: Taita Boves, El Enemigo, Al Borde de La Línea and Plan B. She has also directed and edited films for TV and has been AD in more than 25 national and international feature films. Luisa is producer of Children of Las Brisas and is directing Venezuelan Exodus a multi-platform project produced

by Esther Duran.

Marianela Maldonado Director After graduating from the NFTS in the UK, Marianela Maldonado wrote and directed a few fiction short films, among them: The Look of Happiness and Breaking Out, both premiered at Cannes Film Festival.

As a screenwriter, Marianela has worked in several fiction and animation features and short films, among them: Peter and the Wolf (Oscar winner 2008), Unmade Beds (Sundance, Berlin, Rotterdam 2009), The Flying Machine (Toronto & 3D Films Festival 2012/2013) and The Magic Piano (New York Film Festival, 2011 and pre-selected for the Academy Awards in 2012). She was selected for the prestigious Writing Residence Cannes Film Festival. As documentary director, she has worked for BBC World and Univision. She is now writing her fiction film The Belly of the Whale and finishing her documentary Children of Las Brisas.

Production Details |

Children of Las Brisas

PRODUCTION COMPANY Invento Films Calle Canoabo 112-110 Guataparo 93003 Valencia Carabobo Venezuela www.inventofilms.com

luisadelaville@gmail.com +1 3473486477 luisadelaville.com

CREDITS Production

Director

Co-production

Executive Production Screenplay Production scheme Release Production status

Luisa De La Ville Taita Boves (2010 | producer) El Enemigo (2008 | producer) Al Borde de la Línea (2007 | producer) Marianela Maldonado Peter and the Wolf (2008 | co-writer) Breaking Out (2005 | director) The Look of Happiness (2002 | writer | director) Mosaic Films – Andy Glynne – United Kingdom, Point du Jour – Luc Martin Gousset – France Luisa De La Ville Jéssica Wenzelmann, Marianela Maldonado August 2009 – August 2019 November 2019 In production

FINANCING Production budget Still required Funds and Institutes

Other Financiers Own Investment

Budget €

€ 375.700 € 217.974 IDFA Bertha Fund Europe CNAC | Juan Carlos Lossada Crowdfunding De La Ville & Malldonado

| Children of Las Brisas

Development | Pre-Production Writer 5.400 Producer | Director 24.100 Travel/subsistence 11.250 Pre production 30.350 Other Co director/DP 17.650

€ 88.750

Production Archival rights & reproduction 3.400 Hotels, travel & food 23.900 Production travel and expenses 10.900 Production personnel 23.500 Director 18.000 Technical staff 40.300 Equipment 22.000 Stock Material + Hard drives 13.700 Broadcast requirements 5.300 Co director/DP 16.000 administration 6.300 Shoot pick ups: Wuilly,(NY) Dissandra (Lima), Edixon Yoel Vzla.

4.500

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€ 57.561 € 12.235 € 7.200 € 80.730

€ 187.800

Post-Production Editor/editing system 43.300 Sound design and mix 4.100 Titles and animation 3.800 Music 6.200 Color correction +mastering + subtitling 8.900 taking material out of Venezuela 3.150 Director/Producer salaries 14.000

€ 83.450

Overhead Overhead 8.000 Contingency 4.000 external auditor 3.700

Total budget (summed)

€ 15.700 € 375.700

Round Table Pitch

Director Ahsen Nadeem Production Memory Films Status In Production Country United States

Crows are White In an isolated Japanese monastery, monks risk death and madness in search of enlightenment. Tired of the punishing rituals, one monk secretly abandons meditation and seeks refuge in heavy metal music.

Synopsis Monks from the ancient Buddhist Tendai sect in Japan believe that enlightenment can be achieved in ones current lifetime, but only through extreme self-denial.

Crows are White is a documentary that examines the profound, surreal, and absurd experiences of the men attempting to find enlightenment through a series of increasingly dangerous rituals. Through interwoven vignettes, stories about monks at various stages of their practice unfold. The filmmaker finds Haruki, a young monk wrestling with his desires and duties.

Through their relationship, we witness the parts of monastic life that the other monks wish to hide. At one temple, three monks prepare to embark on Walking Hell.

In this practice, the monks lock themselves in a small room and chant Buddha’s name while walking in circles for 3 months.

At another temple, monk Kamahori has been approved for Kaihōgyō, the holiest practice on the mountain.

Kamahori will walk up to 80 kilometers a day for a thousand days. If he fails, he must commit ritual suicide.

A monk named Haruki befriends Ahsen and reveals that he is in a state of crisis. Working seven days a week and performing the same daily tasks for the last decade, he is depressed and disillusioned with monastic life. Haruki

Format 4k Digital | 90’ Genre

• Human Interest | Social Issues

Pitch Type Round Table Pitch

spends his days writing calligraphy cards for tourists. His life feels unimportant and unspiritual. Haruki listens to heavy metal music and abandons the traditional practice of meditation altogether. He fantasizes about being a sheepherder in New Zealand. However, if he persists in monkhood and cares for his ailing grandfather, he will receive a sizable inheritance from his family. If he leaves, he will receive nothing. Haruki escapes his gilded cage through his twitter feed, a contraband television and a clandestine Internet romance. Haruki dispels the mythos surrounding monastic life, explaining that monks don’t always perform the rituals as the temples claim they do.

Continuing to explore other practices, Ahsen films Watanabe, a monk who has locked himself in a temple to perform a prayer that takes twelve years to complete.

After 3 months, the three young monks emerge from their Walking Hell isolation. Twitchy and glassy-eyed, the camera captures their first moments in the light of day.

Ahsen arranges for Haruki to see Slayer perform in Osaka. His request for a day off rejected, Haruki pretends to be sick and drives to Osaka. The crowd intimidates him, but by the end of the night he is in the mosh pit.

Kamahori faces a grueling exam at the end of his Kaihōgyō ritual – a 7-day fast with no food, water, or sleep.

Haruki visits a nearby sheep farm to test out his dream of becoming a sheepherder in New Zealand. Haruki is terrified as the animals approach. He wants to flee, but can’t.

Finally, after his brush with being a sheepherder and despite protests from his family, Haruki begins an online psychology course and slowly tries to untangle himself from monastic life.

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Project Description Crows are White is about the search for personal freedom in the face of rigid expectations.

Raised in Saudi Arabia and surrounded by Sharia law, I grew up with a unique understanding of what it means to live in and conform to a restrictive culture. When my family moved to Ireland to escape the Gulf War, my relationship to Islam became more complicated. Suddenly, as a young boy, I was exposed to western culture and to new expressions of intense religiosity while attending a Catholic boarding school. I pushed prayer aside and started listening to pop music. Over time, I developed a fluid identity shifting between my family’s religious expectations and my personal desire for freedom and secular expression.

This combination of cultural influences in my history gives me a unique sensitivity for telling the story of the Tendai monks. I understand the religious devotion and self-sacrifice of the monks, but I also relate to Haruki’s restlessness and curiosity about life on the outside.

After repeated visits to the temples, I gained the trust of the subjects in the film and my friendship with Haruki opened a larger window into their world.

While my own background is quite different than Haruki’s in many ways, our stories overlap. We conceal our real lives from our families, hiding our true values and who and what we love. Haruki is pursuing the woman he loves and eschewing his traditional marriage; he has abandoned prayer and embraced heavy metal music as a spiritual haven. I rejected my parents arranged marriage proposal and have married a non-Muslim white American woman without my parent’s knowledge.

Neither of us is fully conforming to the expectations of our families, cultures and religions of origin; instead, we are following our individual desires. These experiences define the structure of Crows are White; Haruki’s story, mirrors Ahsen’s and the film explores themes of how we rebel, yearn for freedom from the past, strive for truth, and struggle with hypocrisy.

It is commonly understood that within Japanese culture, ancient spiritual traditions thrive alongside modern ways of life. But in this era of increased access to information, new communications technologies are challenging even the oldest customs. How it is possible to reconcile faith with the array of options available to individuals within a globalized society? Crows are White explores the ways that cultural boundaries are eroding under the pressure of interconnectedness, and confronts the myths of history and tradition that societies tell about themselves.

Haruki hides his consumption of western pop culture

72 IDFA Forum catalogue 2018

because it is not permitted by his religion, while the ascetic monks hide their apple watches and coffee machines from the camera because these things do not neatly fit into people’s expectations of monastic life. As we see in the film, a meaningful middle ground where tradition and modernity can co-exist is difficult to find.

Crows are White also touches on the theme of ritual as performance. Ritual consists of a series of actions meant to transport a person from a ordinary state of mind to one that is more receptive to the divine. But is this a form of self-deception? Haruki discusses ideas of truth and fiction in his critique of the Tendai monastic culture.

To what extent are the monks controlling their images in order to protect the legitimacy of their practice and their livelihood? Why is a rigid public image a necessary part of being a monk? Should monks be required to meditate in the traditional sense, or should listening to heavy metal music be an acceptable form of meditation, as well? By examining the full scope of contemporary monastic life, Crows are White explores the possibility of a more expansive approach to ritual and devotion.

Cultivating personal authenticity while risking wholesale cultural and familial rejection is central, as well. Current conversations about cultural and religious identity are increasingly politicized in social, news and other media.

Crows are White looks at this subject through the lens of a truly singular subculture and raises questions about the pursuit of individuality over conformity.

The film is a hybrid of different styles complementary to the subject matter. There is a distinct visual contrast between Haruki’s world and the world of the other monks. Close-ups with a wide lens evoke the feeling that we have joined the monks in prayer. The experience is immersive, dream-like and lyrical. Highly stylized and heavily composed sequences depicting the guarded monks are paired with a raw, spontaneous, vérité approach in the sequences featuring Haruki, who is willing to bare everything. The tone is punctuated by the camera rolling on after scenes have ended, occasionally breaking the fourth wall and revealing the process of filmmaking, one that’s fraught with absurd humour and challenges of telling a story of the monks’ isolated world.

Much of Haruki’s communication with the outside world takes place through social media messaging. Aspects of his personal, gamified communiqués will be depicted as overlaid animations in the frame – texts with friends, melodramatic tweets about depression and exploding emoji anime from apps that warn him of migraines, for example.

Production Details |

Biographies

Crows are White

PRODUCTION COMPANY Memory Films 5109 Hollywood Blvd 90027 Los Angeles United States www.memory.is

Riel Roch-Decter Producer Riel Roch-Decter is a Canadian born, Los Angeles based Producer and co-founder of boutique studio MEMORY. Riel began his career as the Director of Production for independent feature film production company Olympus Pictures, working on award winning feature films including John Cameron Mitchell’s Rabbit Hole and Mike Mills’ Oscar Winning Beginners.

Prior to co-founding Memory with Sebastian Pardo in 2014, Riel produced The Wait written and directed by M Blash and starring Jena Malone and Chloë Sevigny. Riel graduated from Concordia University with a Major in Economics. In addition, he attended the London School of Economics to study Management and Entrepreneurship. Riel is a 2014 Sundance Creative Producing Lab fellow.

rrd@memory.is +1 3103826466 sbp@memory.is +1 3105707040

CREDITS Production

Director

Production scheme Release Production status

Riel Roch-Decter, Sebastian Pardo Riel Roch-Decter: Shakedown (2017 | producer) Rat Film (2016 | producer) Fraud (2016 | producer) Ahsen Nadeem Duet (2017 | director) Basically (2014 | producer) Aurora Borealis (2011 | producer) February 2015 – July 2019 January 2020 In production

FINANCING Production budget Still required Own Investment

Budget €

€ 291.478 € 159.791 Ahsen Nadeem MEMORY

| Crows are White

Development | Pre-Production Research & Development 430 Producers 43.100 Director 26.000

€ 69.530

Production Archival rights & reproduction 8.600 Hotels, travel & food 10.900 Production travel and expenses 10.900 Production personnel 4.700 Technical staff 40.800 Equipment 16.520 Voice Over 8.000

€ 101.687 € 30.000

€ 100.420

Post-Production Editor/editing system 46.100 Sound design and mix 13.000 Titles and animation 2.100 Music 22.100 Color Grade 8.600

Miscellaneous Genereal Overhead Production Insurance

Overhead Contingency 5%

Total budget (summed)

€ 91.900

11.448 4.300

€ 15.748

13.880

€ 13.880 € 291.478

Memory Films Production Company MEMORY has collaborated with multi-hyphenate filmmakers and artists to bring their debut films to fruition, such as: Celia RowlsonHall (Choreographer), Carson Mell (Animator), Dean Fleischer-Camp (Hard to Explain), Theo Anthony (Photo Journalist), and Leilah Weinraub (Fashion Design). In 2016 MEMORY was named one of Filmmaker Magazine’s 25 New Faces of Independent Film, and in 2017 their film Rat Film, by Theo Anthony, was nominated for a Gotham Award for Best Documentary Feature.

Their most recent project Shakedown

by Leilah Weinraub premiered at the 68th Berlin Film Festival.

Riel Roch-Decter Producer

Sebastian Pardo Producer

Ahsen Nadeem Director

Ahsen Nadeem Director Originally from Saudi Arabia, Ahsen’s family migrated to Ireland after the Gulf war and became the first Muslim family in Cavan, a small town in Ireland. As a filmmaker, Ahsen’s work is concerned with themes of spiritual and psychological conflict and the consequences of everyday moral choices. His drive to tell such stories was shaped by his early experiences. In 2007, Ahsen relocated to Los Angeles for a residency at The Mountain School of Arts. In addition to shorts, music videos and commercials, he has produced short documentary videos for the New York Times. In 2016, he launched Normal Content, a collaborative studio that produces films, commercials and original content for brands such as Mercedes, Opening Ceremony, Kenzo and Audi. Currently, Ahsen is developing a television show with Ari Aster (dir. Hereditary).

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Round Table Pitch

Director Chloe Fairweather Production Dying To Divorce Ltc, Freak

Films, Tigerlily Productions

Status In Production Country United Kingdom Format HD | 52’ & 70’

Dying to Divorce Ipek fights to stop domestic abuse and bring violent men to justice. As violence against women soars and Turkish society starts to fall apart, Ipek’s clients risk everything for their freedom.

Synopsis It is 2015. Ipek, a young Turkish lawyer and women’s right activist, is working late, picking through the details of her latest case. The newsreader Kubra Eken has been left brain damaged by her husband after she asked for a divorce. The number of attacks like this is soaring. With a complacent conservative government in power, Ipek feels it is up to her to try and get justice for survivors.

‘Violence cuts across Turkish society’, explains Ipek as she drives to an elite neighbourhood in Istanbul.

Stopping the car outside Kubra’s house, Ipek looks poignantly at a TV clip of Kubra on her phone. She braces herself to go into the house. The contrast between Kubra before and after the alleged assault is shocking. Kubra says that her husband hit her over the head. Kubra’s husband completely denies attacking her.

With no other witnesses, it is clear this case may prove to be one of the most challenging of Ipek’s career.

While Ipek is working on Kubra’s case, she learns of two other women at different stages of the justice process.

Hatice who is living in of fear of her ex-husband who tried to kill her; and Arzu who is rebuilding her life after her husband was sentenced to 25 years for shooting her. Each one faces different challenges of dealing with aftermath of violence.

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Genres

• Human Interest | Social Issues • Politics | Society Pitch Type Round Table Pitch

Ipek faces her biggest set- back when a violent attempted coup leads to the arrest of thousands of lawyers and judges. There is an upsurge in women being hurt and it is unclear if there will be a court left to hear any of Ipek’s cases. Despite the instability, Ipek supports Kubra to defy expectations and the courage to confront her husband by testifying in court—but it still might not be enough to secure justice.

While Ipek and Kubra wait for the final verdict, the increasingly repressive government starts to actively discourages divorce, even in cases of violence and over a thousand women’s NGO’s are closed-down. Two of Ipek’s closest female lawyer friends are arrested. She starts to worry she will be next.

Weaving together Ipek’s work with her clients and three years of unprecedented and dramatic changes in Turkey, Dying to Divorce puts viewers at the heart of Turkey’s gender-based violence crisis. Through these intimately shot personal stories, the film gives a uniquely female perspective on a democracy that is close to breaking point.

Project Description Background information Turkey is a society of contradictions when it comes to of gender and violence. It was the first signatory on the UN’s Istanbul Convention to combat violence against women in 2011. However, the number of women being murdered each year is now almost double what it was in 2011 and increasing annually.

It has very strong domestic violence laws. However, more women are killed when they leave violent husbands than ever before. Activists argue this is in part due to Turkey’s ‘provocation’ loophole in the legal system that allows men to blame their partners for violence. It is not unheard of for men to carefully premeditate murders and then get a low sentence using this as a legal argument.

The team met Ipek in 2015 when Turkey was caught in a wave of protest against violence, working with the Fuller Project to create video stories on the protests for the New York Times and Daily Beast. The focus was on the campaign to try close the legal loophole. Turkey had an incredibly vibrant women’s movement and we believed it was approaching a historical moment for women’s equality.

The journey over the last three years since then has been both fascinating and scary. It is a wake-up call to other women across the world on just how quickly the tide can turn back on gender equality. Three years ago, campaigners like Ipek were close to victory. Turkey had the largest number of women MP’s ever. Now women are just fighting to keep the right to divorce at all and the loophole remains in place.

Through our long-term access to activists, we have captured how the attempted coup and the arrest of thousands of lawyers, judges and journalists, including Ipek’s friends, are directly damaging women’s rights.

How the closure of 1300 NGOs, including many prominent women’s rights organisations, is putting an incredibly strain on those that remain.

Through our close relationship with Kubra, Hatice’s and Arzu’s individual stories, we are drawn into the real-life jeopardy of what this means for women in Turkey. Under this kind of pressure, can a court system still provide any kind of justice for survivors? And what happens to the people fighting for that justice? What price do they pay?

Chloe is not telling the story as a journalist would. She is drawing on her observational film making skills to make the viewer feel as though they are right there with our contributors. The long-term commitment to search for the people behind the headlines brings both an inside and outside perspective on what is happening in Turkey.

Artistic approach and access Dying to Divorce is intimate in style and will closely follow the events surrounding the trial of Kubra’s husband from the perspective of Ipek, Kubra and her family. Interwoven will be the contrasting stories of Hatice and Arzu. We will be immersed in every twist and turn of these cases as they unfold. Ipek, the lawyer will provide additional commentary and context about the wider situation in Turkey.

In addition, we will hear from the perpetrators and have secured access to Ahmet (Arzu’s husband in prison) and have preliminary agreement to interview with Neptune (Kubra’s husband). However, most the film will be shot from the subjective perspective of the women involved and their families.

To create a visual language that is both authentically Turkish and female, director Chloe Fairweather will work closely with Turkish Producer and documentary photographer Ozge Sebzeci to research how women feel in different spaces.

It is important that the film reveals how a Turkish woman sees and experiences her environment. For example, tight following shots will create the sense of threat women can experience walking home alone at night. Wide shots of women alone in domestic spaces, focusing on small details, highlight how isolating the home can be.

When violence occurs, and is explicit, subtle recon of the attacks will be used. However, the film will focus of the female perspective and gaze, rather than showing the attack from the outside. Kubra’s apartment will be shot from a low angle giving the sense of the low gaze of a woman beaten on the floor. Using handheld camerawork, the film will recreate the view Arzu had as her husband raised the shot gun and fired.

A wide shot of a deserted street will reflect Hatice’s isolation as she lay on the ground bleeding after her husband shot her. Darkness, shadows and bright light provide a sharp contrast between scenes of violence and the mundane way they must be investigated. Ipek is often pictured working late on cases, then seen getting up in the extremely bright sunshine to present her case, the visuals underlying the journey of trying to bring these horrors to light.

Archive and evidence, such as text messages, will be used to highlight certain key points and build up a strong picture of the women’s lives before the attacks.

However, to retain the intimate and personal feeling, we will avoid using news archive wherever possible. Even huge societal events will be portrayed from personal perspective.

Due to the sensitive nature of the film and the anxiety of participants, most the film will be shot by Chloe and a single camera. However, we plan to work with a DOP on the recon shots to vary the visual language of the film and create a unique visual style.

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Biographies

Sinead Kirwan Producer

Chloe Fairweather Director

Sinead Kirwan Producer Sinead Kirwan’s first cinema feature Still the Enemy Within, (Grierson shortlisted, Sheffield Audience Award Winner) screened all over the world and was a big commercial and critical success. Sinead worked on the distribution of Ecocide (Sheffield Green Award-nominated) and the short Precious Metal. She underwent the ESODOC training program to develop Dying to Divorce, participated in the Scottish Documentary Institutes Consultation program, EURODOC’S and recently produced I Don’t Want to Call It Home, a short animated documentary which screened at the Dinard International Film Festival and Edinburgh International Film Festival.

Chloe Fairweather Director Chloe Fairweather is a BBC trained documentary filmmaker specialising in social documentaries about sensitive and important stories.

She produced and directed Mr Alzheimers and Me (Grierson Shortlisted, BAFTA, RTS, Broadcast Award nominated) for CBBC filming from the point of children whose grandparents have dementia. She spent a year in Birmingham in the UK with NHS and Social Services making the BBC 2 series Protecting Our Parents (Grierson and RTS nominated). She co-produced and shot BBC 2’s My Child the Rioter with BAFTA and Emmy award-winning director Olly Lambert and PBS Frontline’s Prison State with Emmy and Oscar Award Winning producer/ director Dan Edge. Chloe’s first broadcast feature was I Do at 92 for Channel 4’s First Cut Strand and she has recently shot a landmark show School for BBC2.

Natasha Dack Ojumu Executive Producer Natasha Dack Ojumu has produced the critically acclaimed documentaries Black Power Salute (BBC), After the Apocalypse (C4), Plus Tubular Bells (BBC4), Caligari Film Prize, Best International Documentary (HotDocs) Best British Feature Documentary (BritDoc) winner 37 Uses for a Dead Sheep and most recently The Lover and the Despot which premiered at Sundance this year and will shortly be released in cinemas. Natasha executive produced the BAFTA nominated McCullin.

Christina Asquith Executive Producer Christina Asquith is co-director of The Fuller Project for International Reporting (FPIR) a team of journalists dedicated to reporting on the underrepresented role of women in foreign policy. She regularly has articles published in New York Times, ELLE Magazine, The Guardian, Washington Post and others.

76 IDFA Forum catalogue 2018

Production Details |

Dying to Divorce

PRODUCTION COMPANY Dying To Divorce 23 Powerscroft Road E50PU London United Kingdom www.dyingtodivorce.com sinead.kirwan@bad-bonobo.com

Freak Films 9 Waters Close Edinburgh United Kingdom www.freak-films.com +44 7914412037

2ND PRODUCTION COMPANY Tigerlily Productions 23 Blandford Court St Peters Way N1 4SA London United Kingdom

natasha@tigerlilyproductions.com +44 7973624981

CREDITS Production

Director

Executive Production

Production scheme Release Production status

Sinead Kirwan, Natasha Dack Ojumu Sinead Kirwan: Still the Enemy Within (2014 | producer) I Don’t Want to Call it Home (2018 | producer) Chloe Fairweather I Do at 92 (2016 | director) Mr Alzheimer’s and Me (2015 | director) Natasha Dack Ojumu | Tigerlily Productions, Christina Asquith | The Fuller Project for International Reporting June 2015 – June 2019 June 2019 In production

FINANCING Production budget Still required Broadcasters

Funds and Institutes

Other Financiers Own Investment

Budget €

€ 261.555 € 170.295 NRK | Carina Bordewich DR | Anders Bruus Greater Washington Community Foundation Irene Bruegel Trust The Garden Court Chambers Special Fund Crowdfunding Chloe Fairweather Sinead Kirwan The Fuller Project for International Reporting Equity investment Deferred fees

| Dying to Divorce

Development | Pre-Production Materials

2.260

€ 2.260

Production Hotels, travel & food 15.752 Production travel and expenses 9.605 Production personnel 33.674 Director 41.245 Technical staff 15.537 Equipment 11.300 Stock Material 1.898 Broadcast requirements 2.023 Overheads Norway 2.260

€ 5.000 € 4.000 € 4.407 € 2.260 € 1.695 € 11.718 € 11.300 € 2.260 € 3.669 € 6.215 € 38.736

€ 133.294

Post-Production Editor/editing system 33.900 Sound design and mix 2.825 Titles and animation/ subtitling 6.780 Music 8.475 archival rights & reproduction 12.430 Online and Grade | Conform 10.170 Producer Norway 3.220 Post assistants 2.092

€ 79.892

Outreach and distribution Deliverables Reversion Graphic poster Outreach screening campaign

Overhead Overhead 5% Contingency 2.5%

Total budget (summed)

2.260 6.780 1.695 20.000

€ 30.735

9.895 5.479

€ 15.374 € 261.555

Round Table Pitch

Director Violet Du Feng Production Lost & Found Film Studio,

Ten Thousand Images

Status Start Production Country China, Norway

Hidden Letters Hu Xin, a young Chinese Millennial living in rural China, looks toward the wisdom of Nushu - an ancient secret woman-only script - to navigate her life in a world still dominated by men.

Synopsis 28-year-old Hu Xin lives in a small secluded village in Hunan, central China. The villagers have been struggling with poverty for ages. But recently, things start changing as a hidden treasure was discovered, gaining national interest and attention. It is Nushu, an ancient womanonly language created by Hu Xin’s ancestors over 100 years ago to provide a way for women to support each other, during a time when marriage was arranged; footbinding was prevalent; and a woman’s life was confined to her chamber.

Nushu uses poetic language to sing an ode to sisterhood between women, who actually sworn to become real sisters for a lifetime. Their writings are spiritual shelters for women to escape from their daily sufferings. ‘It was a ray of sunshine’ that allowed women to speak up in an otherwise suffocating world. It is also the world’s only script designed and used exclusively by women.

Realizing the cultural and commercial potential of Nushu, the local government built a museum in 2005 dedicated to it. Now Hu Xin works there as a tour guide.

She leads workshops for young girls from the region and teaches them the writing. Hu Xin also promotes Nushu nationally through events and performances.

Format HD cam | 52’ & 85’ Genre

• Human Interest | Social Issues

Pitch Type Round Table Pitch

Everything seems perfect on the surface, but Hu Xin slowly realizes that the old scripts are being hijacked by men today, as a way to teach women how to behave. It has gone awry from its original intent. Hu Xin becomes increasingly concerned with how the modern-day perception of women in China, coupled with the revival of a male-dominant society, poses a threat to the deep values and traditions of Nushu.

Her desire to preserve the true spirit of Nushu grows even stronger as she faces obstacles in her own household. She finds herself trapped in a failing marriage, with a disrespectful and abusive husband. She seeks answers from the old scripts and 78-year-old He Yanxin, the last woman still alive who practiced Nushu traditionally. Hu Xin also starts to find her own sworn sister...

As her marriage dissolves and her career becomes more political being elected as a provincial congresswoman, Hu Xin begins to find her own voice as a young woman in today’s China.

Project Description Hu Xin grew up in a village of 50 households in remote rural China. It is a village that holds a hidden treasure: a secret women’s syllabic script named Nushu, that no man could read.

In the past, when women had no right to education, they developed their own script to tell stories, comfort each other, sing about their sorrows and express their hopes. This process gave rise to a female culture. Over the course of time, even men started to respect the wisdom and talents in Nushu. But with rapid political and economic transformations in recent years, China has undergone fundamental changes in social structures.

IDFA Forum catalogue 2018

77

Today Nushu is almost extinct, yet inequalities for women are still taboo to talk about. For a long time, Hu Xin’s mom was humiliated by the entire village because she couldn’t have a boy. When Hu Xin was born, her grandma was too ashamed to look at her for a whole month. She was told her whole value was to take care of her little brother. The only time she felt truly happy was when she listened to the songs of He Yanxin, the last living original Nushu writer. Lyrics on love between sworn sisters from the old days warmed her heart.

to school. As Hu Xin continues to explore her own gender role, she asks herself what to pass on as a Nushu ambassador.

Yet Hu Xin’s life takes a dramatic turn when she begins working as a tour guide at a local Nushu museum built by the government in 2005. She learns to read and write Nushu while promoting the culture nationally through events and performances. There, she also met her husband, a local government official much older than herself. Hu Xin is soft in nature and traditionally obedient. Her husband had the right to make every decision for her: He even made her get an abortion when she was 6 months pregnant, because it was a girl.

Cinematic approach The film will blend a number of visual methods. Hu Xin’s personal story in cinema verite serves as the main narrative and will give an intimate feel, focusing on her emotional journey. With cinematic visuals in a poetic pace, and the images of Nushu’s villagers elegantly and sensitively framed, we ensure Hu Xin’s story is told in a way that reflects the emotions expressed through the Nushu script. Hu Xin’s encounters with government officials, businessmen and other events serves as a backdrop to illustrate how Nushu is perceived today.

These scenes will be shot in wider frames, with a tone of sarcasm.

But as Hu Xin grows more sophisticated and independent thanks to Nushu, she becomes a member of the National Women’s Association and the People’s Congress at age 28. Ironically, the more she is perceived as the ‘role model of Chinese women’, the more she feels controlled by the male power. Male visitors often improperly flirt or sexually harass Hu Xin and the other girls at the museum; Government officials often demand her to write poems of Chairman Mao in Nushu characters; Businessmen lobby her to teach traditional moral virtues, such as how to properly take care of a woman’s in-laws and husbands. Back home, she lives under the increased pressures from her husband that ‘a woman shouldn’t be successful.’ Over the years he complains about her ‘not being a good wife’, which finally escalates into domestic violence, bringing her marriage to an end.

The trauma of the divorce devastates her. Hu Xin reads from the old scripts, hoping to find strength and wisdom from her female ancestors. She visits He Yanxin and the two generations of women bond through sharing of experiences and feelings about gender sufferings.

Gradually Yanxin opens up to her with her own life story.

Yanxin grew up with her grandma who taught her not only Nushu but also to fight for her own destiny. At 16, Yanxin ran away from her wedding and for the first three years of her marriage refused to share the bed with her husband. Although she raised five children in extreme poverty, Yanxin made sure to send all her daughters

78 IDFA Forum catalogue 2018

Hu Xin connects us to millions of Chinese women who are caught in the dilemma of keeping traditional feminine virtues while fighting gender discrimination.

Nushu sheds light on the status of women over a span of approximately 100 years, highlighting the changes that have occurred in Chinese societies.

We will tell background story of Nushu in a creative hybrid of archival footage and animations to bring alive the voices of Hu Xin’s ancestors from their writings.

When delving into their original poems of Nushu, we will use visually beautiful metaphors such as tile roofs and wood sculptured windows of the old villages.

Director’s Note When contemporary Chinese women today feel liberated to enjoy education and sexual freedoms, we tend to treat our women’s past as a disgrace - all too soon and too simple. In 2014, UN published a paper stating the urgency of gender inequalities and a revival of male dominance in today’s China. Gender income gap increased significantly since Communism times, which aggravates workplace discrimination and amplifies expectations for women’s domestic responsibilities.

40% of women in China have experienced sexual harassment at some point in their lives. Since China’s one-child policy was abolished in 2015, women live under more reproductive pressures in order to alleviate the nation’s aging crisis. Nushu is a unique subject that is both historical and contemporary to help us understand better as women in China, where we came from and who we shall become.

Production Details |

Biographies

Hidden Letters

PRODUCTION COMPANY Lost & Found Film Studio 388 Pubei Rd, Apt 6-201 200233 China www.lostandfoundfilmstudio.com

Violet Du Feng Director | Producer Emmy Award winning documentary film producer Violet Du Feng is one of the 2018 Sundance Non-fiction Producing Fellows. Feng produced Maine-land, a multi-layered comingof-age tale that follows two affluent and cosmopolitan teenagers as they attended the boarding school in the U.S. The film received Special Jury Award of SXSW and Independent Film Festival Boston. Please Remember Me premiered at 2015 IDFA and received three awards at China’s biggest documentary film festival GZDoc in 2016. The film had a theatrical release in China and successfully launched the first doc impact campaign in China and created policy change.

violet.feng@gmail.com +1 6463714145

2ND PRODUCTION COMPANY Ten Thousand Images Løeshagaveien 49 v Nesoddparken 1450 Nesoddtangen Norway www.tenthousandimages.no

mette@tenthousandimages.no +47 93420280

3RD PRODUCTION COMPANY jeantsien@aol.com

+1 9178416721

CREDITS Production

Director

Co-director Screenplay Editor Production scheme Release Production status

Violet Du Feng, Mette C. Munthe-Kaas, Jean Tsien Jean Tsien: Plastic China (2016 | editor) Miss Sharon Jones! (2015 | editor) Please Vote for Me (2007 | editor) Mette Cheng Munthe-Kaas: Nowhere to Hide (2016 | producer) No Word for Worry (2014 | producer | editor) Violet Du Feng Maineland (2017 | producer) Please Remember Me (2015 | producer) Changing the Taste of Mud (2005 | director) Zhao Qing Violet Du Feng, Zhao Qing Mette C. Munthe-Kaas, Jean Tsien

Mette Cheng Munthe-Kaas Producer Mette Cheng Munthe-Kaas is an awardwinning producer, interactive producer, and editor of independent documentary films. She started her career as an editor and has been doing that for the last 20 years. She has produced and edited the award-winning featurelength documentary No Words for Worry. Her most recent production Nowhere to Hide is critically acclaimed and has won multiple international awards including first prize at IDFA in the feature-length Documentary Competition, 2016.

July 2017 – August 2020 November 2020 Start production

FINANCING Production budget Still required Funds and Institutes

Own Investment

Budget €

€ 572.747 € 538.967 Tencent News | Summer Song Visible Influence Pictures | Zhu Xiaoyan Lost & Found Film Studio

€ 12.580 € 12.580 € 8.620

| Hidden Letters

Development | Pre-Production Producer | Director 4.310 Travel/subsistence 8.620

€ 12.930

Production Archival rights & reproduction 2.155 Hotels, travel & food 33.187 Production travel and expenses 6.465 Production personnel 86.200 Director 38.790 Technical staff 83.183 Equipment 21.981 Stock Material 8.620 Broadcast requirements 12.930

Post-Production Editor/editing system Sound design and mix Titles and animation

€ 293.511

Music 8.620 Masters 4.310 Transcriptions and translations 7.413 Color 8.620

Outreach and distribution Outreach campaign 17.240 Travels 6.206 Posters, website and press kit 9.650

€ 33.096

Miscellaneous Legal 4.310 Bookkeeping 1.724 Admin Expenses 1.293

142.230 12.930 14.486

€ 198.609

Overhead Contingency 5 %

Total budget (summed)

€ 7.327

27.274

Jean Tsien Producer Jean Tsien has been working in documentary for 35 years as an editor, producer, and consultant. Her notable editing credits include: the 2001 Academy Award, Best Documentary Feature nominee, Scottsboro: An American Tragedy; Dixie Chicks: Shut Up & Sing; Miss Sharon Jones!; Solar Mamas and Please Vote For Me. She was the executive producer for Plastic China, winner of the Special Jury Award for First Appearance at IDFA 2016; People’s Republic of Desire, winner of Best Feature Documentary at SXSW 2018, and Please Remember Me. Tsien is a member of Rough Cut Service and the documentary branch of the Academy.

Violet Du Feng Producer | Director

Mette C. Munthe-Kaas Producer

Jean Tsien Producer

Zhao Qing Co-director

Zhao Qing Co-director Zhao Qing is the director of the award winning Please Remember Me. She started her career at Shanghai Media Group in 1991, where she directed and produced many television documentaries affiliated to the Overseas Programming Center, now known as the Documentary Channel of SMG. She directed and hosted several popular TV documentary programs such as The Bund and Documentary Editing Room.

€ 27.274 € 572.747

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79

Round Table Pitch

Director Michael Dweck,

Gregory Kershaw

Production Go Gigi Go Productions Status In Production

The Hunt In the secret forests of Northern Italy, a community of truffle hunters struggles to maintain an ancient tradition in the face of environmental change, shifting generational values, and their own mortality.

Synopsis The Hunt follows an ensemble of spirited old truffle hunters and their prized dogs through secret Piedmont forests during the yearly ‘gold rush’ when the world’s rarest ingredient comes into season. The narrative will capture their struggle to hold onto a centuries-old tradition in the face of globalization, climate change, and their own mortality in a place where mystery and magic still flourish.

Project Description In a world where science has replaced mythology, legends, and lore, the white Alba truffle remains an enigma. Impossible to cultivate, its mystery fuels the passion of a subculture of gray-haired men who have dedicated their lives to discovering it in the hills of Northern Italy. They traverse the forest landscape with their faithful dogs, guided notebooks scribbled with directions that have been passed down through the generations; their solitary paths share the same space as the Piedmont pagan legends of witches, black magic, and other evil spirits. They crave the rhythms of the forest, its solitude and the chance of discovery. The world they inhabit is built on layers of history that define their existence. They are the keepers of a tradition, driven by a passion that brings youth to their many years.

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Country United States Format Arri Alexa - 3.2k | 90’ Genre

•N ature | Environment

Pitch Type Round Table Pitch

The white truffle cannot be cultivated, and can only be found in a small slice of land that runs through the foothills of the Alps for a few late fall months every year.

There, small tracts of forest provide the delicate balance of the conditions that allow it to bloom on the roots of tall trees. Its intoxicating scent and taste, combined with its rarity have made it the most coveted ingredient in the world. The hunters sometimes share their truffles with friends over fried eggs, but they more often sell to middlemen who operate out of the posh town of Alba’s glistening storefronts and manage global sales networks to overnight truffles to the world’s far-off capitals. This world of commerce couldn’t be any more removed from the humble lives of the truffle hunters, but they depend on it for their livelihood and manage an uneasy coexistence with its conspicuous consumption.

Today, the traditions and culture of the truffle hunter hang in precarious balance. Development throughout the area has led to the destruction of forests that were once known for their truffles. As global businesses and industry continue to move in, it seems certain that more will be lost. The generation of truffle hunters who have guarded the traditions and secrets of the area are well past the age of retirement. The years have chipped away at their bodies, and their struggle to endure long nights alone in the woods has become a battle for the soul of the land that they love. Now, a younger generation of truffle hunters is coming up. They are motivated by sky-high sale prices and have invaded the ancient forests that were once shrouded in legend. They know nothing of tradition. Their techniques tear up the land and leave it barren for years to come.

Before the sun rises, they sell their pilferings on shadowy street corners to black market vendors. Truffle heists are now reported throughout the region, and the most unscrupulous have taken to poisoning the dogs of other hunters. And while a quiet battle simmers between generations, deforestation and climate change are transforming the landscape. With no known way of cultivating the white truffle, and a rapidly disappearing habitat, it could disappear forever.

The distinct protagonists of the film each have their own story that has grown from the traditions and land that they are a part of. Their lives and relationships echo the great characters of Italian neorealist cinema.

Piero is the head of the local truffle organization. Every day, the conflicts and collisions of the area come across his desk. He is a mediator and arbitrator of the rules and regulations that exist to protect tradition, but as things get worse, he is becoming overwhelmed with the onslaught of complaints from truffle hunters who fear an end to their livelihood.

Angelo is a seventy-five-year-old truffle hunter. who no longer hunts for truffles. He is the caretaker of a dilapidated mansion long forgotten by the wealthy Milanese family that owns it. As a young man he dedicated his

life to the truffle, but now that the hills are inundated with the young and greedy, he has given up on hunting truffles and spends his days patrolling the. property against the pillaging hordes.

Renato is eighty-three and still runs marathons. He believes that there is no better truffle hunter in the world than him, but the drought that has stretched through seasons has him questioning if there is a future for his passion.

Aldo is a former opera singer, winemaker, and truffle hunter who is attempting to pass the traditions he grew up with onto his teenage grandson.

Gianfranco is a third generation truffle seller, who operates one of the most exclusive shops in Alba and serves a clientele of billionaires from around the world.

The shortage of truffles has put his reputation and business in jeopardy and forced him to venture into the dark corners of black market trade to meet the demands of his clients.

The Hunt will document the lives of these characters and others, as they navigate a hidden world that often seems lost in time. Through their stories, we hope to create a new kind of cinematic experience that will immerse our audience in the beauty and emotion of a subculture as it confronts unprecedented change and explores the possibility of a life driven by passion.

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Biographies

Michael Dweck Producer | Director

Gregory Kershaw Producer | Director

Michael Dweck Director | Producer Michael Dweck is an award-winning director and contemporary visual artist. Best recognized for his evocative narrative photography, Dweck artistically investigates the ongoing struggles between identity and adaptation found within endangered sub-cultures. Dweck’s works have been featured in solo and group exhibitions at museums and galleries worldwide including the Grand Palais in Paris and the Annenberg Space for Photography Museum in Los Angeles, and are part of prestigious international art collections, including the archive of the Department of Film at The Museum of Modern Art in New York, where two of his long-form television pieces reside. Dweck was recently the director and a producer of his first feature-length film, The Last Race, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2018. By experimenting with both form and subject matter, the documentary extended Dweck’s exploratory repertoire by combining observational documentary, stylized imagery, and a symphonic merging of motion and sound.

Gregory Kershaw Director | Producer Gregory Kershaw is a graduate of Columbia University’s MFA directing program and has worked as a director, cinematographer, and producer on numerous narrative and documentary films. He was recently a producer and the director of photography on The Last Race which screened at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival. Previously he was a Senior Producer at Fusion TV where he directed long-form TV and digital documentaries on environmental issues around the world.

While at Fusion TV he directed a series of short films funded by the United Nation Foundation that explored the impact of climate change on indigenous groups in remote parts of Latin America such as the Bolivian Andes and isolated regions of the Peruvian Amazon.

He was also the lead producer and director on long-form television documentaries exploring the current global species extinction crisis featuring environmental luminaries such as Jane Goodall and Sylvia Earle.

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Production Details |

The Hunt

PRODUCTION COMPANY Go Gigi Go Productions One Huntington Quadrangle Suite 4S05 NY 11747 Melville USA www.gogigigoproductions.com

michael@gogigigoproductions +1 9178414942 www.michaeldweck.com gregory@gogigigoproductions.com +1 3152728045

CREDITS Production

Director

Editor Production scheme Release Production status

Michael Dweck, Gregory Kershaw Michael Dweck and Gregory Kershaw: The Last Race (2017 | producers) Michael Dweck, Gregory Kershaw Michael Dweck: The Last Race (2017 | director) Gregory Kershaw: Rivers To Dust (2015 | director) Stefano Cravero October 2017 – July 2019 October 2020 In production

FINANCING Production budget Still required Funds and Institutes Own Investment

Budget €

€ 602.230 € 533.171 Sundance Doc Fund | Hajnal Molnar-Szakacs Michael Dweck & Gregory Kershaw

| The Hunt

Producer and Director Producer and Director Fees

129.574

€ 129.574

Development | Pre-Production House Rental 3.440 Crew 3.268 Trailer 1.892 Travel and Expenses 7.697

€ 16.297

Production Translator/Prod. Coordinator 27.520 On Set Audio Mixer w/ Gear 23.220 Camera Assistant/Gaffer 17.200 Equipment & Special Gear 62.350 House Rental 15.480 Crew 19.608 Travel and Expenses 22.944

€ 188.322

Post-Production Editing 42.590 Post Production 59.340 Travel and Expenses 24.218 DCP/Hard Drives 25.350

€ 12.957 € 56.102

€ 151.498

Outreach and Distribution Festival Submission Fees Festival Travel Promotional Poster Image Press Kit Festival Specific Promotional Materials PR Agency and Social Media

860 8.600 3.440 1.720 3.440 10.750

€ 28.810

Business Services Production Insurance 5.160 Production Accounting Services 4.300 Book Keeping 3.440 Administrative and Overhead expenses 4.300 Fiscal Sponsorship Fee Legal Services E&O Insurance and Title Fex Ex Misc Loss, Damage, Repair Misc Office Expenses

Contingency Contingency 7.5%

Total budget (summed)

4.300 17.200 3.870 1.290 860 860

€ 45.580

42.150

€ 42.150 € 602.230

Round Table Pitch

Director Jerome Fritel Production Magneto Status Start Production Country France Format HD Cam | 52’& 90’ Genres

• Nature | Environment • Human Interest | Social Issues • Politics | Society Pitch Type Round Table Pitch

Lords of Water After gold and oil, the time has come for the water rush. By 2050, 1 in 4 people will live in a country suffering from chronic water shortages... enough to arouse the greed of the financial giants.

who are not industrialists, but those who operate according to other criteria, namely profitability, dividends, and speculation, assuming that the market is the best guarantor to manage natural resources. This is an ideological stance that dates back to the 80s and is now being applied to a domain that had previously been spared.

A real monopoly of water has begun. Goldman Sachs, HSBC, UBS, Allianz, Deutsche Bank, BNP... Banks, investment funds and hedge funds are jumping on everything related to water, already known as ‘blue gold.’

The consequences of this process of financialization can prove to be frightening, with the risk of leading to an imposition of a ‘toll’. Some populations would thus be excluded, as access to water would be reserved for richer societies or those better endowed by nature. This financialization can also influence choices in agricultural development, as we already see in Australia where some farmers prefer to resell their production permits rather than to continue producing.

If one considers the Earth as an immense natural reservoir, less than 1% of this stock is made up of freshwater in the liquid state, that is, directly usable in agriculture and industry or consumable by humans. This precious 1% has become the new eldorado of investors of the 21st century.

This worldwide investigation tells of the fight that currently opposes advocates of the financialization of water and the defenders of the right of water access for everyone. Citizens and States will soon cope with the dangers of a new order : new power relations are being established, and access to water is being threatened.

All the stars of Wall Street have created their specific index grouping companies in the water sector: they map reserves, continent by continent, to analyze the cost-benefit ratio, exchange business and consumption permits on the stock market, and attempt to privatize the ownership of glaciers, lakes or underground water tables.

This frontal collision takes place on several grounds : ideological, political, environmental, and of course, economic. The fate of the nearly 10 billion inhabitants of the planet depends on its outcome.

Synopsis

This documentary aims to present the dangers to which people and governments are exposed when they allow the financial world to seize a resource as vital as water.

For the first time, we will analyze, report on, and criticize the invasion of new players in the water sector. Players

Project Description « You liked the ‘subprimes’ ? You will love the water. » This could be the slogan of this documentary. One character embodies the appetite of finance giants for the water market, Michael Burry. An iconoclast investor, this visionary was one of the few to bet on the collapse of the US mortgage industry that would bring on the economic crisis of 2008.

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Immortalized in the film The Big Short in the guise of Christian Bale, Michael Burry has become, despite himself, a guru of modern finance. The film, made in 2015, ends with a black panel on which we can read this warning: ‘Michael Burry focuses his investments today on a single raw material: water.’

In the realm of speculation, water has become of promising value, as was the case in 2007-2008 with bets being placed on the repayment of home loans in the United States, on the rise of wheat and rice, and even on the bankruptcy of Greece. At this rate, we might wonder what the next targets of Wall Street will be: one day, will we need to pay to breathe clean air?

The world of finance has a new credo, theorized by the economist Terry Anderson, a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institute, an American think tank affiliated with the ruling Republican party in the United States. In his book Water Markets, Terry L. Anderson says that there is only one solution to fight against future water shortages: markets.

Governments must no longer control water.

It is by monetizing water that we will best manage it. And one of the best financial analysts on the issue, one of the shark gurus of finance and Citigroup’s chief economist advisor, Willem Buiter, does not hide his vision of the future: “I’m expecting to see a massive expansion of investments in the water sector soon. There will be fleets of tankers and storage facilities that will outpace the ones we currently have for oil. Water will soon be an asset class. There will be a globally integrated freshwater market. Once the spot markets for water are integrated, futures contracts and other water-based derivative financial instruments—put options, call options, exchangetraded and over-the-counter—will follow.”

This film also shows the ambiguity of the current policies defending the environment. By pushing for the privatization of natural resources such as water, do international organizations like the World Bank and the IMF bear responsibility in this imposed financialization?

Is entrusting the protection of the planet, and especially the defense of its most precious good, to private capital compatible with defending the collective interest?

We know that the economic health of many nations does not enable them to make the investments necessary to ensure the treatment and distribution of drinking water for their populations. But is it necessary to apply to water the same formulas that are in vogue for the oil or raw materials market, where the shipments are the object of multiple speculations and change owners depending on the unpredictable nature of the markets?

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This 90-minute documentary tells the story about a fight whose outcome is still unknown. The proponents of financialization or the advocates of free access to water - who will win?

The narrative framework is based on theatrics that are inherent in images. Because everything brings into opposition these two forces : on the one hand, finance, an invisible, abstract material, an activity that unfolds continuously around the planet in confined spaces, via computers, and whose unit of time is the nanosecond.

On the other hand, water, a living liquid, abundant, a source of life that is omnipresent in everyday life. It can manifest in a thousand different ways, from the drop that runs from a tap to the majestic waterfalls that carry along thousands of cubic meter per second.

The directing principle aims to structure the clash between these two universes through images. Without drifting into Manichaeism, finance takes the face of predation in this ongoing battle. The urban atmosphere of trading rooms, shareholder meetings, numerous screens, the ringing of telephones, of traders, wealth, anxiety.

The tones are dark, aggressive, the characters are shadowy, almost inhuman.

They represent a certain vision of the world, an order that relies exclusively on the power of money.

Water, by contrast, embodies an original purity. It flows, unshakeable, mapping out its path despite the obstacles put in place by those who wish to tame it. It is filmed from all angles, from the fine droplets of mist to the furious torrents rushing down from the mountains.

The film is structured on the basis of numerous interviews with men and women who either campaign for the financialization of water or who try to resist it.

Like Jérome Fritel’s previous documentaries about Goldman Sachs, Mittal, or HSBC, these interviews will all be filmed on the same directing principle, to put the different perspectives on an equal footing.

Carefully lit, shot with multiple cameras, they allow us to delve into the secrets of this transformation of water into a financial product, into the daily operation of the first water stocks operating in Australia or California, and behind the scenes at international summits dedicated to the defense of the environment, where the future of water is at stake.

Production Details |

Biographies

Lords of Water

PRODUCTION COMPANY Magneto 168 Rue d’Aguesseau 92100 Boulogne-Billancourt France www.magnetotv.com

bconforti@magnetotv.com +33 613032446

CREDITS Production

Director

Distributor/Sales Agent Production scheme Release Production status

Barbara Conforti, Marc Berdugo Barbara Conforti: Rebuilding Mosul (2018 | producer) Silent War (2017 | producer) Pornocracy (2016 | producer) Jerome Fritel Banksters (2017 | director) Fighting ISIS : Behind the Global Power Struggle (2016 | director) Mittal, the Hidden Face of the Empire (2014 | director) Roch Bozino | Java Films September 2018 – September 2019 September 2019 Start production

FINANCING Production budget Still required Broadcasters

Distributors Funds and Institutes Own Investment

Budget €

€ 528.415 € 163.740 ARTE | Rachel Adoul RTBF | Marc Bouvier RTS | Gaspard Lamunière Java Films | Roch Bozino CNC Magnéto Presse | Lords of Water

Development | Pre-Production Writer 15.550 Producer | Director 30.000 Travel/subsistence 9.000

€ 54.550

Production Archival rights & reproduction 25.000 Hotels, travel & food 50.000 Production travel and expenses 2.000 Production personnel 35.000 Director 75.000 Technical staff 29.910 Equipment 29.336 Stock Material 5.000 Broadcast requirements 3.600 Other - Investigation crew 25.428 Other - Archive researcher 2.999 Other - Fixing crew (Australia, USA, Canada, UK) 7.500

€ 220.000 € 10.000 € 9.000 € 10.000 € 85.675 € 30.000

€ 290.773

Post-Production Editor/editing system 45.319 Sound design and mix 6.750 Titles and animation 6.318 Music 4.823 Color calibration 3.600 Other - Subtitles 2.500

Outreach and distribution Trailer and stills

Miscellaneous Financial Fees

Overhead Overhead 15 % Contingency 7 %

Total budget (summed)

€ 69.310

10.000

€ 10.000

8.493

€ 8.493

Barbara Conforti Producer Franco-Italian, Barbara Conforti was born in 1971 in Rome where she lived until she left for Paris to study journalism. For over twenty years, she has done fieldwork for television to direct reports and investigative documentaries on mafia organizations and trafficking all around the world. In 2011, she left Capa agency where she was a senior reporter, to join the production company Magnéto. After serving as editor-in-chief of Vox Pop, Arte’s European magazine, she became a producer of documentaries, especially for Arte and Canal+. Her filmography includes: Rebuilding Mosul, directed

by Anne Poiret (Arte, 2018), Silent War, directed by Manon Loizeau (France 2, 2017), Pornocracy, directed by Ovidie (Canal Plus, 2016), Girl’s War, directed

by Mylène Sauloy (Arte, 2016).

Jérôme Fritel Director 52 years old, Jérôme Fritel is a journalist and director. His first film, Goldman Sachs, the Bank that Rules the World, co-written with Marc Roche was broadcast in September 2012 on Arte.

He received many awards : Les Lauriers de la Radio et de la Télévision 2012, the Special Jury Prize at Figra 2013 and the 2014 Tournesol Prize at the Green Film Festival (Switzerland). He was also nominated for the Europa 2013 Prize in Berlin. This doc was broadcasted on Netflix on november 2017.

His second film, Ambush (L’Embuscade), dedicated to the ambush of Uzbin in Afghanistan in which ten French soldiers were killed in a matter of hours, was broadcast in April 2014 on France 2. He was selected for the 2014 Schoendoerffer Prize.

Then he directed Mittal, the Hidden Face of the Empire (Arte - September 2014), ISIS: birth of a terrorist state, (Arte - February 2015) which received the Lauriers de l’Audiovisuel 2015 in the documentary category, Fighting ISIS: Behind the Global Power Struggle (Arte), Gaming, the Digital Revolution (Arte - November 2016) and Banksters (Arte - 2017).

Barbara Conforti Producer

Marc Berdugo Producer

Jerome Fritel Director

64.969 30.320

€ 95.289 € 528.415

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Round Table Pitch

Director Dawood Hilmandi Production BALDR Film Status Development Country The Netherlands Format HDcam | 80’ Genres

• Author’s Point of View • Human Interest | Social Issues Pitch Type Round Table Pitch

Oh Father, I Don’t Want to Hate You Years after he ran away from home as a boy, an Afghan-Dutch filmmaker goes back to confront his authoritarian father, and despite not knowing how their bond will be, he hopes to find his freedom.

Synopsis Dawood (30), a young Dutch-Afghan artist and filmmaker, carries a burden of restriction coming from his troubled past and from his authoritarian father. After 17 years living in Europe, away from his family and father, Dawood goes back to find a way to get rid of the burden.

Dawood’s father, Mohammad Yosef (75) lives as an Imam in Qom, one of Middle-East’s most religious cities. Yosef is a former Mujahedeen commandant, an Afghan immigrant who escaped to Iran because of life threatening political pressure during the Afghan-Soviet war. He is a father of 14 children whom he treated with the severity of rules and often the cruelty that one encounters on a military training base. At the same time, Yosef is also a creative writer who didn’t share his passion enough with the world.

Father and son haven’t had an easy relationship.

Dawood, the youngest son of all, experienced his harsh, uncomprehending and dictatorial father as a child. Working almost as a slave of the family in a time of poverty, and never being heard and cared for by his father, Dawood decided to break his father’s hierarchical system by doing the ultimate defiance, and also a dangerous act: He ran away from home at 13 years old and left his house and family behind to go to Europe. He

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(working title) carries with him the pain from his relationship with his father and decides to confront his father with questions about his childhood and find out more about this complex authority figure, which is his dad.

For this purpose, Dawood arranges two trips to Afghanistan together with his father. They go back to their roots in Hazarajat, first in the summer, and secondly during the winter. Through talks and interviews with his father, the son discovers many things about his origin, and about his father’s life, about where freedom and limitation in their family started to get shaped and their consequences. With a last trip with his father to the famous pilgrimage in Kharbala, Iraq, he lets himself (and the audience) be surprised by the power of freedom, imagination and tolerance. The spiritual experience, together with thousands of other pilgrims, replaces the interview/documentary style of the other two trips.

Project Description Back in Afghanistan my father was a well-respected man; outside the house he was a great adviser, a wise and famous man among Afghans. But inside the house he remained a commandant. The kids were the soldiers in his private army. I was the youngest son, the Nr 13, and with that almost the lowest in the hierarchy of the family.

This authoritarian hierarchy was very present. There was room for two things: orders and obeying.

There were no normal conversations between my parents and their kids. Instead, there were many religious group sessions with the whole family and at the end as usual my father finished the session with a religious speech. My father’s authoritarian system at home was very tough for me, it became a prison without any freedom or understanding. Sometimes a paid job in which I worked nightshifts in a plastic factory felt like

an experience of freedom for me, away from the tiring controlling system at home.

Life lost its meaning for me, I couldn’t go on in such an environment. Finally I decided to leave the house without permission. I felt I was betraying the authority.

But my drive for leaving that suffocating environment triggered a profound need in me.

So at the age of 13, I walked my way to Europe, a frightening and risky trip of which I still remember every minute of, to start a new life. A life in the way that I wanted. I grew up in the Netherlands and despite being alone I felt strongly attracted to art which became a companion to me and my biggest passion as well. Art for me was a way of being free again. Especially film, since I could play with sound and image and create another world through my imagination.

Looking back now, 17 years of my life passed in the Netherlands and I am still not able to completely leave the past behind and fully go towards the future. I’m still not a free person nor the artist I know that I could be. I am holding back from my artistic works that would often contradict the religious rules of my father and family.

This creats a constant feeling of shame and fear which results in frustration, and finally in anger and numbness.

I now understand that my past is still hunting me. The only place where I felt happier was my freedom in my creative world, but after all these years, I realise that my freedom is being taken away from me even in that creative world, which feels suffocating to me.

Why I want to make this film In December 2017 I travelled to my father. It was the first time I really spent time with him in Qom. Spending this time with my father and me being older and able to reflect, I also started to see another side of him; a side which was not only cruel, heartless and authoritarian. In that trip I discovered that I really don’t know much about this man. He was not only the commandant anymore.

I started to see a man that I didn’t see before: a very creative writer, a poet, a fashionable man, a fun guy to hang out with. I had to come back again.

Visual Approach The filming atmosphere will focus on revealing the emotion of the characters. Many of the shots will concentrate on showing the characters in long takes.

The film will also sometimes show a succession of shots that travel through time –showing/evoking memories or capturing the intimacy of the home, of a hug between father and son, of a saddened face. We’ll see close-up frames of the characters faces, or hands, eyes, that will

reveal their expression, regularly captured from a low angle. These close-up frames will get combined with wide shots of the nature that sometimes reflect the inner feeling of the characters (for example the mountains in Bamiyan, the frozen lake in Band-e-Amir). Warm, dry summers contrast with harsh frozen winter. The contrast in colour and mood expresses the internal tension and the sharpness of emotions. It creates a timeless space of mediation. The difference between the shots with one lonely character in the frame will contrast with the millions of people that walk the pilgrimage in Karbala in Iraq or the crowded streets in Kabul.

I want to create a hybrid documentary. I’d love to make it visually as cinematic as a possible. I will shoot a mix of observational and sometimes interview style. Along the film, we see the emotional struggles from both sides. I’m very interested in the way how Terrence Malick works with observational shots and put’s also conversations with them. Also, I’d like to let it be as cinema verite style as possible like how Dardenne brothers works.

I’m also inspired by some of the earlier works from Bruno Dumont, such as Hadewijch, Outside Satan and L’humanité, quietly showing a lot of emotions with little conversation. Also the way Robert Bresson creates an indescribable situation in the film, fascinates me a lot. Chris Marker, Bela tar and Kiarostami are strongly influencing me, in the way that they create poetry by real-life cinematic moments. Last but not least Joshua Oppenheimer is a vital maker who I should mention.

Especially in the way he uses interview combined with re-enactment, to allow the audience to grasp emotionally almost unreachable grey eras. I will also use some archive material from the Afghan-Soviet war.

Conclusion Oh Father, I Don’t Want to Hate You is an intimate documentary about the relationship between me, as a troubled Dutch-Afghan artist and my religious Afghan father with hidden creative sides. At the same time, it is a story about unresolved conflicts from a troubled history of immigration and epistemic damage which caused many pain and alienation in Afghanistan and Afghan diaspora. Furthermore, it’s a film about finding hope in the freedom of creativity and human intimacy. Can I find my way to my ultimate creativity, by tolerance and acceptance, or by ignoring and resisting the past?

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Biographies

Katja Draaijer Producer

Frank Hoeve Producer

Dawood Hilmandi Director

BALDR Film Production Company BALDR Film (2012) is the Amsterdam-based production company of Frank Hoeve and Katja Draaijer. They focus on developing and (co-)producing challenging, author-driven features and documentaries of a select number of filmmakers with a distinctive personal signature. BALDR Film offers a lot of support in matters of content, focussing not only on urgent content but also on form and originality. In this they don’t fear to take risks, always aiming for a high artistic value, visually intriguing style and an international audience. Selected credits: Those Who Feel the Fire Burning by Morgan Knibbe (Competition IDFA 2014 and Dutch Academy Award Winner), Ubiquity by Bregtje van der Haak (Competition HotDocs 2018), Etgar Keret: Based on a True Story

by Stephane Kaas (Nomination International Emmy 2018) and Heartbound by Janus Metz (TIFF, IDFA 2018).

Dawood Hilmandi Director Filmmaker Dawood Hilmandi explores the relation between authority and imagination. In 2017, Hilmandi won the prestigious Locarno Open Doors Hub prize.

His works have been screened at a.o. the IFFR, International Film Festival Oberhausen, NFF, Krakow Film Festival, International Short Film Festival Winterthur, Eye Film Museum, Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art, Watermill Center New York. He holds an MA Artistic research film, Nederlands Film Academy Amsterdam (2014-2016), a Postgraduate diploma in filmmaking, LFA London (2010-2012), and a BA Fine Arts –VAV, Gerrit Rietveld Academy, Amsterdam (2008-2010).

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Production Details |

Oh Father, I Don’t Want to Hate You (working title)

PRODUCTION COMPANY BALDR Film Oudezijds Achterburgwal 77 1012DC Amsterdam The Netherlands www.baldrfilm.nl

katja@baldrfilm.nl +31 628405800 frank@baldrfilm.nl +31 20 4421725

CREDITS Production

Director

Production scheme Release Production status

Katja Draaijer, Frank Hoeve Ubiquity (2018 | producer) Rocknrollers (2016 | producer) Those Who Feel the Fire Burning (2014 | producer) Dawood Hilmandi A Journey Into Zero Space (2017 | director) June 2019 – July 2020 October 2020 Development

FINANCING Production budget Still required Funds and Institutes

Budget €

€ 368.075 € 335.000 The Netherlands Film Fund | Suzanne van Voorst

| Oh Father, I Don’t Want to Hate You (working title)

Development | Pre-Production Writer 5.000 Producer | Director 5.000 Travel/subsistence 7.500

€ 17.500

Production Archival rights & reproduction 10.000 Hotels, travel & food 24.000 Production travel and expenses 3.000 Production personnel 20.000 Director 35.000 Technical staff 34.000 Equipment 26.100 Stock Material 750 Broadcast requirements 3.385 Co-producer 7.500

€ 33.075

€ 163.735

Post-Production Editor/editing system 34.000 Sound design and mix 22.000 Titles and animation 4.100 Music 12.000 Image Post production & VFX 22.000

€ 94.100

Outreach and distribution Publicity 12.500 Outreach Campaign 8.000

Overhead Overhead 7 % Contingency 7 % Producersfee 7%

Total budget (summed)

€ 20.500

24.080 24.080 24.080

€ 72.240 € 368.075

Round Table Pitch

Director Ayse Toprak Production Toprak Film, COIN FILM GmbH Status Development Country Turkey, Germany Format HD | 70’ Genres

• Human Interest | Social Issues • Politics | Society • Author’s Point of View Pitch Type Round Table Pitch

The Other Half How will a country on the brink of absolute rule preserve its everfleeting democracy? The Other Half is a story about one family’s struggle for justice and a group of young Turks hoping to chart a new future, with an omnipresent leader overshadowing them all.

Synopsis The Other Half will follow Ahmet Şık, an iconic journalist who recently got elected to Turkey’s parliament.

Together with his wife, Yonca, he has been fighting for human rights since university. Their daughter, Mina, witnessed authorities dragging Ahmet to prison twice since age 11. She’s now studying law to help defend her father, who appealed a seven-year prison sentence just before entering parliament.

The film starts following Ahmet and his family after Turkey’s 2018 elections. Ahmet quickly becomes the voice of the voiceless in parliament, pursuing issues journalists can no longer report and challenging the government’s policies. Hate propaganda and threats mount, pressuring the Şık family to create coping mechanisms and driving the film’s narrative.

President Erdogan -the omnipresent leader of Turkeyis the second main character. We never meet him in person but he is in our lives daily, blaring from every TV screen with fiery speeches like an Orwellian nightmare come true. Erdogan haunts the protagonists, who put their lives and family on the line to fight one-man rule.

Ahmet takes on Erdogan in a David-versus-Goliath fight, which could just as easily go the way of Tiananmen Square. Ordinary people are stuck in the middle.

The third narrative is built on a 20-year-old university student, Irem, and her friends, who came of age in the Erdogan era. They are sick and tired of Turkey’s stale politics and the demagogy of both the government and the opposition. With youthful optimism, they decry older generations’ redlines around identity politics, religion and ethnicity. Instead, they dream of building a vibrant democracy. The film follows this idealistic group, as they seek a way forward. Their aim: a political movement that would challenge the conservative status quo and the left’s dated values.

The Şık family’s story embodies what happens when justice vanishes: it affects your whole life, loved ones, and kid’s future. A ruling on Ahmet’s appeal, expected during filming, will be a breaking point. Will he be free or back behind bars? The youth’s story, meanwhile, portrays an internationally invisible side of Turkey -a new generation, with loud voices and bold visions.

Our characters’ future will mirror the dynamics of a country walking the line between democracy and autocracy. Turkey and the film become a cautionary tale for many societies today. The story, however, also shines a light on a hopeful bunch, whose efforts could provide a way out of this quagmire.

Project Description Background Erdogan’s party, the AKP, came to power in 2002. Back then, it pledged to expand liberties, consolidate democracy and join the EU, partially delivering on its promises.

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But authoritarian undercurrents eventually surfaced.

They set out to demolish the pillars of Turkey’s modern republic, while deepening the divide between conservatives and the band of liberals, secularists, socialists, democrats and Kurds. Soon enough, for the opposition representing the other half of Turkey, the party’s moves amounted to an Islamist-nationalist push turning the secular democracy into a majoritarian autocracy.

Characters Ahmet Ahmet Şık has been an investigative journalist since the early 1990s, covering injustices in Turkey. In 2011, he was imprisoned for writing a book on the Islamist Gulen network’s infiltration of Turkish bureaucracy. At the time, the Gulenists and Erdogan’s ruling AKP were in cahoots.

Ahmet’s case was dismissed as Erdogan came to loggerheads with the Gulen movement. The president blamed the 2016 coup on Gulenists, who are widely believed to have initiated the attempt. In a bizarre twist, Ahmet was among the 50,000 people jailed for backing the Gulenist putsch. Just four years after his release, Ahmet found himself in the same prison.

Enraged, Ahmet delivered an epic defense at court, lambasting the AKP for governing like the mafia and concluding that Turkish courts have become ‘the graveyard of justice.’ He was released amid his ongoing trial and subsequently sentenced to seven years in prison, which he appealed and ran for parliament after Erdogan called early elections.

Irem Irem set to work on her childhood ambition of building a better society immediately after entering Turkey’s top college, Bogazici Universtiy. However, she quickly realized the futility of trying to energize Turkey’s opposition. The conservative government’s detractors, Irem saw, are stuck in antiquated leftist dogmas, divided by infighting and detached from the public.

On a quest to change Turkey’s politics and forge a movement that she can also call her own, Irem helped launch Universus. Comprising students working across many disciplines at numerous universities, their unprecedented grassroots movement aims to break the stranglehold of old, partisan politics on Turkey. Mainly, they want to unshackle the youth’s potential to chart their own way, unbound by the dictums of Turkey’s patriarchal leaders.

Irem and her friends live in a country, where being a 22-year-old is not what it used to be. They know how to recognize undercover policemen lurking in their universities. They are secretive because they fear other students working as informants for the secret police.

They have to fight for their friends’ freedom, seeking the release of some 70,000 students currently in prison.

Despite the challenges, however, they are full of hope and a desire for change.

Visual concept The Other Half is an observational documentary that takes its audience on an intimate ride. Our main characters will present the structure and help viewers engage in a different reality of Turkey. The film is driven by these characters’ evolution. We anticipate many ups and downs, which we will follow. The ubiquity of Turkey’s president throughout this period in cityscapes -including billboards across Istanbul, TVs in restaurants and adverts on public transportation- will give the film a thriller-like quality. The film will bring to life seesawing emotions of hope and dismay.

Director’s Note I started writing my Director’s note for this project a day after joining the Justice March led by Turkey’s mainopposition chief in 2017. He walked 432 kilometers from Ankara to Istanbul, for 25 days, carrying a single banner: Justice. Hundreds of thousands followed.

He marched out of desperation because he couldn’t do anything else to draw attention to the injustices in my country. It was his way to fight the system. The image of that 69 year old man walking in the scorching summer heat and through thunderstorms has been burned in my mind since. So are the faces of those who followed -full of dignity and pride- and the cacophony of honking cars passing the marchers, and the people clapping on the side of the road, chanting only one slogan: ‘Rights! Law! Justice!’

Like many of my peers in Turkey -who believe in democratic values and equality for all- I had long lost hope in politics. We rejected the divisive rhetoric and our country’s transformation to an authoritarian regime, which we helplessly resisted from the sidelines. Witnessing the travails of people’s loved ones, however, increasingly bothered my conscious.

One family friend started a letter to her incarcerated husband -a lifelong champion of democracy and founder of a prominent NGO- saying: ‘Dear Osman, I guess this will be the first time in 30 years that we won’t be spending New Year’s together.’ Conservative thugs attacked the funeral of a Kurdish parliamentarian’s mother last year and removed her body from the grave. It gives me the chills to imagine what that woman lived through while protecting her dead mother’s body.

Similarly, it pains me to think of a journalist I know, who said the most difficult part of being imprisoned for two years was the day his seven-year-old daughter asked if the charges against him were true.

What kind of a country have we become?

I now have a four-month-old daughter. I reject the idea that she will grow up to be a citizen of a country where she witnesses our experiences. Despite everything that is currently unfolding, I am hopeful and strongly believe that she won’t. That underpins my connection to the characters in this film. They haven’t given up on the fight, even if that means dire sacrifices.

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Production Details |

Biographies

The Other Half

PRODUCTION COMPANY Toprak Film Cihangir Cad. No: 28/4 Bazlamaci Apt. 34427 Istanbul Turkey 2ND PRODUCTION COMPANY COIN FILM GmbH Rolandstraße 63 50677 Cologne Germany www.coin-film.de

Ayse Toprak Producer | Director Ayse Toprak is a filmmaker based in Istanbul. She received a BFA in Film &TV from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, and an MA from the Media Studies department at the New School. Her work experience includes producing for Al Jazeera in London, and Doha. After almost 15 years of living abroad, Ayse returned to Turkey with Al Jazeera in 2011, to produce social and political documentaries in her country and the region. In 2016, Ayse quit Al Jazeera to work on her first feature length documentary, Mr. Gay Syria. To this date, Mr. Gay Syria has attended over 70 international film festivals including IDFA, Sheffield Film Festival, MOMA Fortnight, Chicago Film Festival, Movies That Matter, One World. The film won 14 awards, half of which were given for its enhancement of human rights.

ayse.toprak@gmail.com +32 468385668

c.kiauk@coin-film.de +49 1732709378

CREDITS Production

Director Production scheme Release Production status

Ayse Toprak, Christine Kiauk Ayse Toprak: Mr. Gay Syria (2017 | producer | director) Christine Kiauk: Mr. Gay Syria (2017 | co-producer) The Barber of the Bomb (2015 | producer) Iraqi Odyssey (2014 | co-producer) Lost in Liberia (2007 | producer) Ayse Toprak

Coin Film Production Company Coin Film has been developing and producing feature films and high-end documentaries for cinema and television since 1993. All of its films are characterized by the film-maker’s individualist approach and artistic profile. Of the more than 40 films produced to date, many have been international Co-productions. Christine Kiauk was the German co-producer of Mr. Gay Syria.

February 2019 – October 2020 October 2020 Development

FINANCING Production budget Still required

Budget €

€ 351.000 € 351.000

| The Other Half

THE OTHER HALF Development | Pre-Production Writer 10.000 Producers 20.000 Travel/subsistence/teaser production 5.000 Markets/ Co-production Forums/ application costs 3.000 Teaser Editor Graphic Designers/ Translators

3.000 3.000

€ 44.000

Production Archival rights & reproduction 15.000 Hotels, travel & food 10.000 Production travel and expenses 10.000 Production personnel(line producers/ drivers/researchers) 15.000 Director 15.000 Technical staff 25.000 Equipment 15.000 Hard Drives 4.000 Broadcast requirements 7.000

Ayse Toprak Producer | Director

Christine Kiauk Producer

Post-Production Editor/editing system 35.000 Sound design and mix 30.000 Titles and animation 3.000 Music 10.000 post production supervisor 8.000 Online package deal 28.000

€ 114.000

Outreach and distribution Posters | distribution campaigns | impact plans 7.000

Miscellaneous Administrative costs

Overhead Overhead 7 % Contingency 7 %

Total budget (summed)

€ 7.000

20.000

€ 20.000

25.000 25.000

€ 50.000 € 351.000

€ 116.000

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Round Table Pitch

Director Nino Orjonikidze,

Vano Arsenishvili

Production Artefact Production Status In Production Country Georgia

The Platform

Format FULL HD | 75’ & 90’ Genres

• Human Interest | Social Issues •P olitics | Society Pitch Type Round Table Pitch

An old railway station in a remote valley of Georgia suddenly becomes a site for a big change, when hundreds of Chinese settle around it to build the New Silk Road.

Synopsis A scarcely populated village in a remote part of Georgia, sinking in poverty and solitude, suddenly becomes a site for a big change. Hundreds of Chinese workers settle in the area to build a fast railway linking China and Europe, which leads to the abolishment of the old station and a drastic reshape of the landscape.

The inhabitants of the village are waiting for change with both hope and fear: some hope for compensation, planning to leave the village for good, others fear that their houses could be demolished... The ambiguous nature of the construction process, the inability of the villagers to communicate with the Chinese workers, due to the language and cultural barrier, increases the uncertainty of the locals.

Speculations and rumours are spread in the gorge faster than local trains can rattle through it twice a day.

With their strong folk traditions and beliefs, some of the villagers perceive the Chinese even as spiritual creatures invading their mountains.

The Platform follows the characters and situations around the old train station for 5 years - until the moment when the village finds itself under the huge viaduct for fast trains.

The story starts as a comedy where locals do not take Chinese seriously and the local media depicts them as ‘dog eaters’. But slowly it turns into a tragedy when

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villagers become more and more aggressive towards habits of their new neighbors. Also the working conditions and the salaries on the tunnel construction site are unbearable.

The tension culminates when the rumour spreads that one local worker is found dead. Since certain point even high officials cannot moderate anymore the escalation of the conflict. The language barriers lead to misunderstandings and to real physical harm. Poor safety conditions lead to numerous damages of workers, underground explosions hurt villagers and ruin their houses.

The villagers start to revolt and so do the mountains.

The landslides endanger the whole project and the village itself. Meanwhile the deadline for the new railroad opening is approaching, which means that the old station and a part of the village might be destroyed.

Those who survive the drama, including two of the film characters, find themselves under the huge viaduct passing over the village.

Project Description Protagonists Nodar, 60, is the stationmaster of the old train station.

He has been working here since he was 17. Due to his very good communication skills and humour, people love stopping by and chat with him. Nodar is always ready to listen to passengers and share their worries.

His whole life is connected to this platform. In the film he serves as a character, through whom real conflicts unfold: whose house will be demolished? What if the railway goes through the only school? How to deal with the environmental disaster approaching the village?

Nodar survives a bear attack. He cannot raise a hand to stop trains, but he can still listen to the villagers. At the end, Nodar also looses his inner security when he is

told by the Ministry of Culture that his platform might be either demolished or moved to another place on wheels by cutting of its basement.

Gotcha, 33, is a villager who is autistic. But Gotcha’s physical strength and inability to refuse make him an excellent aid for chopping woods and cleaning up a stable. He has one obsession: he draws with almost absolute accuracy railways, trains and tunnels. He mostly walks alone, shyly observing Chinese from the hills. Progressively he starts to be fixed on construction trucks. Their activity brings a childish happiness to Gotcha, not really realizing how much they change the environment he lives in. Gotcha’s house might be ruined if it is decided that new railway goes across it.

Eteri, 95, used to be a respectable teacher of the village school. All her life she fought for the preservation of the unique forest and natural resources of her village.

Now, living alone on the upper side of the village, she observes the changes in the gorge from the top. Eteri believes that the village is often visited by some spiritual creatures called ‘Chinkas’ (old Georgian folk creatures like ‘trolls’ that locals believe have a power to affect lives, often in a quite destructive way). For her ‘Chinkas’ and Chinese are of the same nature; she feels they have a power to influence lives. Eteri dies without seeing all the changes in the village. With her dies the old world. Her favourite mountains are swept away by huge bulldozers operated by those she could never talk to...

The old village platform might be demolished as a last sign that changes are irreversible. It will never be the same, the old world has gone and everybody who belonged to it. The stationmaster (who miraculously survived the bear attack but damaged his right arm) might not be part of the newly constructed huge railway.

He and the painter, who preferred to stay in the partly destroyed village, find themselves under the huge viaduct for fast trains constructed over the small village.

Visual Approach & Style The mixture of harsh reality and imagination is reflected in the stylistic approach of the film – it shifts between two worlds – realistic and mystical inextricably intertwine in the gorge: On one hand there is narrative story developing around the century old railway platform, inhabitants and construction site. On the other hand, this ‘intrusion’ is seen from the perspective of the film’s protagonists, who reflect on changes in their very peculiar way, which is sometimes very surrealistic.

Motivation & Background The 5-year long observation of the remote valley in Georgia shows the drastic changes it undergoes due to the New Silk Road railway route construction. On the cross road of Europe and Asia, in the shadow of a big neighbouring Russia, Georgia still struggles for its own importance and place on the world map, therefore the train from China to Europe is seen as something vital for the country. Beyond this global agenda, locally people are unaware what is next to be happening to them. They are stuck between construction and deconstruction. For villagers it is an aggressive intrusion into their lives and harmful reshape of their landscape, for the country it is the route from China to Europe with the total absence of the Russian presence.

The time we committed ourselves for observing one particular community gave us the unique opportunity and material to experience the real change and what it really means to people – lives and deaths, joys and sorrows of ordinary, unnoticed but charismatic characters. To zoom-in on things that are blurred from the fast trains, that fade away from a global perspective. This is what interests us.

So we try to depict this process of change on a personal, environmental and infrastructural level and explore how ordinary men and women are affected by a global politics. But to do it in a very subtle and highly artistic way, with profound visuals and sophisticated depiction of sound, to create a vivid experience of a very contemporary situation, relevant to many other countries through charismatic characters and tragi-comic situations.

This small railway platform is a scene/setting where all these layers intersect, this is why we have chosen it as a point of our filming location. It is already five years we are filming this place following ups and downs, tragic and comic situations developing around the old platform. We reached the point where our main location – the platform, is about to be demolished.

The ambivalence of situation and multiple layers of the story make this film very complex representation of our current world full of contradictions. For us the film and The Platform encapsulates this whole idea of sweeping away the old world with a new order and its paradoxical nature. We try to find the bigger image of the micro world stuck in the midst of construction and deconstruction.

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Biographies

Nino Orjonikidze Producer | Director

Vano Arsenishvili Director

Nino Orjonikidze Producer | Director Nino Orjonikidze is a documentary filmmaker, graduated from Goldsmiths, University of London.

She is the author of English Teacher (best documentary Focus Caucasus – Cinedoc 2013), Altzaney nominated for prizes at a number of international festivals including DOK Leipzig, Krakow Film Festival and others, The Bridge screened at Vision Du Reel 2015. Nino teaches documentary filmmaking at the Caucasus School of Journalism and Media Management (GIPA) and works as a mentor/editor of the international media platform Chai-Khana, supervising short documentary film production in the South Caucasus.

Artefact Production Production Company Artefact Production was established 10 years ago in Tbilisi, Georgia by documentary filmmakers Nino Orjonikidze and Vano Arsenishvili. It focuses on artistic documentary & experimental film production, also transmedia projects. We co-produce and co-develop different projects with many regional partners, including Sakdoc Film, Chai-Khana and others. Selected projects include 10 minutes of Democracy, Plastic, Speechless by Salome Jashi, Altzaney, English Teacher, A Journey to Leuville, Madonna Revisited. Artefact Production also serves as a mentoring and consultancy partner for numerous organisations and educational institutions in the South Caucasus, providing consultancy in editing, storytelling and documentary production, especially for young generation of filmmakers from Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan.

Vano Arsenishvili Director Vano Arsenishvili – a filmmaker, cinematographer and editor, studied at the Vienna Film Academy and Tbilisi Theatre and Film University.

He is co-director, cinematographer and editor of an award winning English Teacher, Altzaney, The Bridge. Apart from filmmaking, Vano also teaches documentary at the Caucasus Media School, GIPA and Black Sea University. He works as a consultant and editor on numerous film projects in Georgia and the South Caucasus. He is the director of the production company Artefact Production. Vano was a jury member of a short and animation film at Dok Leipzig 2017.

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Production Details |

The Platform

PRODUCTION COMPANY Artefact Production 17//11 Chiaureli st 0109 Tbilisi Georgia www.artefact.ge

nino@artefact.ge +995 599987977

CREDITS Production

Director

Screenplay Editor Production scheme Release Production status

Nino Orjonikidze Nino Orjonikidze: English teacher (2012 | producer | director) Altzaney (2009 | producer | director) The Speechless (2008 | producer) The Bridge (2005 | producer | director) Nino Orjonikidze, Vano Arsenishvili Vano Arsenishvili: English Teacher (2012 | co-directors) Altzaney (2009 /co-directors) The Bridge (2005 | co-directors) Nino Orjonikidze Vano Arsenishvili March 2014 – September 2019 November 2019 In production

FINANCING Production budget Still required Funds and Institutes

Own Investment

Budget €

€ 70.055 € 18.500 Georgian National Film Center IDFA Bertha Fund Artefact Production

| The Platform

Development | Pre-Production Writer 2.433 Producer | Director 2.124 Travel/subsistence 600

€ 5.157

Production Hotels, travel & food 1.000 Production travel and expenses 2.165 Director 9.124 Technical staff 9.072 Equipment 12.565

€ 20.800 € 17.055 € 13.700

€ 33.926

Post-Production Editor/editing system 11.300 Sound design and mix 4.200 Titles and animation 1.500 Music 2.595 Color Corection 3.408 Translation 811

€ 23.814

Overhead Overhead 3.124 Contingency 4.030

Total budget (summed)

€ 7.154 € 70.055

Round Table Pitch

Director Pedro Kos Production Rebel Hearts LLC Status In Production Country United States Format 4k, HD, DV, 16mm film | 90’ Genres

• Human Interest | Social Issues • History

• Art | Music | Culture Pitch Type Round Table Pitch

Rebel Hearts Rebel Hearts tells the story of an unlikely resistance group – Catholic nuns in Los Angeles who stood up to the patriarchy of the Church over fifty years ago and continue to walk their talk today.

Synopsis It’s May 1st, 1964. The sun is shining over Hollywood, California as a parade marches through the streets.

Seemingly out of place amidst the colorful banners and protest signs are nuns in full habit, jovially singing as they walk alongside their students and members of their community. These are the Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, a group of free-thinking nuns who, under the leadership of Sister Anita Caspary, are about to turn the Catholic Church upside down. In the college and parochial schools they run throughout Los Angeles, the sisters are determined to teach their mostly-female students that education and creativity will empower them to do anything. At the helm of the art department is pop art icon Sister Corita Kent, who spends her days creating bold screen-prints that fuse faith with cultural references, which brings her a great deal of media attention and notoriety.

In 1965, the Second Vatican Council issues a decree for religious orders around the world to modernize the longstanding traditions of the Catholic Church. Some abhor the decrees from the Holy See, like the Archbishop of Los Angeles, Cardinal James Francis McIntyre who has spent his entire career promoting conservative values within the Church. The Sisters of the Immaculate Heart, however, roused by these decrees, begin to implement a series of changes: to shed their habits, break out of

the insular world of the convent and engage with radical commitment to the communities they serve. Enraged, Cardinal McIntyre asks that the order cease all reforms or face serious consequences. Thus begins an all-out war between the institution of the Church and the sisters, with each side refusing to compromise. Finally they are given an ultimatum: either cooperate with the Church’s demand to end their reforms or leave the Church - and with it, everything to which they had devoted their lives.

In the end, 350 of 400 nuns make the heartbreaking decision to dispense from their vows. Together, those who leave take ownership of their role as women religious and form the Immaculate Heart Community. Now fifty years later, they are thriving, pushing the boundaries of the role of women in faith, while those who remained loyal to the Cardinal are once again in conflict with the Church. Intimate and profound, Rebel Hearts captures the awakening of a movement that found its strength as it battled for justice against a seemingly invincible status quo.

Project Description Background Rebel Hearts is at its core is a David versus Goliath story about a group of devoted women who took on the weight of the Vatican and the patriarchy of the Catholic Church, challenging the notions of what a nun and what a woman were supposed to be, and paving the way for others to follow suit. With unprecedented access and never-before-seen material, this story will bring to life the lasting impact of the bold acts of defiance that have reshaped our society over the last half century and the ripple effects that continue to cause waves today.

As a feature-length documentary, the film will be a dynamic, cinematic experience that captures the youthful, spirited, and revolutionary essence of these sisters. Anchored in the present, the series will inter-

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weave forgotten captivating archival material, vivid artwork, and current day vérité footage.

Characters Anita Caspary - As the Mother General of the Immaculate Heart Order, Sister Anita Caspary leads the reforms encouraged by Vatican II. Always standing up for what she believes to be just, she is Cardinal McIntyre’s main adversary. After the split from the Church, she becomes one of the founders of the Immaculate Heart Community.

Corita Kent - Sister Corita Kent is a pop art icon in league with Andy Warhol, and the chair of the art department at Immaculate Heart College. Her artwork fuses faith with pop culture, creating a stir in the Catholic community, especially with Cardinal McIntyre.

Cardinal McIntyre - Cardinal McIntyre is the conservative Archbishop of Los Angeles and strongest opponent of the Immaculate Heart Sister’s reforms, eventually forcing the sisters out of the Church to which they had devoted themselves.

Sister Eileen MacDonald - Sister Eileen MacDonald is the leader of the faction opposed to the reforms. Betraying the trust of her sisters, she secretly reports to Cardinal McIntyre about the ongoings of the order.

Sister Rita Callanan - Sister Rita Callanan is one of only three remaining nuns in the Immaculate Heart Order. In an echo of the past, she is currently in conflict with the current Archbishop of Los Angeles, José Gomez, over the sale of the Immaculate Heart convent in Los Feliz, California to popstar Katy Perry.

Access This project began twenty years ago with producer Shawnee Isaac-Smith. Over the years, Shawnee conducted a series of interviews with many of the characters of the film, and eventually gained the trust of the community members. As a result we have over 100 hours of never-before-seen footage, and we are working with the full cooperation of the Immaculate Heart Order, the Corita Art Center, and the Immaculate Heart Community, who have been gracious enough to allow us unfettered access to their archives. We’ve also been allowed to follow members of the Immaculate Heart community as they meet to rewrite their mission for the first time since 1968.

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Artistic Approach To capture the essence of their story, Rebel Hearts will be an immersive viewing experience that transports the audience from the colorful and rich world of the Sisters of the Immaculate Heart in the sixties to their present day struggles. Visually we will interweave vibrant archival material that brings to life the world of the Sisters of the Immaculate Heart (i.e. Senna and Amy) with bold animations of Sister Corita Kent’s striking artworks, which will illuminate the social and political issues at the core of the order’s work. We will also include visceral recreations that emotionally involve the audience in the action of the film, while cinematically capturing the essence of the time period (i.e. Stories We Tell). The color palette will reflect the divergence between the black & white of the rigidity of the Church and the rich & colorful world of these freethinking nuns. The soundtrack will combine electrifying music from the 1960s such as ‘Turn, Turn, Turn’ from The Byrds, and evocative modern tunes, such as music from Tame Impala and Arcade Fire, that embody the sister’s rebellious spirit. This will be contrasted by a traditional score that encapsulates the conflict with the conservative institution of the Catholic Church.

Director’s notes With many issues of justice, faith, and gender resurging and being fought over so bitterly in these polarizing times, I feel that the world urgently needs to learn the story of the Sisters of the Immaculate Heart. The tug and pull between movements of change and the preservation of the status quo has always been a primary shaping force in our world, not just from a larger societal perspective, but on an individual level as well. As someone who personally experienced this conflict throughout my life growing up as a gay man in catholic Brazil, I felt a deep connection when I first heard the story of the IHM sisters. A complex and inspiring example of this clash of forces, these sisters’ actions have not only redefined the role of women in faith, but also provide an intimate example of how change happens. Despite the enormous cultural significance of their actions, it is important not to reduce these women to mere symbols, but instead to show them as three-dimensional and complex people who struggled and continue to struggle with their convictions and their faith. In the end this is a story of an awakening whose ripple effects are reverberating to this day and will continue to do so for generations to come.

Production Details |

Biographies

Rebel Hearts

PRODUCTION COMPANY Rebel Hearts LLC c/o Merman 6374 Arizona Circle 90045, Los Angeles CA United States

Kira Carstensen Producer Kira Carstensen is an Academy Award Nominee and a two time Emmy Nominee for her work as producer on Lucy Walker’s documentary short The Tsunami and the Cherry Blossom. Kira oversaw and produced the critically acclaimed visual album Lemonade for Beyonce and HBO, and in June 2017, Kira opened Merman in the US and UK, along with Sharon Horgan (creator, Catastrophe and Divorce) to produce award-winning female-led content across TV, film and branded.

+1 3109919153 kira_carstensen@me.com

CREDITS Production

Director

Executive Production Editor Production scheme Release Production status

Kira Carstensen, Judy Korin Kira Carstensen: Beyoncé: Lemonade (2016 | producer) The Tsunami and the Cherry Blossom (2011 | producer) Pedro Kos Bending the Arc (2017 | director | editor) The Crash Reel (2013 | writer | editor) Waste Land (2010 | editor) Rick Rosenthal, Nancy Stephens Yuki Aizawa September 2017 – April 2019 September 2019 In production

FINANCING Production budget Still required Funds and Institutes

Own Investment

Budget €

€ 762.809 € 641.473 Antonini Foundation | Marisa Antonini Catapult Film Fund | Lisa Kleiner Chanoff Magic Hour Fund | Whitewater Films | Rick Rosenthal Rosenthal Family Foundation | Nancy Stephens

| Rebel Hearts

Development | Pre-Production Producer’s Unit

192.038

€ 192.038

Production Production travel and expenses 4.300 Production personnel 2.150 Director 59.985 Technical staff 19.866 Broadcast requirements 12.900

€ 18.136 € 17.200 € 60.200 € 25.800

€ 99.201

Miscellaneous Administrative Expenses (Legal, Accounting, etc)

Pedro Kos Director Pedro Kos’ feature directorial debut Bending the Arch premiered at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival.

Previously, he edited Jehane Noujaim’s Academy Award nominee The Square which earned Pedro an Emmy Award for Best Editing for a Non-Fiction program, Lucy Walker’s Academy Award nominee Waste Land and The Crash Reel (2013 SXSW Film Festival Audience Award winner), Jon Shenk’s The Island President (2011 TIFF Documentary People’s Choice Award winner). Pedro is from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and received his B.A. in Theater Directing from Yale University.

Kira Carstensen Producer

Judy Korin Producer

Pedro Kos Director

31.648

€ 31.648

Overhead Production Company Fee 2.5% 18.162 Fiscal Sponsor Fee (5% of 50% of budget) 18.162

Total budget (summed)

€ 36.324 € 762.809

Post-Production Editor/editing system 178.020 Sound design and mix 25.542 Titles and animation 64.500 Music 51.600 archival rights & reproduction 64.500 Digital Intermediate 15.910 Deliverables 3.526

€ 403.598

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Round Table Pitch

Director Lasse Barkfors,

Frida Barkfors

Production Final Cut for Real Status Development Country Denmark

School Shooters

Format 4K | 75’ & 56’ Genres

(working title)

As the disaster of yet another school shooting hits, some parents are faced with a brutal fact: their child was the one pulling the trigger.

Synopsis Every time it’s just as unreal and incomprehensible.

An adolescent, sometimes a child, brings a weapon to school and shoots his or her fellow students and teachers. Seeking answers to why it happened, the media attention and the finger of guilt is often pointed towards the perpetrator’s parents. Who are these parents? How could they not know that their child was planning such a horrible act? How does one raise a murderer?

In this film we meet parents from different places and backgrounds, with different stories and experiences, but with this one thing in common: they are parents of a school shooter.

We will take a deep breath, go beyond the headlines and examine the phenomenon of school shootings from the perspectives of those normally not heard through the media frenzy.

With frenzy comes fear. Through personal stories, the film will also touch upon the growing fear of school shootings, and the effect on individuals and societies.

Numerous new school safety laws were passed in 2018, and millions of dollars are spent on security measures and equipment. Children go through active-shooter drills at school and their parents are buying bulletproof backpacks. However, figures of reported school shootings cover a wide range of incidents, and some sources indicate that only a small percentage of the reported

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• Human Interest | Social Issues • Politics | Society Pitch Type Round Table Pitch

incidents can actually be confirmed, let alone fit the common perception of a ‘school shooting’.

Is fear taking over common sense? What can we learn from the parents of the shooters, and from the perpetrators themselves? Looking at the phenomenon of school shootings from several and different angles, the film will challenge us to look more deeply into the incomprehensible, and possibly recognize more than we thought we would.

School Shooters (working title) is the third film in Frida & Lasse Barkfors’ trilogy about social stigmas. Sundance award winning Pervert Park (2014) was the first, followed

by Death of a Child (2017).

Project Description As many other incomprehensible actions we shy away from, school shootings are often depicted in black and white terms.

With this film, we want to ask some of the questions not often asked. Are there things to learn by listening to the people who are normally not heard?

School shootings happens all over the world, and are always devastating. The shootings in the US, however, outnumber any other part of the world, and the film will take place in the US. However, the soft spoken, un-sensationalistic approach, the focus on the human perspectives, day to day life, coping with the unbearable, will resonate across borders.

Participants The reality of these incidents are not one-dimensional, and the film will feature diverse stories and characters.

Some distance themselves completely from their son or daughter, dead or alive. Others blame themselves and

continues to ask what they could have done to prevent it. Others will by many be considered flawed as parents, with various problems with addiction and criminal behavior. Is there a recipe for disaster, or is it more complex than that?

The film will also touch upon perspectives from the ongoing debate around school shootings. This will be incorporated from a personal viewpoint, in line with the intimate space of the film.

We are in development, and with each film in the trilogy, it has been a challenge to get access and build trust, as participants have been badly burned by media. Apart from a very few that have chosen to speak out in media, most parents of school shooters are hiding from any kind of attention. However, in mid 2018 we had a major breakthrough, and are in dialogue with several parents, that will represent a diversity of perspectives.

This August we filmed with Jeff Williams, father of Andy Williams. In 2001, Andy (15) brought one of Jeff’s guns to school, and shot and killed two students, wounding 13. Quickly the media was full of accusations about his parents. How they had divorced when Andy was five, how the father watched sports and drank beer on the weekends. What made Andy bring a gun to school?

There was much more to Andy’s story than made it to the media. Nothing can justify what Andy did, but by listening to him and his father we might come a bit closer to understand what makes a 15 year old bring a gun to school.

Andy was sentenced to serve two 25 years-sentences consecutively to life and is currently in prison.

This is the case we are furthest with and can therefore go public with. Details of other participants can be shared in one-on-one meetings.

Directors’ Intention & Artistic Approach We believe that by taking topics that often get high media attention but almost always with the same sensationalistic and one-sided approach, and looking at it from a different perspective, we can learn things that can broaden our views of a world far more complex

than we perhaps want to think it is. We want to challenge the audience’s preconception, inviting them to make up their own mind. By letting the parents tell their stories without being shamed, we can raise new questions.

What kind of guilt does these parents live with, and how do they see their role? Can you keep loving a child that has done such a horrible crime? Can they live on in a community that their child has traumatized? If their child has lost his or her life, how do they grieve? Are they allowed to grieve?

The leading words for us are intimacy and identification.

We create as intimate a setting as possible with lighting, camera and sound. We work with the smallest team possible, just the two of us, so that the participants dare to open up and talk about things they haven’t shared before. Thereby, we also make the audience feel close to the participants. We strive to portray participants as we would with any other person, without judgement, actively working against the stigma that the parents are exposed to. We point the camera at the normal and everyday life scenes, which the audience can identify with. Music is used carefully and sparsely. We want the audience to be entitled to all emotions. Therefore, the audience must never feel that we in any way force emotions on them.

Working with stories often presented one-dimensional in the tabloid press, our approach is the opposite of the mainstream media: We want to present reality just as complex and difficult as it is. We need to leave breathing space for the nuances and afterthought.

We want the audience to keep questioning their own opinion throughout the film. Each story contributes to a thought-provoking complexity that hopefully will make the audience leave the film with mixed emotions and richer in thoughts.

The overall aim of this film and the trilogy as a whole, is to contribute to open our minds in situations where the media and we are eager to jump to conclusions and simple, often vilifying, explanations and ‘us and them’ divisions, perhaps because we are scared to face the complexities. But maybe they are not so scary if we shed some light on them.

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Biographies

Anne Köhncke Producer

Frida Barkfors Director

Lasse Barkfors Director

Anne Köhncke Producer Producer Anne Köhncke, co-founder and producer at Final Cut for Real since 2009. Prior to that she worked as Commissioning Editor of documentaries at DR2 and Sales Executive at TV2 World. She holds an MA in film from the University of Copenhagen.

She has produced both of the Barkfors’ previous documentaries.

Final Cut for Real Production Company Final Cut for Real is a two-time Oscar®-Nominated production company based in Denmark dedicated to producing high-end, creative documentaries and fiction for the international market. Selected titles: The Distant Barking of Dogs (2017) Simon Lereng Wilmont, What Walaa Wants (2018) Christy Garland, Land of the Free (2017) Camila Magid, Death of a Child (2017) & Pervert Park (2014) Frida & Lasse Barkfors, Les Sauteurs (2016) Estephan Wagner, Moritz & Abou Bakar Sidibé, The Look of Silence (2014) & The Act of Killing (2012) Joshua Oppenheimer.

Frida Barkfors Director Director Frida Barkfors has a degree in Film Directing at the National Film School of Denmark (2005-2009).

Her first feature documentary was Pervert Park in 2014, together with Lasse Barkfors. It won a Special Jury Prize for Impact at the Sundance Film Festival in 2015 and has been screened at over 30 festivals around the world. Her and Lasse Barkfors’ second feature documentary Death of a Child premiered in competition at Göteborg Film Festival. Both films have been widely distributed.

Lasse Barkfors Director Director Lasse Barkfors has a degree in Fine Arts from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts (2007-2012). His first feature length film was Pervert Park, that premiered in 2014, directed together with Frida Barkfors. He also directed Death of a Child with Frida, and he is the cinematographer and editor of both films. He has directed several short films, fiction and experimental.

De Andra Film Co-production Company De Andra Film is Frida and Lasse Barkfors’ production company based in the south of Sweden, and has collaborated with Final Cut for Real on all films in this trilogy. As the name suggests (De Andra means ’the others’ in Swedish) the company aims to make films that describe the complexity in a world often presented as one-dimensional.

100 IDFA Forum catalogue 2018

Production Details |

School Shooters (working title)

PRODUCTION COMPANY Final Cut for Real Forbindelsesvej 7 2100 Copenhagen Denmark www.finalcutforreal.dk

anne@final-cut.dk +45 35436043

CREDITS Production

Director

Co-production Editor Production scheme Release Production status

Anne Köhncke What Walaa Wants (2018 | producer) Death of a Child (2017 | producer) Pervert Park (2014 | producer) Lasse Barkfors, Frida Barkfors Death of a Child (2017 | directors) Pervert Park (2014 | directors) De Andra Films – Frida Barkfors – Sweden Lasse Barkfors, Signe Rebekka Kaufmann January 2019 – January 2020 February 2020 Development

FINANCING Production budget Still required Broadcasters

Funds and Institutes

Own Investment

Budget €

€ 583.885 € 517.584 DR | Anders Bruus SVT | Charlotte Gry Madsen Creative Europe | Slate Funding Film i Skåne | Lisa Nyed Final Cut for Real & De Andra Films

| School Shooters (working title)

Development | Pre-Production Writer 2.685 Producer | Director 40.029 Travel/subsistence 9.087 Development sum 11.991 Financing costs 5.168 Other 23.290

€ 92.250

Production Hotels, travel & food 19.007 Production travel and expenses 23.691 Production personnel 63.495 Director 87.919 Technical staff 21.980 Equipment 18.201 Stock Material 966 Broadcast requirements 10.287 Gifts for cast 537 Crew: direction 10.232 Therapy help 403

€ 10.000 € 1.932 € 40.000 € 4.832 € 9.536

€ 256.718

Post-Production Editor/editing system 67.091 Sound design and mix 15.738 Titles, graphic color grade, online 8.859 Music 14.886 Postproduction coordinator 7.471 Translation, Subtitles 7.248 Master copies 6.846

Outreach and distribution Trailer editing

€ 128.139

3.087

€ 3.087

Miscellaneous Auditor, Prod.accountant, bankfees (for transfers) 4.832

Overhead Overhead 5% Contingency 10% Other: Administration 10%

Total budget (summed)

€ 4.832

19.772 39.543 39.543

€ 98.859 € 583.885

Round Table Pitch

Director Guy Davidi Production Danish Documentary

Production, Medalia Productions

Status In Production Country Denmark, Israel Format 4K | 90’ & 58’

Senseless

Genres

• Politics | Society •Y outh

• Human Interest | Social Issues Pitch Type Round Table Pitch

What does it mean to grow up in a place that forces you to be something that is not who you are?

Synopsis All this madness running wild is not me. - Rotem Shapira What does it mean to grow up in a place that pressures you to go against who you are? In Israel, it’s compulsory for all young men and women to complete 2-3 years of military service. Your family, your friends, your teachers, everyone takes part in preparation of the mission to make you a soldier. There are no alternatives available to avoid this reality. The alternative of not enrolling is not an option.

Senseless is the story of those entangled between their desire to be part of society and their own sensitivity and moral values. It’s the story of young boys and girls who died during military service, without becoming heroes.

All these youngsters lived a painful self-conflict which they never resolved. Ron who went into the commandos, Adam who failed to be a combatant, Doron who enrolled in the first cycle of women ‘field-Intel’ combatants. They were all outsiders, idealistic souls who wrote poems and texts in secret. Texts that expose their sensitive minds and their defiance of a conformist society and its militant values. Yet they all enrolled to become soldiers. They even fought hard to become combatants or get into the ranks of the highest units. But something went wrong: their growing understanding of not belonging to this reality had devastating consequences – they chose to take their own life.

Project Description Senseless is a self-account of these deceased soldiers. It begins with them reflecting, while being in the military, and then go back in time to reflect over the life they lived until that point. The images used are switching between the deceased soldiers’ home video footage and presently filmed scenes with changing characters, setup in a chronological order. These scenes will form a comingofage story from birth, through childhood and youth and ‘soldierhood’. Every part of the film will show to us that actually creating a society where everybody need to serve in military doesn’t really makes sense anymore, if it ever did.

The first chapter revolves around children from kindergarten into school. We see young toddlers as they are first exposed to the immense importance of military in Israeli society. The young kids portrayed live close to Gaza. The daily sounds of tanks and distant explosions are something they learn to ignore. During the commemoration days, they are taken to visit an old armory hideout and hear about heroic war stories.

Already from that age their childhood is under pressure from the expectation to be strong. We then meet Ella, a 10-year-old girl, who declares that she doesn’t want to become a soldier. But along with friends they go to a local ‘military fair’ for kids, where they try the different weapons, her best friend says she want to become a combatant, Ella is under pressure, as everyone around her plans what they’d do in the army. We will then meet Gilad, a 13-year-old, in school the teacher describes about the Jewish holocaust, she describes how anyone who was not strong enough would end up dead, this image shocks the class. When the class visits a museum for the Israeli soldiers they taught that their only way to survive is by fighting.

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The constant presence of military from an early age illustrates the absurd and disturbed society, while the lyrical narration takes us on a journey of contradictions of this deranged place. As the film develops, the narration increasingly expresses the deafness and blindness of this society. This is a concrete link to some of the teenagers we meet in the film. These boys and girls, expose their deep need to belong, which is a clear result of the enormous social pressure. This takes us to new levels of absurdity. We meet a 16-year-old deaf boy, who is dreaming to become a combat pilot; a blind girl, who goes to military boot camp, which includes gun shooting practice; and a deaf 18-year-old, who is going through his first days of combat practice within the army.

Unable to put on his hearing aid, he is not allowed to be in possession of a weapon, which is his only wish, just to feel that he is the same as the others. The lack of senses becomes a cinematic motif that help us to understand society’s denial. The gloomy narrative voice overs refer to the hard times of the deceased soldiers during their service.

Director’s note Senseless is a film about the cost of assimilation. My experiences as a soldier in the Israeli army, which culminated with me fighting against the military system to evade the service, are my personal motivation to make this film. I enlisted in the winter of 1997. The introduction and basic training camp were a tough shock for me an experience that no one prepared me for. The values, of which the internal conduct of the military is built, are light years away from the declarations about a moral and ethical military system, that I had been presented for until that moment. It made me furious that it all just was a false narrative I had been taught, but even more that the force used against me denied my freedom to choose

102 IDFA Forum catalogue 2018

what kind of person I wanted to be. The process of leaving the military lasted three and a half months, and was very dramatic. During that process, I had to rebel against everyone around me, including friends, family and the system.

I am quite sure that only few teenagers have enough strength to go through that. This film is for them.

Senseless should be a wake-up call: For all the societies who put pressure on young teenagers to obey the norms; for parents, worldwide to understand their responsibilities in nurturing their children’s selfdefinition. For Israeli society, I wish this film will be an encouragement to open a debate about compulsory military service as well as the debate on how the militaristic approach is controlling and shaping this society.

With its setting in one of the tensest regions in the world, the film also has a potential to start a general discussion about the military and its power, not only in war-affected regions, but also on a worldwide scale. Finally, it’s a film that should be an inspiration for teenagers everywhere to define themselves as who they are, regardless of the pressures surrounding them.

This game can’t continue for too long. Why not to just get a psychiatric discharge and just run somewhere?

- Ron Adler

We kindly ask of all the journalists, industry and public to stay discrete and avoid writing and publishing about the project in public and social media. We especially ask not to expose the suicide aspect in the film. That could risk the production of the film at this sensitive stage.

Production Details |

Biographies

Senseless

PRODUCTION COMPANY Danish Documentary Production Kvæsthusgade 5C, 1st. floor 1251 Copenhagen Denmark www.danishdocumentary.com 2ND PRODUCTION COMPANY Medalia Productions 2 Barzilai Street suite 16, 3rd floor 6511304 Tel Aviv Israel www.medaliaproductions.com

Sigrid Jonsson Dyekjær Producer Sigrid Jonsson Dyekjær, PGA has produced more than 20 documentary films during the last 17 years. She is one of the most experienced producers in Denmark, when it comes to financing and production of international documentary films. Because of her international track record, and the great success of Hanna Polak’s Something Better to Come, Sigrid was accepted as a member in the renowned Producers Guild of America in 2016 and in 2018 she became a member of The Academy.

sigrid@danishdocumentary.com +45 26162535

Hilla@medaliaproductions.com +972 544791124

Hilla Medalia Producer Peabody Award-winning producer has received three Emmy® nominations.

Her projects have garnered critical acclaim and screened internationally; The Oslo Diaries (Sundance, HBO, ARTE), Muhi (IDFA, HotDocs), Censored Voices, (Sundance, Berlinale), The Go Go Boys (Cannes), Dancing in Jaffa, Web Junkie (Sundance, POV, BBC), Hilla holds an M.A. from SIU.

CREDITS Production

Director

Created by Distributor/Sales Agent Screenplay Editor Production scheme Release Production status

Sigrid Dyekjær, Hilla Medalia Sigrid Dyekjær: Aquarela (2018 | co-producer) A Year of Hope (2018 | producer) A Modern Man (2017 | producer) Guy Davidi Mixed Feelings (2016 | director) Five Broken Cameras (2011 | director) Interrupted Streams (2010 | director) Guy Davidi Salma Abdalla | Autlook Filmsales Guy Davidi Guy Davidi January 2019 – November 2019 December 2019 In production

FINANCING Production budget Still required Broadcasters Funds and Institutes

Distributors

Budget €

€ 775.086 € 567.260 Yes Docu | Lion Valer | Development The New Fund for Cinema & TV | Dorit Inbar Danish Film Institute | Anders Riis-Hansen Creative Europe | Slate Funding MPA APSA Academy Film Fund | Eddy Garcia Autlook Film Sales | Salma Abdalla

| Senseless

Development | Pre-Production Writer 1.340 Producer | Director 210.067 Development | Pre-Production 115.252

€ 326.659

Production Hotels, travel & food 24.298 Production personnel 14.471 Researcher 10.051 Technical staff 24.122 Equipment 21.039 Materials 6.365

€ 3.134 € 51.266 € 40.204 € 37.500 € 20.722 € 55.000

€ 100.346

Post-Production Post-Production facilities 53.404 Post-Production salaries 108.484 Lab + edit 17.823 Music 26.870 Delivery 13.401

€ 219.982

Miscellaneous Insurance and Auditing 7.236 Lawyer 2.411 Fringes 7.697

Overhead Overhead 10% Contingency 5% Producers fee 5%

Total budget (summed)

€ 17.344

55.377 27.689 27.689

€ 110.755 € 775.086

Danish Documentary Production Production Company Danish Documentary Production is co-owned and run by three awardwinning directors, and their producer: director Pernille Rose Grønkjær: The Monastery – Mr. Vig and the Nun (IDFA winner), Love Addict, Genetic Me, by director Eva Mulvad: A Modern Man (CPH:DOX competition 2017), The Good Life (winner of Karlovy Vary, and Doc Alliance award), Enemies of Happiness (Sundance & IDFA winner), by director Mikala Krogh: A Normal Life (CPH:DOX Audience Award), Cairo Garbage, Everything is Relative, The Newsroom- off the record, and by producer Sigrid Jonsson Dyekjær, PGA: Ai Wei Wei - The Fake Case, Something Better to Come, The Newsroom – off the record, BUGS, Amateurs in Space and many more.

Sigrid Dyekjær Producer

Hilla Medalia Producer

Guy Davidi Director

Guy Davidi Director Born in Jaffa, Guy Davidi’s documentaries revolve around powerful and controversial subjects along with a very personal and lyrical tone in his storytelling. Many of his works touched Palestinian and Israeli stories, as his well-known feature 5 Broken Cameras (2012) which was directed with Palestinian co-director Emad Burnat. A film that was nominated for the Oscar 2013 in the Best Documentary section and has won the 2013 International Emmy Award for Best Documentary.

Davidi also won the prize for Best Director at the Sundance Film Festival as well as the Audience and Jury awards at IDFA in Amsterdam.

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Round Table Pitch

Director Joris Postema Production Doxy Films Status Start Production Country The Netherlands Format HD | 55’ & 80’ Genres

• Author’s Point of View • Politics | Society • Art | Music | Culture Pitch Type Round Table Pitch

Stop Filming Us! Story about young artists in Goma fighting against the prevailing Western reporting on war and misery, the film investigates to what extent Western stereotyping is the result of a skewed balance of power. Cinematic dialogue between Western conceptions and the Congolese perception of reality.

Synopsis Stop Filming Us! tells a story about the lives of three people in their twenties from Goma in Congo: journalist Ley Uwera, photographer Mugabo Baritegera and filmmaker Gerry Kahashy. They are among the frontrunners of a new generation of Congolese that want to show their own reality in response to the domination of onesided Western perceptions. With their cameras, they are showing a picture that is miles apart from the standard Western image of misery and violence.

At the same time, the realisation of the film will itself become part of the film, as the viewer becomes part of filmmaker Joris Postema’s search for a way in which he can show how the two different perceptions exist in parallel, while clearly influencing one another. He wants to leave room to hold his own Western prejudices to light. He does this by, on the one hand, entering into a dialogue with the young people of Goma and, on the other, by engaging in a dialogue with Western journalists and the NGOs in Goma. This space is organically incorporated into the film’s story as local producer

104 IDFA Forum catalogue 2018

Ganza Buroko and interpreter Gaïus Kowene constantly confront him with his own Western notions. Also, Ley and Gerry frequently take on assignments from Western NGOs, as these provide them with a basic living. As a result, they are frequently caught up in an ideological dilemma. How do Western employees of NGOs and media companies like the BBC and Radio Netherlands Worldwide respond to the underexposed good sides of Goma? And how do Ley, Mugabo, Gerry, Ganza and Gaïus see the dark sides of Goma? How do they perceive the refugee camps, the current cholera epidemic and the fourteen UN soldiers murdered last winter?

Stop Filming Us! is a film which dissects the mechanisms underpinning the dominance of Western perspectives on the Congo and Africa. It asks how deeply ingrained these perceptions are in our hearts and minds and whether they are the result of feelings of guilt, superiority or racism. Where does the constant need to provide aid and assistance come from? Is it a business model to legitimise the presence of the 250 Western NGOs located in Goma? Or does it constitute a means to demonstrate our (Christian) charity? Are there ways to adjust this paradigm to reconcile it with what the residents of Goma themselves experience?

Project Description Stop Filming Us! aims to be a film that tells a big story in a nutshell. The film tells a story about young artists opposing stereotypical Western imaging in Goma, Northeast Congo. By trying to unravel the underlying mechanisms, the larger context becomes clear. The film deals with the skewed relationship between the West and Africa. A relationship that is skewed in terms of the balance of power, predominantly manifest in the development aid relationships and expressed in stereotypical Western news casts portraying Africa in terms of war, violence and disease.

According to a study by John Hopkins University, if non-profit organizations were a country, they would constitute the fifth largest economy in the world. This economy depends on fundraising, donations and government support. Their image is their greatest capital. At the same time, they are difficult to monitor because aid organizations themselves largely determine the news flows from the countries where they offer help, as well as the lense through which (Western) journalists view Africa. That lense is mainly negative. Pity and shame are easy emotional levers to pull with a Western audience. They are proven to bring in the dollars. The problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue. But the problem is that they are stereotypes. And in the long run they are powerful enough to caricaturise people as pitiable beggars and deny them freedom of choice. This creates a wrongful - or at least very one-sided - image of a substantial part of the world. Stop Filming Us! intends to unravel how this process of Western imaging works.

The Film The film begins with the way in which self-assured young people in Goma oppose Western imaging, which, they say, restricts them in their options and, moreover, frustrates the development of the society they live in.

The story will initially be set up as a classic documentary narrative. The film follows the struggle of three passionate young people: journalist Ley Uwera, photographer Mugabo Baritegera and filmmaker Gerry Kahashy.

They belong to a vanguard that wants to hold up a mirror to the people of Goma and the West, to say that there is another reality. A reality that must be portrayed. They do so by sharing their version of it by means of photos, blogs, video reports and Instagram. They are all about articulation and emancipation and how it is time for a new paradigm; a local paradigm. Something they aim to achieve by showing images other than the traditional Western stereotypes; by portraying ordinary people in the streets of Goma or people who do something special. Like guerrillas, armed with cameras, they try to break into the powerful Western hegemony.

At the same time, Western media are eagerly making use of talented Congolese photographers and journalists. Ley and Gerry, for example, often work for NGOs and broadcasters such as the BBC or the Dutch World Service to earn money. They understand very well which are the stories the West wants to hear and they ensure

they adapt these according to the wishes of the client - Gerry with reluctance, while Ley is generally more pragmatic - in order to meet Western preconceptions.

In doing so, they contribute to the very imaging that they want to break free from; in fact, they appear to be legitimising it.

By filming Mugabo, Gerry and Ley, Western viewers get a completely different picture of Goma. Instead of a city that is only marked by violence and misery, by victims and perpetrators, we suddenly get to know a city where people get up in the morning, eat their breakfasts and go to work. We also see the drawbacks of our relief operations and economic investments: dependence on the West, for example. Of course there is also violence and poverty in Goma, and of course the reality of my characters is only their personal perception of reality, but at least it provides a more nuanced perspective. A perspective that I think is very important to show, as it will hopefully change our attitudes towards Goma (and Africa in general).

At the same time, the photographs and films that Gerry and Ley make for their Western clients emphasise the stereotypical images of Goma. I will of course also look into that: violence, rape, poverty, refugee camps, outbreaks of epidemics, it’s all there. How do Mugabo, Gerry and Ley perceive this?

In the course of the film, the research is increasingly turning against the filmmaker as a Western filmmaker.

Does he have a (hidden) agenda that pushes the film in a certain direction? Does his Western gaze not get in the way of telling the locals’ stories? Is he not burdened with neo-colonial ideas? (Something which, confronted with a Westerner, the locals, from experience, take as a given until proven wrong). Does he, as a white Westerner, in fact have any right to make this film? These are legitimate questions that will come up while shooting the film.

It makes the discussion a part of the film. In order to be able to sketch a realistic image of Goma, we will have to try and answer these questions. Only then will the stories of Mugabo, Gerry and Ley become meaningful.

Otherwise it will mainly be confirming the western perception of reality, and not saying anything about theirs.

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Biographies

Harmen Jalvingh Producer

Joris Postema Director

Doxy Production Company Doxy is a major player on both the Dutch and the international market.

Doxy (previously KeyDocs) has been awarded international prizes and (co)produced broadcasting- and festival favourites. Starting point is to develop and produce documentaries that combine relevant subjects with an original visual style.

Among the cinema films are The Disciples – a Streetopera (premiere during the Netherlands Film Festival 2018) the critically acclaimed Becoming Zlatan (international coproduction, 2015), Erbarme Dich – Matthew Passion Stories (2015), which received the Chrystal Film Award for box office success in the Netherlands, and international award winning This Is My Picture When I Was Dead (2010) (Best Film Dubai International Film Festival).

Doxy collaborates with Dutch broadcasters and funds developing quality television content. Among these documentaries are My Life Belongs to Me – Pia Douwes (2018), The Mystery of the Milking Robots (2017), festival hit Alice Cares (2015) (Palmarès 2016, Eureka Award 2015, Prix Grand Écran PariScience), The Sex Police (2012) with high television ratings and the international sale success The Man with 100 Children.

Under supervision of Janneke Doolaard the filmmakers vision is key. Doxy is a member of EFA, European Producers Network EAVE and the European Documentary Network (EDN). Doxy’s creative producer Harmen Jalvingh works as EDN’s National Information Provider International Coproductions.

Janneke Doolaard was delegated for the Netherlands as producer on the the Move during the Cannes International Filmfestival 2016.

Joris Postema Director Joris Postema’s (1973) debut documentary FC Rwanda premiered at IDFA and afterwards went all over the world, from Ivory Coast to Denmark and from Canada to Italy.

The collaboration between Doxy and Joris in 2015 led to the abrasive documentary Daan’s Inheritance (IDFA 2016) and the production of the documentary Bassmen (currently in post production) about a quest for the secret of the importance of the bass in popmusic

by Henny Vrienten, the best and most famous bass player of The Netherlands with his son Xander, who is seen as the most talented bass player of The Netherlands.

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Production Details |

Stop Filming Us!

PRODUCTION COMPANY Doxy Films Nieuwendammerkade 28 C 13 1022 AB Amsterdam The Netherlands www.doxy.nl

janneke.doolaard@doxy.nl +31 202380501 harmenjalvingh@doxy.nl +31 204222607

CREDITS Production

Director

Production scheme Release Production status

Janneke Doolaard, Harmen Jalvingh Janneke Doolaard: Alice Cares (2015 | producer) Becoming Zlatan (2015 | co-producer) Daan’s Inheritance (2016 | producer) Joris Postema FC Rwanda (2013 | director) Daan’s Inheritance (2016 | director) Bass man (2018 | director) January 2019 – August 2020 November 2020 Start production

FINANCING Production budget Still required Broadcasters Funds and Institutes

Budget €

€ 324.444 € 76.471 EO/IKONDocs | Margje de Koning NPO Fund | Hanneke Bouwsema The Nederlands Film Fund | Suzanne van Voorst

| Stop Filming Us!

Production Story & rights 4.550 Hotels, travel & food 21.292 Producer 12.219 Production personnel 22.845 Director 44.804 Technical staff 37.523 Stock Material 4.339 General Expenses 4.510 Broadcast requirements 5.650

€ 157.732

Post-Production Editor/editing system 39.289 Sound design and mix 19.339 Titles and animation 5.900 Music 8.200 Post prod film & digital 14.339

€ 40.000 € 153.973 € 54.000

€ 87.067

Outreach and distribution publicity 16.739

Miscellaneous Finance, bank & legal

Overhead Overhead 7,5 % Contingency 5 % Producers Fee 7,5%

Total budget (summed)

€ 16.739

3.500

€ 3.500

26.504 13.024 19.878

€ 59.406 € 324.444

Round Table Pitch

Director Nuno Miguel Pereira

Escudeiro

Production Miramonte Film Status In Production

The Valley Refugees started taking dangerous mountain routes to cross the French-Italian border. The local population rushed to help them in order to prevent humanitarian tragedy. They entered a battle with the State which responded with a wave of repression that revealed a system of human rights violation.

Synopsis On the border between Italy and France, migrants are risking their lives in the hope of a better life, having fled war, political persecution and poverty. This issue is most felt by the inhabitants of the Roya and Durance Valleys in the Alps. It is through “their valleys” that refugees attempt to cross the border, having been refused entry at other, safer points of passage.

Seeing the migrants’ suffering and dismay, the local population has taken action to provide them with basic aid. Nonetheless, in France, the transporting or hosting of undocumented migrants is a criminal offense, and the population has soon found itself on the wrong side of the law. So far, nine people from Roya are facing criminal charges, after being caught by the authorities transporting undocumented migrants.

About two years ago, the Roya Valley group decided to make their actions public. On a practical level, the mediatization has made matters worse, leading to frequent road blocks, night raids in the villages, and drones flying overhead. Soon, with the support of lawyers, the helpers discovered that the local authorities were in fact violating their own laws.

Country Italy Format HD cam | 52’ & 75’ Genre

• Human Interest | Social Issues

Pitch Type Round Table Pitch

In response, they started to provide minors and refugees with legal support and to document the numerous human rights’ violations committed by the State.

This arm-wrestling bout between the population and the authorities is still going on today, and having a nationwide impact in that it clashes with the French president’s commitment to fight “illegal immigration”.

The tight border controls in the Roya Valley has forced the migrants to find new routes to cross, and they have moved north to the Durance Valley through an alpine region of higher altitude.

There, just like in Roya, the people of Briançon began witnessing the arrival of over thirty migrants per day in their small town; migrants who have crossed on foot through the mountains, in the middle of one of the harshest winters in living memory. The mountains started claiming victims.

This film focuses on the individual and personal stories of common men and women who – caught in the middle of an impossible situation of great legal, political and media-focus complexity – are struggling to keep a sense of morality and to do what is right according to their own ethical stance. As witnesses of the resurfacing borders, the local inhabitants have become engaged in reshaping their own nation’s laws by engaging in civil disobedience.

Project Description We started filming 18 month ago. Throughout this time, we have witnessed the struggles that locals have endured in order to help the migrants. We have established a strong relationship with them, and this has allowed us to develop an insight into this encounter between this border population and the refugees passing through their valley.

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This film is a chronicle of these past two years, a character-driven story, which aims to build a deep, layered understanding of what it means to live in ‘the valley’ at this historical moment in time.

helped an Eritrean family seek asylum, but their hearts were broken when the police deported them back to Italy. They subsequently decided to take a break from giving aid.

We follow four different people, painting an intimate portrait of their lives. Each character brings a different dramatic aspect/theme/problematic to the situation, showing how their lives are affected and how they choose to respond to it.

Political pressure placed on them forced them to stop helping, just like many other people in the valley. Which will prevail? The State’s determination to stop them, or Elisabetta and Simon’s sense of solidarity?

Cédric Herrou As a symbolic reference of the nationwide movement, Cédric faced trial and was sentenced to house arrest.

Today, he is confined to his farm and cannot leave the country. He is still welcoming refugees into his home.

Cédric struggles with maintaining both his work and his commitment with his freedom of movement and action so heavily restricted. The police make regular visits to his home under the most far-fetched pretexts.

Today, the rest of the group and the militant lawyers are focusing on denouncing the illegalities and of human rights violations that occur in the border zones.

They are building illegal-procedure cases to prove what is going on. So far, their actions have resulted in five guilty verdicts against the Prefect – the highest-ranking State official in the region – who openly speaks out against the helpers and deploys State resources to target them.

“We ask nothing other than that human rights are respected. If they start violating the rights of migrants today, then tomorrow, it will be your rights or mine, and it will never stop,” says Zia Oulumi, one of the lawyers working with the group.

Elisabetta and Simon Elisabetta and Simon, two ordinary valley citizens of Italian and English nationality respectively, started helping in day-to-day operations and taking refugees into their home.

They soon found themselves caught crossing the fine line between humanitarian and political action. They

Suzel and Raffael In the aftermath of the heavy media coverage, charges were pressed against other 9 people of the movement, like 19-year-old Raffael Fayes, son of Suzel Prio, one of the main organizers of the movement.

Suzel is one of the most active people in the group, holding down a full-time job at the local tourist office, while running the association’s website and constantly hosting meetings in her own small home. “This is an emergency, and evidence of this motivates what we are doing. I can’t just stop.”

The members of “Roya Citoyenne” believe that the only reason Raffael was prosecuted was because he is Suzel’s son. Many other people in the same situation as him were arrested by the police and were not even placed on trial.

Since France declared unconstitutional the law that criminalizes the transporting, hosting and helping of migrants, by taking into account the principle of fraternity imprinted in the French State’s motto of ‘Freedom, Equality and Fraternity’, Rafael’s appeal against his sentence is coming up and with it, the first possible application of this decision. Will this mean a longawaited victory for the border population?

Michel in the Durance Valley In the meantime, the town of Briançon in the Durance Valley has become a new point of passage, much harsher then Roya due to its high altitude and snowcovered landscapes. Michel Rousseau and his association “Tous migrants” work to help the refugees cross in safety and avoid human tragedy – although they are not always successful. The winter 2017/2018 death toll amounts to at least five. Michel and the Briançon activists are working to identify the bodies, give the migrants a proper burial and inform their families who are awaiting news of their loved ones. The valley has become the theater of a dangerous game, caught between an immediate concrete need for action and a complex context of international geopolitics.

For the past few years, the lives of simple people like Suzel, Rafael, Michel, Elisabetta, Simon and Cédric have changed completely. Relationships and family life, dayto-day schedules and work are deeply affected.

This film aims to be emotional, to make the viewer empathize with the main characters, to see what they feel, to accompany them as they take difficult decisions in both the good and the bad moments, to see how their commitment influences and changes their lives.

We aim to tell this story not through the subject itself, but through the charisma and passion of the characters; not to moralize, but to dramatize personal struggle and self-doubt, human strength and solidarity.

We want to show the things that change our characters and what they gain and lose from contact with the refugees. This is best put into words by Elisabetta: “The wave of migration is a chance for us all.”

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Production Details |

Biographies

The Valley

PRODUCTION COMPANY Miramonte Film Via Piani di Bolzano 17 39100 Bolzano Italy www.miramontefilm.com

Miramonte Film Production Company In 2004 Valerio B. Moser and Andreas Pichler, both students from the first year of the ZeLIG-School for Documentary in Bolzano, Italy, created Miramonte Film as an audiovisual production company specialized in documentaries with a strong character driven and story telling note. Bolzano as a tricultural town has an old bridgetradition between the Mediterranean and the Central European culture, so it was obvious for Miramonte Film to set up their projects since the beginning as European coproductions. During the last 14 years Miramonte Film co-produced most of the documentaries with independent producers and TV-broadcasters from Italy, Germany, France, Austria, Switzerland and Finland. Documentaries by Miramonte Film were awarded at festivals and broadcasted all over Europe. Films like The Venice Syndrome, Lampedusa in Winter or The Milk System had cinema releases in several countries.

pichler@miramontefilm.com +39 3356045814

CREDITS Production

Director

Co-production Distributor/Sales Agent

Andreas Pichler, Valerio Moser Miramonte Film: The Milk System (2017 | producer) Lampedusa in Winter (2015 | co-producer) The Venice Syndrome (2012 | producer) Nuno Miguel Pereira Escudeiro The Curse (2017 | director) Moon Europa (2016 | director) Chronicles of Wind and Stillness (2015 | director) Point du Jour – Luc Martin Gousset – France Luc Martin Gousset | Point du Jour International May 2018 – March 2019 April 2019 In production

Production scheme Release Production status

FINANCING € 187.244 € 49.244 Public Senat | Elise Aicardi IDM Alto Adige Südtirol | Brigit Oberkofler CNC Provence Alpes Côte d’Azur Region | Fanny Graddault Autonomous Province of South Tyrol | Karen Obexer

Production budget Still required Broadcasters Funds and Institutes

Budget €

| The Valley

Development | Pre-Production Writer 6.000 Producer | Director 6.000 Research and production trailer 11.350

€ 23.350

Production Hotels, travel & food 5.375 Production travel and expenses 3.100 Production personnel 1.565 Director 13.500 Technical staff 20.110 Equipment 24.100 Stock Material 1.920 Broadcast requirements 1.500 Shooting permission, courier and other expenses 1.400 Social and legal fees

€ 15.000 € 80.000 € 20.000 € 15.000 € 8.000

13.775

€ 86.345

Post-Production Editor/editing system 22.200 Sound design and mix 3.600 Titles and animation 2.000 Music 3.300 Transriptions and translations 2.200 Subtitles 3.500 Color correction/DCP/Master Copies 5.320

Andreas Pichler Producer

Nuno Miguel Pereira Escudeiro Director

Nuno Escudeiro Director Born 1986 in Tomar, Portugal, studied Media Studies at the University of Aveiro, Portugal and Documentary Film Directing at the ZeLIG-School for Documentary in Bolzano, Italy. He is a moving image artist, working for cinema and galleries. His short films have been screened in several national and international film festivals, such as Directors Lounge in Berlin, CineDans in Amsterdam, Cinerail in Paris. His diploma film, the feature documentary Moon Europa has been screened at the Dok.Fest Munich and IndieLisboa. cargocollective.com/nunoescudeiro

€ 42.120

Outreach and distribution Promotion 1.500

Overhead Overhead 10% Contingency 7% Financing & inspection fees

Total budget (summed)

€ 1.500

15.331 10.732 7.866

€ 33.929 € 187.244

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Round Table Pitch

Director Marten Persiel Production Flare Film GmbH Status Development Country Germany Format 4K | 90’ Genres

• Nature | Environment • Human Interest | Social Issues • Politics | Society Pitch Type Round Table Pitch

The Way We Were In the year 2051, a young man Ben seeks truth about the mass extinction of species that has stripped the planet. A documentary fairy tale from the future, where fable meets scientific investigation to explore the wonders of nature and lost memories of a golden era — our own.

Synopsis It’s 2051. Ben (28), a young vinyl collector and vintage fan, coincidentally discovers some pictures of animals that he doesn’t recognise, since the species have been long extinct. His curiosity piqued, he begins to research them. There’s only unreliable information on the internet – alternative facts – so he decides to interview the old people in his immediate environment. Was there really such a bizarre animal as a ‘giraffe’? What did people know at the time about species extinction? What did they do about it?

The fictitious, futuristic story surrounding Ben provides a framework for real documentary investigation and meetings with reputable conversation partners. In the course of his research, Ben realises the immense scope of the species extinction that has been taking place right under his nose for decades, without really being discussed in the media. He continues to investigate, meets scientists and other witnesses.

Old people open up to curious, likeable Ben. Weltschmerz and regret rage in the souls of the people who were there at the time, watching daily Facebook posts about beached marine mammals, devastated

110 IDFA Forum catalogue 2018

breeding areas, broken climate treaties and illegal oil pipelines. A friend compiles Ben’s interviews and animal photos into a Film.

This film shows our time, 2018, as a golden age. The years of the glorious farewell, when the beauty of nature, the forests, the reefs, the great herds disappeared and the thousand voices of birds could be heard for the last time. When Ben’s film comes out in 2051, it causes a global shockwave of recognition and realization.

The nostalgic view of our times makes one thing evident: the current extinction of species is the most significant process of our time, because it’s the most irreversible.

We are the witnesses who did nothing when it still wasn’t too late. Our children’s children will ask us a simple question: ‘Did you think there was anything more important back then?!’

Project Description ‘... and this weltschmerz was in us all. Something had to change. We had to change ourselves. Thanks to Ben, the revolution came. Conservation accords were reached and upheld. The people of all nations and religions came together to save those species that could still be saved. By that time, they were nowhere near the whole of creation. But still, it was life. We had finally understood our gift. And we lived happily, until the end of time.’

The Way We Were is a kind of folk tale: the legend of the rescue of the planet Earth by the young hero Ben in 2051. The film packages legitimate documentary debate with the current extinction of species, within a magical futuristic framework.

It’s 2051. Ben is 28. He lives in a world where 10.5 trillion people battle for raw materials and water. His generation has more to worry about than long-gone animal species.

Polar bears and orangutans, as well as 800,000 other species that disappeared in the 2010s and 2020s, are things of the past.

The narrative framework of The Way We Were can be quickly described: Ben, a young vinyl collector and vintage fan, coincidentally discovers some pictures of animals that he can’t account for, since the species have been long extinct. His curiosity piqued, he begins to research them. There’s only unreliable information on the internet – alternative facts – so he decides to interview the old people in his immediate environment. He asks questions about their experience with nature and their lives in the 00s, 10s and 20s. Was there really such a bizarre animal as a ‘giraffe’? What did people know at the time about species extinction? What did they do about it?

The fictitious, futuristic story surrounding Ben provides a framework for real documentary investigation and meetings with reputable conversation partners. In the course of his research, Ben realizes the immense scope of the species extinction that has been taking place right under his nose for decades, without really being discussed in the media. He continues to investigate, meeting scientists and other witnesses. Old people open up to curious, likeable Ben. Weltschmerz and regret rage in the souls of the people who were there at the time, watching daily Facebook messages about beached marine mammals, devastated breeding areas, broken climate treaties, and illegal oil pipelines.

A friend compiles Ben’s interviews and animal photos and makes a film.

This film shows the world of the 2010s and 20s in retrospect. Our time, as a golden age. The years of the glorious farewell, when the bounty of nature, the forests, the reefs, the great herds disappeared, and the thousand voices of birds could be heard for the last time. When Ben’s film comes out in 2051, it causes a global shockwave of recognition and realization.

The Way We Were consists to a large extent of the documentary film that Ben is making. The nostalgic

view of our times makes one thing evident: The current extinction of species is the most significant process of our time, because it’s the most irreversible. We are the witnesses who did nothing when it still wasn’t too late.

Our children’s children will ask us a simple question: ‘Did you think there was something more important back then?!’

Director’s Note I’m speechless. While doing research into the numbers for this film: speechless. At the latest climate prognoses, at the news about the Great Barrier Reef: speechless. At the election of Trump... I’m 43 years old. Apparently, I’m supposed to accept the fact that the point of no return for the mass extinction of millions of species is being reached during my lifetime. That my children will ask me about it when it comes up in Biology class. Whew. About 150 species are disappearing from the planet every day (the official UN estimate) – forever.

What excuse will we have in the long run? ‘I knew nothing about it’, won’t hold up well in the eyes of future accusers. And unfortunately, it’s not true either. Nature is losing its battle with us. We all feel this shame, this Weltschmerz. And the more you learn about it, the more it hurts. Better to think about something else.

I was born into a family of conservationists in the 1970s. At the time, just one species threatened by extinction was asensation. Today, many researchers have concluded that we might have cut the number of species on the planet by half, even before I turn 80. It’s a paradigm shift. I can’t resign myself to my Weltschmerz.

I want to explore these emotions.

In The Way We Were I am using hindsight-from-the-future as a tool to get closer to what will once be remembered as the most defining dynamic of our time. Extinction.

The species extinction of the early 21st century is unique in natural history. It will never be able to recover on the same scale. What’s gone is gone.

Let’s see to it that as many people as possible are conscious of this moment in the natural history of the planet and that they at least look at it with their eyes open.

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Biographies

Katharina Bergfeld Producer

Martin Heisler Producer

Marten Persiel Director

Production Details |

Katharina Bergfeld Producer In 2014 Katharina joined Flare Film as documentary producer.

She studied film in Ireland and at the Film-University in Potsdam.

Several years experience as festival programmer, production assistant and sales agent for TV documentaries. In 2012 and 2013 she worked as Industry Coordinator for the Int. Documentary FiIm Festival DOK Leipzig. Since 2017 mentor and tutor at the German film academy DFFB and for several internatonal film festivals, as docudays UA and DOK Leipzig. She is a member of Eurodoc and EDN. Marten Persiel Director Born in 1974 in Germany. Studied directing and screenwriting at the Westminster University London.

Cosmopolite, surfer, nature lover, screenwriter, advertising and film director. Unembellished images, a constant hint of adventure and an intimate connection with his characters define his style, fully expressed in his debut feature This Ain’t California (2012). The film won awards all over the world, as Berlinale Best Film Perspektive German cinema, Warsaw Film Festival Audience Award, Raindance Film Festival, London nomination Film of the Festival, Camerimage, Nashville Film Festival Special Jury Prize for Achievement in Directing, Filmkunstfest Schwerin New Talent Award, Festival de cinema Nantes Jury Award & Audience Award, Santa Fe Independent Film Festival Best International Feature, International Skateboard Film Festival Best Original Screenplay & Best Director, in competition at Vancouver Festival, and more. In the last decade, he directed numerous commercials and commercial docs for major companies. In 2013 he received an invitation to Villa Aurora’s artist-in-residence program in LA. n 2016 he was jury member at the Diagonale film festival in Austria.

PRODUCTION COMPANY Flare Film GmbH Allerstr. 18 12049 Berlin Germany www.flare-film.com

bergfeld@flare-film.com +49 30762397383 heisler@flare-film.com +49 30762397370

CREDITS Production

Director Screenplay Editor Production scheme Release Production status

Katharina Bergfeld, Martin Heisler Flare Film: Family Shots (2018 | producer) Marten Persiel This Ain’t California (2012 | director, script) Marten Persiel Maxine Goedicke May 2019 – December 2019 November 2020 Development

FINANCING Production budget Still required Broadcasters

Own Investment

Budget €

€ 1.388.525 € 1.140.000 ARTE | RBB | Dagmar Mielke Flare Film

Dramaturgical Advisory 12.500 Layout Treatment 700 Reproduction 800 Research 1.000 Avid License 1.500

€ 178.525 € 70.000

| The Way We Were

Development | Pre-Production Author (3% of total net cost), M. Persiel 41.656

€ 58.156

Production Stock footage (images) 40.000 Licensing rights (music) 35.000 Archive research 8.000 Production personnel 249.027 Director (6% of total net cost), Marten Persiel 83.312 Director’s assistant 30.000 Equipment 80.000 Technical staff 81.700 Insurance package 17.000 Casting & Actors 87.000 Set Design 71.000 Hotels, travel & food 62.700

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The Way We Were

€ 844.738

Post-Production Editor/editing system Sound design and mix Dubbed version (German) Music (original score) Titles and animation Completion package Subtitles (English)

74.750 48.000 20.000 18.000 28.500 83.500 3.500

€ 276.250

Outreach and distribution General costs (office, PR, tax advisory) 25.300

Overhead Overhead 7,5% Contingency 4 % Financing costs & fees

Total budget (summed)

€ 25.300

90.333 48.748 45.000

€ 184.081 € 1.388.525

Round Table Pitch Crossmedia

Director Michel Reilhac Production Submarine Channel Status Development Country The Netherlands Format Interactive Documentary

| Daily

Genres

• Investigative

• Politics | Society

• Human Interest | Social Issues Pitch Type Round Table Pitch | Crossmedia

The Almanac The Almanac is an empowering platform that will enable global citizens to take back control of their digital lives. On a daily basis, the platform will offer practical tools, tips and stories to help you monitor and improve your digital consumption patterns.

Synopsis We aim to inspire a movement transforming our digital use for a healthier and diverse media by developing an innovative combination of storytelling through: 1) a documentary film titled Bellingcat – Truth in a Post-Truth World , 2) an interactive piece titled The Almanac and 3) an impact campaign. The campaign is organized around the documentary film and the interactive platform The Almanac.

The documentary: Bellingcat – Truth in a Post-Truth World follows the rise of the first-ever known online investigation group named Bellingcat. This international network of citizen journalists investigates current conflicts and put news agencies and governments to the test. The film explores the group’s member’s motivations to take control and stand up against world powers and to make people accountable for the crimes in a web of lies and propaganda.The documentary was presented at the IDFA Forum in 2016 and is a Co-production of Submarine & VPRO, Director: Hans Pool

The Almanac (subtitle: your daily digital fix)as online platform is an interactive component to the documentary, but is produced as a separate project in order for it to function standalone as well. On the platform subscribers have access to a ‘tip a day’ on how to improve their newsfeed awareness, data-protection and the overall conscious use of technology.

Goals: 1. Inspire and empower citizens to take back control of their privacy and digital rights.

2. Create behavioural change by encouraging citizens to make better choices in online news and data usage.

3. Create awareness around the difference between fake and factual news: what is real?

The content of The Almanac will be grouped around four themes: Newsfeed, Privacy/Data, Health/Balance and Etiquette.

The tips around these four themes are very diverse: concentrating around serious and fun, online and offline.

There will be several levels in which the user can choose to get involved. The tips would start with a very simple sentence in the first screen, then inviting the user to go deeper. When possible the tips will be using the device itself in explaining the technology behind it. Creating insight in what happens when you for example use Whatsapp or give consent for cookies.

Project Description We aim for the content of The Almanac to be easily accessible, simple to use, activate or reflect upon. Each daily tip will be written and offered as a standalone item with a little story. These stories consist of text, photo, video and | or animation.

For the production of the daily content on The Almanac and the platform itself, we are focusing on mobile first and social media (design and navigation). All items produced as a tip of the day, will have the format of a

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short online teasing piece, made for mobile (so vertically (portrait) produced + subtitles) and easy to share through social media channels.

In collaboration with our partners, we will create daily pieces of content (written, visual, audio) that people can read, view and listen to. This content will be distributed through different media platforms and will be branded as The Almanac, and link to the main website. Links and references from media partners and experts will be central in the outreach campaign.

We are partnering with organizations and experts/ influencers with already existing audiences (communities), who are active in the field of technology and digital rights. They have shared goals with us; helping people understand and monitor the digital dimension in their lives. These partners and experts will be part of The Almanac by sharing their expertise and providing input for our daily content.

The daily tips within The Almanac might be related to a specific partner | expert. This person will be included on the online platform as our weekly guest. The Almanac will be, via additional links, referring to these experts | partner platforms as a tool to find more detailed information about the topics in case our users | viewers would like to know more.

DocSociety supports the creation and production of our Impact campaign. The project has been selected for GoodPitch (which takes place early October 2018).

Additional partners with whom we are aiming to work with in creating the content and/or distributing the project are: VPRO, Bellingcat, Meedan, Free Press Unlimited, Tactical tech, First Draft, Snopes, Common Scence, Data & Society, Centre for Humane Technology, Note to Self, Reply all, ITL, Periscoop Film Distribution, and more...

Target groups: We are first aiming for a 25-55 age group target audience who are already conscious of privacy hygiene.

Secondly, we will be targeting a layman audience with no training, nor previous experience in resisting or protesting the spread of disinformation and personal data mining. Besides this, we are targeting young adults, teenagers and their parents, and of course, if possible, everyone else. Our first target audience is aware of the new European Privacy regulations: General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and scandals like what happened with the Cambridge Analytica and Facebook.

They want to react and do something, but do not know how and don’t want the hassle. The layman audience, young adults, teenagers and parents with none or little awareness of issues related to their newsfeed, privacy, personal data and digital diet and not yet equipped to take appropriate action.

We will produce the project in both Dutch and English (and subtitled), in order to attract the best (international)

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experts for the input of this daily content, to make the project interesting for (international) partnerships and in order to reach out to a large audience both in the Netherlands as well as abroad.

Promotion and distribution: All content will be distributed via The Almanac newsletter (email) and its dedicated social media channels. We will build an active growing community of subscribers to our newsletter in order to reach out to our audience directly.

Through this newsletter, we will provide our community with special content, the latest updates, news on trending topics and more. We will promote the newsletter through the existing social channels of Submarine Channel (Facebook: 18,000+, Twitter: 4500+, newsletter: 2200+, Medium: 900+) and the channels of our partners.

The daily tips are produced as short separate standalone items that can be distributed | promoted through existing online social media channels. We are considering channels such as Facebook, Reddit, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Medium, Whatsapp and | or Snapchat.

All the tips and profiles of the guests (experts) will be collected and archived on The Almanac website.

For the feature documentary on Bellingcat – Truth in a Post-Truth World we foresee a premiere at IDFA 2018. We are planning to engage our international partners (to use their network) in organizing and promoting the screenings of the film. The goal is to launch the Digital Almanac online shortly after the premiere, on January 1st, 2019, when the film will be in the middle of its promotional campaign.

The online platform The Almanac will be released on January 1st 2019 – as a symbolic gesture, considering that a lot of people will have new year’s resolutions for 2019 and The Almanac offers many advantages for optimizing the quality of your (digital) life.

Since the project is active for a period of 12 months, we will produce the content throughout the year and not all at once before the launch. This gives us the possibility to follow the news and adjust to content to current events.

This will strengthen the project content-wise, and will help us attract and build a community. It will also give us the possibility to learn and grow within the project and adjust (our content and campaign) where needed.

Please note: the production-phase will start end of 2018, and will be parallel of the release period and distribution period. We are aiming for a release on January 2019: at that time the interface of the platform, as well as the newsletter and social media (look & feel),and the first month of content should be in place. For the rest of the content, the daily tips will be both produced as well as released throughout the year. The project is in development, looking for finance and reaching out for creative and financial partners, as wel as content and media partners.

Production Details |

Biographies

The Almanac

PRODUCTION COMPANY Submarine Channel Arie Biemondstraat 111 1054 PD Amsterdam The Netherlands www.submarinechannel.com

Submarine Production Company Submarine Channel has the goal to create visually-led transmedia projects that explore the possibilities of these new storytelling techniques, researching the parameters of emerging genres such as non-linear film, interactive animation, and narrative video games – and diffusing this new-found knowledge with audiences both within the Netherlands and internationally, using diverse platforms to do so. Submarine Channel is part of the multiple award-winning production outfit Submarine, founded by 2000

by Bruno Felix and Femke Wolting.

The documentary Bellingcat – Truth in a Post-Truth World is produced by Submarine and the VPRO. As of November 2016, Michel Reilhac is the new Head of Submarine Channel.

corine@submarine.nl +31 208204940

CREDITS Corine Meijers Ashes to Ashes (2015 | producer) The Industry (2016 | producer) POPPY Interactive (2017 | producer) Echoes of IS (2017 | producer) Yula Altchouler Michel Reilhac Michel Reilhac | Submarine Channel VPRO – Barbara Truyen – The Netherlands

Production

Impact Producer Director Created by Co-production

November 2018 – January 2019 January 2019 Development

Production scheme Release Production status

FINANCING € 219.582 € 194.582 Submarine Channel | Corine Meijers

Production budget Still required Own Investment

Budget €

| The Almanac

Development | Pre-Production Writers | copy writers 39.000 Travel/subsistence 0 Production Assistant 3.900

€ 42.900

Production Hotels, travel & food 500 Production travel and expenses 1.700 Production personnel 8.640 Technical staff 72.000 Broadcast requirements 600 Research and Development 3.600 Design Graphic 4.320 Interfase development 10.800

Post-Production Editor/editing system

€ 102.160

16.250

Sound design and mix

€ 25.000

€ 16.250

Outreach and distribution Press and publicity/ distribution manager 6.480 Impact producer uitwerking/ socical media 7.200 Making-of and teaser/ various publicity materials 7.000

Miscellaneous Juridical cost

Overhead Overhead 7 % Contingency 5 % producer fee 7 %

Total budget (summed)

€ 20.680

1.000

€ 1.000

13.481 9.630 13.481

€ 36.592 € 219.582

Corine Meijers Producer Corine Meijers works as an interactive producer Submarine Channel since 2014. She’s has been developing | producing a variety of projects, i.e.

Echoes of IS, Mona, Poppy Interactive, De Industrie, Ashes to Ashes, Who Are The Champions?, Bistro In Vitro and Motion Comics Exhibition – The Beginnings. Corine has studied cinema in the Netherlands and in Stockholm.

She has several years of experience working as a producer/coordinator at international film festivals such as the Rotterdam International Film Festival, Netherlands Film Festival, TIFF (Romania), Holland Animation Film Festival and DTFF (Qatar). Before starting at Submarine, she lived in Belgium for several years, working at BOZAR; the Centre of Fine Arts in Brussels, the MEDIA Desk Flemish Community and iDROPS; a digital innovation agency for the creative & cultural industries.

Corine Meijers Producer

Yula Altchouler Impact Producer

Michel Reilhac Director

Michel Reilhac Director | Producer Michel Reilhac is an internationally renowned transmedia producer and virtual reality filmmaker who shares a common interest with Submarine in exploring new forms of storytelling in VR, games and other non-linear digital media. Before joining Submarine, Reilhac was Head of Film Acquisitions at ARTE France for many years and executive director of Arte France Cinema, where he co-produced an average of 30 films per year, including Antichrist and Melancholia by Lars von Trier. In 2013, he was elected Man of the Year in Film by the trade magazine ‘Le Film Français.’ Reilhac also organizes workshops on transmedia storytelling at events such as the Cannes Film Festival, Sunny Side of the Doc, The Pixel Lab, Dixit, Femis, etc.

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Round Table Pitch Crossmedia

Director Nir Sa’ar, Ido Mizrahy Production Pagoda Productions,

Motherlode Productions

Status Development Country Israel, United States Format 6DOF - Spherical Stereo

VR 360 8K | 15’

Genres

The Longest Goodbye The greatest mystery facing humanity on a future Mars mission is not Mars--but the human psyche. This VR journey follows a resourceful NASA psychologist, as he investigates the threat, posed by extreme isolation, to astronauts’ mental stability.

Synopsis Within the next twenty years, four astronauts will travel to Mars on a NASA funded mission. Separated from their loved ones for up to three years, these brave souls will face the kind of solitude that hadn’t been encountered since the heroic age of Antarctic exploration. The precedents are alarming: more often than not, trivial issues among crew-members become dangerously magnified, due to the extreme isolation, endangering the mission itself.

The Longest Goodbye is a VR documentary that follows a NASA psychologist, as he attempts to understand the grave threats, posed by long term isolation, to astronauts’ mental stability. In order to mitigate these threats, he and his team turn to external experts for help. This VR experience takes us on their journey for answers—going as far back as the 18th century, uncovering heartbreaking letters, written by crew-members of polar expeditions. As we listen to a NASA anthropologist recount these men’s stories, we find ourselves in the actual ship, sailing through icebergs and haunted with memories of loved ones left behind. Pressing ahead, our NASA psychologist tests his findings with present-day experiments, studying the behavior of six crew-members, locked up for a whole year, inside a Mars

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• Science | Technology

• Human Interest | Social Issues

• Investigative Pitch Type Round Table Pitch | Crossmedia

simulation habitat. To overcome the negative effects of their prolonged isolation, he turn to a NASA-funded VR specialist, who designs shared virtual environments for crew-members, where they can spend time with their family members. This portion of the VR journey allows the viewer to experience life in the simulation habitat, as well as partake in virtual interactions with family members and listen to the VR expert in charge of the study, describe her findings. Finally, as we find ourselves headed to Mars, accompanied by our NASA psychologist, we get to test a set of futuristic communication tools, designed to disrupt the extreme isolation, during long duration space missions.

While the following VR experience focuses on the uniquely extreme conditions of space travel, it serves to explore a largely universal tension between our desire to belong (our past, roots, history), and our desire to explore (our future, individuality, identity as discoverers).

A mission to Mars might seem exotic, almost fictional to most of us, but the experience of being separated from one’s friends and family, for long periods of time, and the powerful effect that has on our mental state, is something many of us have, or will encounter, at some point in our lives.

Project Description The idea for this project--the psychological toll of exploration--came to us back in 2015 when we first began meeting with NASA personnel. Initiated by Executive Producer, Valda Witt, whose NASA contacts opened the door to this project, we were given rare access to NASA’s facilities and had the chance to speak to countless experts, in the various departments. Back then, we were still searching for our theme. While we were fascinated by every aspect of the planned mission to Mars, we were determined to find an angle that transcends the scientific aspects of the mission. It wasn’t until we met with

the team of psychologists working for NASA’s Behavioral Health and Performance Element (BHP), that we knew we had stumbled on something truly special. As filmmakers we’re primarily drawn to character-based drama, and so we found the idea of approaching the Mission-to-Mars story from the perspective of a basic human struggle between the desire to explore and the challenge of being socially detached, absolutely magnetic. This story is not about science, or space - it’s about man’s need to reach new heights, and the loneliness that comes with it.

In select moments, our gaze will trigger story elements, such as secondary character interactions, and additional story vignettes--as we relive memories of those we left behind, and look forward into the future. These ‘subplots’ will blend seamlessly with the linear flow of the experience. The VR hand controller will be used for minimal actions during peak moments, using practical objects, like the use of a spyglass to scout for help, or an axe to break through the ice, making the viewer engaged in a state of total immersion.

Some of the more prominent NASA funded investigators, who will serve both as subjects in this VR documentary, as well as technical advisors are Peggy Wu--a VR creator and NASA funded principal investigator, who’s been tapped by NASA to create virtual environments for crew-members and their families, to advance behavioral health, Dr. Jack Stuster--a NASA funded cultural anthropologist, specializing in the measurement and enhancement of human performance in extreme environments, and Dr. Lawrence Palinkas--a medical anthropologist and veteran NASA contractor, who’s an expert in the areas of preventive medicine and the effects of communication delay.

This VR experience is made possible by our long standing relationships with NASA funded scientists, who are extremely supportive of the proposed project.

On a technical and creative level, we enjoy productive relations with some of the field’s leading commercial companies, that specialize in volumetric scanning and dynamic 360 sound mix. Drawing from our own experience in managing VR creation workflow, and unique access to compositing tools constructed expressly for spatial experiences, we plan to utilize 3D scans of real live-action characters in various conditions. Ultimately we intend to embed those characters, items and figures in 3D as well as deliver a complete 360 audio mix to any stereo headphones, in a way never before seen in documentaries.

The visual experience will be composed of live action documentary footage, layered with CGI elements, including 3D scans of our subjects, creating a kind of ‘Holodeck’ experience. We will alternate through several locations, moving back and forth between past voyages, present-day studies and future Mars mission projections.

The prism through which we’ll experience the story will remain dynamic, at times as an observer, and other times assuming the form of an actual character (albeit body-less).

Traveling through the worlds that make up this VR journey, we’ll experience a sharp contrast between fluid forward movement--onboard a 19th century ships and futuristic spacecrafts, and moments of complete stagnation--when stuck in ice, or stationed on Mars, for months on end. This contrast will enhance our sense of isolation, and our total dependence on nature’s will.

The end product will be an interactive stereoscopic VR experience, and its linear duration will be approximately 15 minutes. It will offer six degrees of freedom, with several capabilities, designed uniquely for hand controllers. This choice was made mainly to enhance intensive cognitive engagement and sensual participation, and to a lesser degree to enable room scouting. As such, it could fit a wide range of distribution platforms and devices. The piece will be fitted for festival presentation, conferences, galleries and other venues, as a full range installation, along with an online version that could be played on any individual Oculus rift | Go | Quest, etc. A downgraded version could also be compiled for Gear VR and comparable devices, by excluding a few of the interactive elements. Nevertheless, the core of the story and central ideas should play out as vividly in the passive version, as they do in the interactive one, since the bones of the piece are constructed of true documentary investigation materials.

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Biographies Mizrahy and Sa’ar have vast experience in traditional documentary filmmaking, as well as commercial projects and cutting edge creative technologies development.

Nir Sa’ar Producer | Director

Ido Mizrahy Producer | Director

Ido Mizrahy Producer | Director Ido Mizrahy’s narrative and documentary films premiered at SXSW, Tribeca, MOMA’s New Directors | New Films, among many other festivals, and went on to win numerous awards. His work has been distributed throughout the world, by AMC, Sundance, Netflix, Amazon, MTV and DirecTV. Nir Sa’ar Producer | Director As a tech driven director, Nir Sa’ar specializes in Augmented Reality and VR productions, from creative inception to hands-on execution.

His work has screened in prominent festivals including Next Reel NYU, Busan Korea, and La Biennale di Venezia. Festival du Cannes premiered his last VR fiction film Summertime at NEXT - The Future of Cinema official selection.

Valda Witt Executive Producer Valda Witt is an independent producer and investor based in New York City. Her narrative and documentary features have premiered at Tribeca, Venice, Oldenburg and Hot Docs film festivals. Valda also serves on the boards of numerous educational and arts institutions in NYC. Josh Braun Executive Producer Josh Braun is the co-president of Submarine Entertainment, a hybrid sales, production and distribution company. Submarine’s recent series titles include Wild Wild Country, Evil Genius and The Keepers. Recent sales titles include Three Identical Strangers, Shirkers, The Oslo Diaries, Crime and Punishment, White Tide, Pick of the Litter, Kusama: Infinity and Apollo 11.

Submarine has been responsible for the sale of five out of the last eight academy award winning documentaries; Citizenfour, 20 Feet From Stardom, Man on Wire, The Cove and Searching for Sugar Man.

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Production Details |

The Longest Goodbye

PRODUCTION COMPANY Pagoda Productions Kikar Kdumim 16 6803794 Tel Aviv Israel

nirsaar@gmail.com +97 2503422523

2ND PRODUCTION COMPANY Motherlode Productions 226 East 2nd Street, Apt 1C 10009 New York United States

mizrahy.ido@gmail.com +1 6464987086

CREDITS Production

Director Created by Executive Production Production scheme Release Production status

Nir Sa’ar, Ido Mizrahy Ido Mizrahy: GORED (2016 | director | producer) Patrolman P (2013 | director | producer) Nir Sa’ar: The Most Beautiful Woman (2016 | producer) Summertime (2016 | VR Fiction | director) Still Waters (2012 | director) Nir Sa’ar, Ido Mizrahy Ido Mizrahy, Nir Sa’ar Valda Witt, Josh Braun | Submarine Entertainment May 2019 – November 2019 November 2019 Development

FINANCING Production budget Still required Own Investment

Budget €

€ 87.860 € 57.860 Valda Witt Motherlode Productions | Ido Mizrahy Pagoda Productions | Nir Sa’ar

| The Longest Goodbye

Development | Pre-Production Producer | Director 4.000 Travel/subsistence 10.000 Designer 2.200

€ 16.200

Production Hotels, travel & food 3.500 Production travel and expenses 4.500 Production personnel 3.200 Director 4.000 Technical staff 8.600 Equipment 6.500 Stock Material 2.000 Broadcast requirements 2.500

€ 20.000 € 5.000 € 5.000

€ 34.800

Post-Production Editor/editing system 5.400 Sound design and mix 3.400 Titles and animation 1.200 Music 2.200 archival rights & reproduction 1.200 Interactive - UNITY 8.000 CGI 4.000

Overhead Overhead 10% Contingency 5%

Total budget (summed)

€ 25.400

7.640 3.820

€ 11.460 € 87.860

Round Table Pitch Crossmedia

Director Mina Keshavarz Production Lighthouse Reports Status Development Country The Netherlands Format HD | interactive (online |

offline) documentary

Genres

• Human Interest | Social Issues

• Politics | Society

• Investigative Pitch Type Round Table Pitch | Crossmedia

Scheherazade Now If you are a victim of domestic violence in Iran, you have nowhere to run to, no laws to protect you and few institutions to support you. This project documents a collective attempt towards change.

Synopsis This interactive (online | offline) documentary portrays an epic fight for the protection of women in Iran through storytelling. If you are a victim of domestic violence in Iran, you have nowhere to run to, no laws to protect you, and almost no institutions to support you. Still, out of shame or the fear of being met with resistance, few women dare to break the silence. By engaging audiences and encouraging them to share their stories of domestic violence in Iran, we aim to document this issue. The lack of documentation has downplayed the need for implementation of protective laws and institutional support against such abuses.

With the help of a network of activists, over the last two years 400 personal stories about domestic violence have been collected. They are intimate and intense stories, that depict the impact of domestic violence.

Based on these testimonies and additional research, we will produce a transmedia storytelling project: Scheherazade Now. This project is about the collective struggle towards change through sharing and documenting these unheard stories to start a movement.

Scheherazade Now is the continuation of Soora: Breaking the Silence a linear documentary directed by Mina Keshavarz, that establishes the background of this project. Soora shows how women in Iran try to protect

each other from domestic violence, by trying to change the laws that govern this conservative country. Soora is fully funded and the distribution begins in Fall 2019, and will end with a short message: Want to support or follow their fight? Visit ScheherazadeNow.com The Interactive magazine part of Scheherazade Now is an interactive story that starts with the well-known story of The 1001 Nights, but smoothly emerges as an urgent and actual story about domestic violence. Core message: how telling stories about domestic violence, just like The 1001 Nights, is the only way to protect women against their violent fate.

In the offline storytelling part, postcards are made with moving testimonies on the one side and an invitation to write your own story about domestic violence on the other side. The postcards can be obtained and shared digitally (on any platform), but will also spread physically in targeted neighborhoods and gatherings. The postcards and the interactive documentary are a loop, they fuel one another. The stories collected through the postcards feed into the interactive documentary. And the interactive documentary inspires the use and spread of the postcards.

Project Description In 2008, a law was proposed to enable men to marry a second wife without the consent of their current wife.

About a hundred women picked a fight and started a campaign against these laws. They mobilized public support, raised awareness by writing a manifesto against the law and asked women everywhere to sign it. Against all odds, they were able to stop the law before it became effective. It was a big win for women’s rights in Iran, and a sign that even within the framework of a theocratic regime, change is possible. A few years later the same women started another heroic battle. Their new aim: the

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passing of a law that protects women against domestic violence.

According to a study, over sixty percent of women in Iran suffer from domestic violence. The lack of protective laws or safe havens for these women prevents them from trying to get out of the situation or even speak about it.

The private entities such as NGOs and activists are under constant harassment from the government. The country’s policy on this issue is to keep it silent, arguing that it is a domestic affair. Hence, it is common in Iran to beat a woman or even kill her without almost any consequence.

Women’s rights are considered a western invention and against family values. Those associated with it, like social workers, lawyers, activists, or NGOs can easily be labeled as the agents of the West and imprisoned.

The fear of speaking out is the main reason why existing laws will not be changed soon. When only two activists speak out, they are easily arrested and shut down. That is why a gathering of activists decided they need a massive amount of testimonies. They started building trust with women to collect these stories, one by one. Their idea: if it is a big social movement, if there are thousands of accounts - and if the platform is not based in Iran - the situation can be changed. It no longer needs to be the activists’ testimonies, but it reflects the larger society.

The Campaign Against Domestic Violence, as they labelled it, is inspired by their successful campaign in 2008. Until now they collected 400 unique stories that are a window on the societal tensions in Iran, the effects of a theocracy on intimate relationships and the dilemmas when cultural values clash with ethics. The leading question for this project therefore (‘Can a 1001+ women change the law?’) will help us shed a new light on a country that we normally only see through political frames and conflict-related stories. That makes it very relevant from a journalistic perspective as well as from the perspective of storytelling. It is a universal story about the battle between good and evil, between the powers that be and the grassroots resistance that tries to overcome it.

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The 400+ testimonies of domestic violence in Iran are an impressive database that is a unique starting point for a transmedia storytelling project with real impact.

We deeply believe that starting this project can result in a powerful, beautiful and engaging experience for our audiences by enabling them to hear others’ stories and learn from each experience.

Neither the topic of women rights nor domestic violence are new. But it is the first time that we get such a well-documented inside perspective from this society.

Besides that, it is not victimizing, but it is about different ways of resistance to overcome domestic violence in a country like Iran. Scheherazade is not a woman who was threatened just by a man (her husband), she is also an activist that is in danger because of the system she is resisting.

Scheherazade is the iconic princess featured in the Arabian Nights. Her fate seems inevitable: one night with the sultan, and then killed - just as all the women who preceded her. But she has a strategy: stories. She tells the sultan such compelling stories that he cannot kill her for 1001 night. In the meantime, they build a relationship and he starts to trust her. After all these nights, he cannot kill her anymore. They live happily ever after. We will build the story and the concept on the dynamics between Scheherazade (all the women who dare to tell their stories), the sultan (the current powers in Iran) and the necessity to tell a story every night, to postpone and finally overcome - their apparent violent fate.

The concept is best described as a journey for our audience, a journey with three stages that smoothly flow from one into the other. It starts with a card that introduces Scheherazade, tells her compelling and universal story and transfers it to the current battle for women’s rights. It then enters into a phase that is confrontational and often harsh which shows the true impact of domestic violence and makes you feel what is at stake. It also introduces the real-time challenge to collect 1001+ testimonies. It finally leaves the visitor with an opportunity to engage by sharing their own stories.

Once you join, you feel you are not alone, you are not the only woman who is abused and you are now part of something bigger than yourself. You can tell your story and give the same feeling of strength-by-solidarity to the next woman.

Production Details |

Biographies

Scheherazade Now

PRODUCTION COMPANY Lighthouse Reports Tochtstraat 4 3036 SJ Rotterdam The Netherlands www.lighthousereports.nl

Ludo Hekman Producer Ludo is a freelance journalist and creative producer at Lighthouse Reports. He is specialized in translating complex issues into thought provoking concepts and stories alike. He worked for print, online and TV in countries like Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan. As a creative producer, he started many innovative and meaningful collaborations and has a good sense for the opportunities of emerging technologies. Lighthouse reports has been selected for numerous awards like the Prix Europa and the Dutch Online Journalism award (best storytelling). Hekman was selected a radical innovator by a major Dutch magazine.

ludo@lighthousereports.nl +31 640229299

CREDITS Production

Director

Created by Co-production

Screenplay Production scheme Release Production status

Ludo Hekman Track and trace of the Dutch Arms (2018 | producer) The Dutch Mission to Uruzgan (2017 | creative producer) A Decisive Conversation (2016 | producer) Mina Keshavarz Braving the Waves (2016 | director) Unwelcome in Tehran (a self-portrait documentary about my divorce) (2015 | director) Profession Documentarist (2013 | director) Mehrnoush Alia, Ludo Hekman , Mina Keshavarz Maaa Film – Mehrnoush Alia – Iran, Mindoc Film Production – Mina Keshavarz – Iran Mehrnoush Alia October 2018 – February 2019 May 2019 Development

FINANCING Production budget Still required Own Investment

Budget €

€ 92.959 € 83.959 Lighthouse | Ludo Hekman Mindoc Film Production | Mina Keshavarz Maaa Film | Mehrnoush Alia

| Scheherazade Now

Development | Pre-Production Writers 1.500 Producer | Director 2.000 Travel for research and fundraising/ subsistence 5.000 Research 1.500 Proces Management 3.100 Fundraising, Pitching Forums, and Application Fees 3.500

€ 3.000 € 3.000 € 3.000

€ 16.600

Production Web development Graphic and interaction desing Managing Impact and editorial maintenance

8.000 5.000 7.500

Production personnel 5.000 Director 5.000 Technical staff 5.000 Equipment 3.500 Stock Material 1.300 Translation of testimonies 3.500 Production interaction footage/

animation 1.800 Feedback and implementation 2.400 Writers to edit the stories 5.000

€ 53.000

Post-Production Sound design and mix 7.500 Titles and animation 450 Music 1.700 archival rights & reproduction 1.000

Outreach and distribution Postcard Design Printing and Transport Distribution

Overhead Overhead 4% Contingency. 2.3%

Total budget (summed)

€ 10.650

700 2.000 4.500

€ 7.200

3.498 2.011

€ 5.509 € 92.959

Mina Keshavarz Director Mina is a documentary filmmaker and producer based in Tehran, who has received several international grants and prizes in support of her films, including from IDFA Bertha Fund, Screen Institute Beirut, Sorfond. Her films were shown at international film festivals such as IDFA, Sheffield, Leipzig, London international Film Festival. Since she has established her own documentary film production MinDoc in Tehran in 2013, she produced and co-produced 4 documentary films, including interactive, short and feature length. Mina is interested to produce or co-produce social, political documentaries especially in Muslim countries with personal approach. Mina’s last film Soora: Breaking the Silence is in production and has won 3 pitch awards in MIPDoc and Kolkata.

Ludo Hekman Producer

Mina Keshavarz Director

Mehrnoush Alia Co-producer

Mehrnoush Alia Co-Producer Mehrnoush Alia is an Iranian writer/ director/producer working between New York and Tehran. She received her MFA in film from Columbia University, and her BA in Film Studies and Comparative Literature from UC Berkeley. She has produced over a dozen films that have screened at many international film festivals including Hot Docs, Sebastopol, and BFI. She is the co-founder of Maaa Art, a film and theater company that develops and distributes works by immigrant artists. Mehrnoush is interested to share stories from the Middle East and especially those of women and minorities that shed a different light on the life in this region.

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Round Table Pitch Crossmedia

Director Celine Tricart Production Red Corner Status Development Country France Format VR camera (Google Yi

Halo) | 6 x 15’ VR

Wonder Women

Genre

• Human Interest | Social Issues Pitch Type Round Table Pitch | Crossmedia

Wonder Women is a VR documentary series featuring incredible stories of women all around the world literally- fighting for their rights.

Synopsis

Project Description

From the Yazidi women taking arms against ISIS in Iraq, to the Kenyan grand-mothers learning karate to protect themselves from rapists, the series wants to inspire, amaze and spark discussion thanks to its provocative tone.

Context Everything started with the VR Film The Sun Ladies that will become the Wonder Women’s 1st episode. Watch the trailer by clicking on the cover. A demo is also available on demand.

The series is shot in 360, with the Google’s Yi Halo camera. A 2D companion series of short videos optimizes the distribution and reach the widest audience possible. It will be composed of additional material shot on location, as well as BTS footage showing people experiencing the corresponding episode in VR and reacting to it.

The success of this award winning film (Sundance, SXSW, Hotdocs) allows us to prepare an ambitious series, within each episode demands a specific development.

Our goal : offer a universal and open debate based on those incredible situations women are facing all over the world.

This deck below presents a first selection that has to be completed and refined.

Intentions Women’s role in conflict has been traditionally associated with building peace, and the dynamic of male fighters versus women victims has historically dominated how we think about gender and war.

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Even today, the diversity and complexity of women’s war experiences is often silenced to conform with the frames imposed by international organizations involved in peace-building projects. It was striking to see, for instance, that the challenges faced by women ex-combatants were barely mentioned during the last summit of Women for Peace organized in Bogota. Our primary goal is to overthrow the idea that women are victims, not combatants.

By meeting them and understanding their motivations better, we want to to sparkle discussion on the stereotype of the « strong man » and the « inoffensive woman » is buried deep in our culture and can be extremely harmful to the dream of equality.

Why VR? So far the promise often used in VR documentaries to put the viewer “in the place of” has often seemed to me to be misleading. It is not in a five minutes film, as realistic as the experience is, that the participant can be made to understand the real stakes or the suffering of an individual or a group. Wonder Women takes another direction. This VR experience does not seek to substitute a character by another (to put in the place of) but wants to propose a real act of presence (to be with).

The close alliance between VR technology and the subject of the series leads to a new type of storytelling (without framing, commentary, interviews). Emotion finds a new form of simplicity and sincerity in the midst of these extraordinary situations. Constructed in an original, non-narrative way, each episode unfolds like a train of thought and follows an emotional arc rather than causal logic. Each participant will create a unique lived memory from the experience by choosing the details to which he/she will want to hang on.

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Biographies

Marie Blondiaux Producer

Celine Tricart Director

Marie Blondiaux Producer Marie Blondiaux is producer in Red Corner for 6 years, a company dedicated to new media contents (VR, AR, Web app),based in Paris.

She obtained 3 master degrees of Sciences-Po Paris and La Sorbonne (Comparative literature and Audiovisuel Law).

Production Details | PRODUCTION COMPANY Red Corner Red Corner, 14 rue du Moulin Joly 75011 Paris France www.red-corner.fr

Celine Tricart Director Celine Tricart is a director who has developed a unique and recognizable style with a strong visual sense due to her background as a director of photography. Her work was showcased in numerous Academy Awards qualifying festivals including the Sundance Film Festival, SXSW, the Austin Film Festival, HotDocs and the Cannes Film Festival. Celine was the recipient of a Creative Award by the Advanced Imaging Society and two Telly Awards amongst many other accolades.

Celine Tricart is also a worldrenowned 3D and Virtual Reality expert. As such, she worked on cutting-edge films including the first French 3D feature film Behind the Walls, making her the first-ever female feature film stereographer.

She later worked on well-known franchise films such as Transformers 4 and Transformers 5. She wrote two books published by Focal Press ‘3D filmmaking’ and ‘Virtual Reality Filmmaking’. She is a Google VR Jump Start Fellow, as well as an Oculus Launchpad and VR FOR GOOD fellow.

In 2016, Celine founded Lucid Dreams Productions, a production company specializing in new technologies and the future of storytelling.

In 2017, Celine produced and co-directed the pilot for Wonder Women, Maria Bello’s Sun Ladies VR experience about the women Yazidi fighting ISIS in Iraq which was selected in the 2018 Sundance Film Festival and SXSW.

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marie.blondiaux@gmail.com +33 677889174

CREDITS Production

She produced and co-produced a various range of Web experiences as Phi (nominee of the NFB | ARTE competition ‘Interactive Haikus), the interactive graphic novels The Wanted 18 and Le dernier Gaulois, the archives platform Radioactivity, and the game Animals and us. Since 2015, she produced and developed VR and AR interactive experience as SENS VR (Unity summit vision, Tribeca Film Festival, SXSW, FOST), 7 lives with the French director Jan Kounen to be released in Q1 2019, Paris 2050, The Endless Meeting, A King’s Story, and Wonder Women.

Wonder Women

Director

Created by Production scheme Release Production status

Marie Blondiaux 7 Lives (2019 | director) SENS VR (2016 | director) The Wanted 18 (2014 | director) Celine Tricart Under the Canopy VR (2017 | director) The Sun Ladies (2017 | director) Celine Tricart January 2019 – September 2019 January 2020 Development

FINANCING Production budget Still required Funds and Institutes

Budget €

€ 600.000 € 560.000 CNC | Pauline Augrain

| Wonder Women

Development | Pre-Production Writer 10.000 Producers 15.000 Director 10.000 Travel/subsistence 10.000 Pilote Postproduction 25.000 Line producers X5 10.000

€ 80.000

Production Archival rights & reproduction 5.000 Hotels, travel & food 60.000 Production travel and expenses 10.000 Production personnel 40.000 Director X5 70.000 Technical staff 60.000 Equipment 25.000 Stock Material 10.000 Data Management 10.000

€ 40.000

€ 290.000

Post-Production Editor/editing system 15.000 Sound design and mix 15.000 Titles and animation 5.000 Music 15.000 Animation 40.000

Outreach and distribution Marketing assets Online campains

Overhead Overhead. 10 % Contingency 10%

Total budget (summed)

€ 90.000

15.000 25.000

€ 40.000

50.000 50.000

€ 100.000 € 600.000

Individual Meetings Project Crossmedia

Director Joanna Wright Production Tiny City Status Development Country United Kingdom Format HD/ 16mm archive |

Augmented Reality | 360 Installation | Website

Genres

• History • Politics | Society • Human Interest | Social Issues Pitch Type Individual Meetings Project | Crossmedia

Atomfa Atomfa shares surprising stories from the final days of a rural nuclear power station. From local mythologies & the promise of the atomic age to the space age. From the past, the present & long into the future.

Synopsis Atomic power came to the mountains of rural north Wales fifty years ago. Now the people of Trawsfynydd and the surrounding villages are dismantling the nuclear power station built and run by their parents and grandparents, a job that won’t be completed in our lifetime.

Trawsfynydd Nuclear Power Station is a place full of humour and personal stories. It is singular for it’s cinematic location and its sense of community and culture. This is a place full of contradictions that subvert stereotypes of rural location and people.

Atomfa aims to rethink how digital technology might be used to engage and implicate a viewer in a story that won’t be complete until long after they are dead.

Through the personal stories of our contributors, poetic cinematography and previously unseen archive material, Atomfa searches out the humour and the hubris of this story, exploring themes of legacy and inheritance and the complex and emotional relationship between industry and economy, people and place.

The timing of production is significant, now entering the end period of work on site for this generation of workers, the realities of the closure are evident and real, with

direct emotional and financial consequences. This is the time for people to share their stories, and reflect on the legacies of this place on their past and present, and the unknown future.

The story of the decommissioning process is complex and surprising. It expresses human fallibility, our inability to think very clearly about the future, and shows that how ever many safeguards are in place, humans always make mistakes.

While Atomfa is a project with strong local stories and voices, there is a universality in the content that will connect with other rural communities and locations that are decommissioning similar sites internationally.

Project Description Background Built in the 1950’s in a national park in rural Wales, Trawsfynydd nuclear power station was at the forefront of atomic technology and is now at the forefront of nuclear decommissioning internationally. The local economy has had considerable benefit from the industry. Local residents were almost unanimously in favour of the station, marching in support from the surrounding villages. This is a place that has put food on the table.

In the 1980’s this part of Wales was significantly affected by fallout from the disaster at Chernobyl. Radioactivity continues to affect farmers and livestock today, so this in an area that has experienced a disproportionate burden & benefit as a consequence of nuclear power.

In the early 1990’s Trawsfynydd abruptly went offline for repairs, and the decision was made to permanently

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decommission the station, a process that will take over a century, and will see waste left on site for the long term, with a proposal for the site to house waste from other locations.

The story experience has 3 proposed elements: Augmented Reality, 360 Installation & Website The structure of the project focuses on a loosely connected set of spoken word narrative, evocative archive material, contemporary filming and detailed binaural soundscapes, recorded within and around the site. The stories draw on 70 years worth of atomic, Welsh, and international culture, and project long into the future.

360 Installation: The experience starts with a piece of news reel archive filmed at the location in 1958, that shares the full excitement of the oncoming atomic age, transitioning to binaural soundscape of the sounds of the location exterior: the lake, the fishermen, the wind, in this cinematic and startling landscape, the sounds of a power station begin to emerge as the structure of the building is introduced.

The story is told through voice over, a combination of memories, anecdotes and narrated text (that draws on news articles, transcripts of meetings and government documents) with the feeling that each voice is only telling a small part of the story. Narratives are short 3-4 minutes, by turns funny, emotional and full of jeopardy.

At the outset of each as the viewer you find yourself in a specific space within or around the station that will change around you as a narrative unfolds. As the building emerges in the Snowdonia landscape the 360 ‘real world’ begins to transform into a more imaginary scene, built from a combination of film, archive and collaged materials, pulling you into a space in between the past, present and future. There is a sense of walking through an archived landscape, uncertain if these spaces still physically exist.

The Augmented Reality experience is intended for the landscape near the power station, in a popular National Park with high tourist footfall (3.5 million + annually) It will allow a unique insight into an inaccessible industrial site, enabling people to explore stories, image, archive and audio while they are within the landscape. The building looms large in the countryside, visible from many of the significant vantage points of the National park. A viewer

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will be able to ‘enter’ inside, and travel in time, from the 1950’s to the present day, guided by voices from multiple generations of people who have been impacted in different ways by the power station, encouraging deeper cultural and environmental understanding.

Online site: Using the visual language of a pop-up book the web experience offers a more structured way to share individual stories, archive material and oral histories. Starting with a simple introduction that mimics the 360 installation, the experience is broken down into distinct sections and categories relating to theme and media type, where a viewer can choose a thread to follow.

Through careful curation of material, and use of deliberately accessible visual language, a viewer is drawn into humanity of the stories of the power station. These could be your neighbours or friends or family. Workers, fishermen, practical jokers, teenagers in pop bands, set within a context where the stakes of human error are incredibly high.

Digital Context: In Atomfa time is fluid. The power station and landscape is at the centre of stories and ideas that have moved in and around it over the years, and it will leave an indelible legacy on the land and people, long after it closes.

There’s a visual poetry in the location, the intersection of the building and countryside, the beauty of the idyllic landscape and the looming danger inherent in the buildings. We plan to interpret this by mixing and collaging visual and sound media to engage the audience with an understanding of the multiple and shifting versions of the story, and the time scale involved. Live action can be collaged with animation, text, archive images and topographic representation. Changing points of view would be achieved through layering contemporary filming with archive and drawing.

Director’s note I was drawn to this story because of the contradictions, the location and time frame involved. I want to look at relationships to physical and cultural landscape, and in this story specifically, the hubris and hope surrounding this heavy industrial site. I see the iconic power station building and the surrounding landscape as a central structure of the project, a repository for the stories of our contributors, a counter to the repository for the waste left behind.

Production Details |

Biographies

Atomfa

PRODUCTION COMPANY Tiny City Ty Capel Cefn Bach Llanedwen LL61 6EQ Llanfairpwllgwyngyll United Kingdom

Joanna Wright Producer | Director Tiny City was set up by filmmakers Joanna Wright & Anna Jones. Working with a strong network of award winning creative collaborators we produce film and artist led projects that crossover between documentary, installation and digital platforms, most recently the interactive/ live documentary Two Itinerant Quilters, funded by the BBC | Arts Council digital platform The Space. Projects we’ve worked on have been screened and exhibited internationally, including at the British Film Institute, Channel 4 UK, BBC, Sky, The British Council, The Institute of Contemporary Art, London, Edinburgh Film Festival, Seattle Film Festival and True/False Documentary Festival, USA. Joanna lives & works in north Wales, she is a graduate of the National Film & Television School UK.

joannamartine@gmail.com +44 7903218774

CREDITS Production

Director Created by Co-production Editor Production scheme Release Production status

Joanna Wright Two Itinerant Quilters (2017 | producer | director) Woodcutters (2014 | producer | director) Greetings From Death Valley (2006 | producer | director) Curtains (2013 | producer) Future Postcards (2013 | director) Not (2012 | producer) Out of A Box, Episodes 1-4 (2006 producer | director) Joanna Wright Joanna Wright Bard Entertainments Ltd – Margaret Matheson – England Ariadna Fatjo-Vilas January 2019 – September 2019 October 2019 Development

FINANCING Production budget Still required Funds and Institutes

Own Investment

Budget €

€ 169.993 € 132.688 Ffilm Cymru Wales | Kimberley Warner British Film Institute | Alice Whittemore Tiny City | Joanna Wright

| Atomfa

Development | Pre-Production Producer | Director 11.098 Travel/subsistence 1.110

€ 12.208

Production Archival rights & reproduction 5.548 Hotels, travel & food 2.220 Production travel and expenses 1.110 Director 5.548 Technical staff 5.548 Equipment 11.098 Stock Material 222 Broadcast requirements 1.110 website build 16.647 AR 44.391 360 installation 11.098

€ 11.654 € 3.607 € 22.044

€ 104.540

Post-Production Editor/editing system Sound design and mix Titles and animation

8.878 6.659 4.439

€ 19.976

Outreach and distribution Impact producer 5.548 Press 5.548

Overhead Overhead 5% Contingency 10 %

Total budget (summed)

€ 11.096

7.391 14.782

€ 22.173 € 169.993

Margaret Matheson Co-producer Margaret Matheson started producing in 1975 with the feature film It Shouldn’t Happen To A Vet. She produced Play For Today, including Abigail’s Party and Scum which the BBC banned.

She went on to be Head of Drama for Central TV, Director of Production for Zenith Productions and Chief Executive of Island World before forming her company, Bard Entertainments. Films include Marleen Gorris’s Antonia’s Line (Best Foreign Language Oscar), Kasi Lemmons’ Eve’s Bayou, Elaine Proctor’s Kin, Alex Cox’s Revengers Tragedy, American Cousins written by Sergio Casci and directed by Don Coutts, Duncan Roy’s AKA, Mark James and Phil O’ Shea’s Vampire Diary, Gideon Koppel’s ‘sleep furiously’, Skin, directed

by Anthony Fabian, In The Dark Half written by Lucy Catherine and directed

by Alastair Siddons, Hard Boiled Sweets written and directed by David L G Hughes and Scott Graham’s Shell. In 2013/2014 she produced Katie Morag, the double BAFTA winning children’s TV series. In 2014/5 she produced Scott Graham’s second film, Iona.

Joanna Wright Producer | Director

Margaret Matheson Co-producer

Other collaborators include editor Ariadna Fatjo Vilas (films she has worked on have received accolades such an Oscar nomination, the Ecumenical & Panorama Audience Award in Berlinale, the Jury Prize at Sheffield & CPH:DOX) Cinematographer Ed Edwards for key shoots (Scarlet Sunrise, Boy Cheerleaders) and sound designer Alex Ashcroft, who’s collaborations have been shown at Venice Biennale, Edinburgh Film Festival, Cannes, MoMa and the Guggenheim Museum.

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Individual Meetings Project Crossmedia

Director Ifeatu Nnaobi Production Ifeatu Nnaobi Status Start Production Country Nigeria Format HD Cam and 360 Cam |

choose your own story, photo story, mini doc, 360 short film

Borno

Genre

• Human Interest | Social Issues

Pitch Type Individual Meetings

Project | Crossmedia

Devastation, beauty, and resilience in Borno State, Nigeria.

Synopsis A crossmedia project telling stories of the insurgency in North East, Nigeria.

Project Description My project consists of 4 parts: 1. A choose-your-own story portraying the experiences of the victims of NE Nigeria.

2. A photo story consisting of images featuring the beauty and resilience of the people of Borno. These images were created during my travel and interviews with victims of the insurgency in Borno State, Nigeria.

3. A mini documentary telling the story of Bulus Mungopark, a Borno native who has served as a vigilante in Chibok, the North East Nigerian town where the schoolgirls were infamously kidnapped in 2014. In the documentary, he discusses the conflict dynamics of the armed insurgency, and why everyone should be concerned.

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4. A short film called Fatimah: 1 in millions which is a 360° experience, telling the story of Fatimah, a 16-yearold Nigerian girl who currently lives in a camp for Internally Displaced People in Maiduguri, Nigeria.

Fatimah shares the story of her gruelling abduction by Boko Haram, her escape from the group, daily life in the camp and her hopes for the future.

I am using different platforms and different media formats to address a variety of issues surrounding the topic and my main goals are to achieve immersion, empathy and understanding.

The main reason for presenting this project in different formats is the historical context of the conflict situation.

The conflict in northeast Nigeria and the Lake Chad region will enter its tenth year in 2019. During this time, this conflict has killed tens of thousands of people in Nigeria, Niger, Chad and Cameroon. The conflict has displaced almost 2.4 million people. It continues to see grave violations of human rights, widespread sexual and gender-based violence, forced recruitment and suicide bombings. The crisis has been exacerbated by conflict-induced food insecurity and severe malnutrition. Although this is one of the biggest crisis on the continent, many people have become desensitized to the conflict.

In creating this project to address this gap in knowledge, my theory of change combines several elements drawing from public policy, international relations, civil society and advances in story-telling. With new forms of conflict emerging in the world at large, citizens need new ways of thinking about, and talking about conflict situations. For maximum engagement, stories of these conflicts need to be immersive if they are going to lead to their consumers taking meaningful steps that can contribute to solutions, including holding public officials accountable. Immersive experiences are perspective shifters. The project uses various new media formats to push the story-telling agenda. What holds all the different formats together is an overarching dedication to documentary-style storytelling.

Each of the formats have their own target groups. The mini documentary and the photo story are targeted at traditional viewers, the choose-your-own story is for younger audiences who are more conversation with games, and the 360° experience is for those seeking even more immersion in their story experiences. On a personal level, this project is a challenge to myself to learn more about my country and present my findings in innovative ways making use of my diverse skillset.

It is a challenge to push myself to create experiences using new technology that challenges artists to embrace technology and intersectionality in their work.

Previous work done on the conflict in NorthEast Nigeria have come through traditional media format in books and linear documentaries. Most of them focus on the history of the conflict and the general political situation of the country. However, none of these applaudable efforts have created immersion or interactivity through their stories. After conducting a series of interviews of survivors of violence in Maiduguri, Nigeria earlier this year, and learning about the nuanced experiences that often get missed out of traditional media reporting, I chose to focus on using different media formats to create experiences that are memorable and can reach different people in different ways.

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Biographies

Ifeatu Nnaobi Producer | Director

Ifeatu Nnaobi Producer | Director Ifeatu Nnaobi uses digital media to challenge social inequality. She does this through transmedia projects, documentaries, text, and video art. Her film and photography projects have featured internationally, including at The International Documentary Film Festival, Amsterdam, Sheffield DocFest and Les Rencontres d’Arles. She has an LLB Law with International Relations degree from the University of Sussex and a Masters in International Public Policy from University College London.

Production Details |

Borno

PRODUCTION COMPANY Ifeatu Nnaobi www.ifeatunnaobi.com

ifeatu.nnaobi@gmail.com +23 48188720277

CREDITS Production Director Created by Production scheme Release Production status

Ifeatu Nnaobi Where is Home? (2017 | Producer) Ifeatu Nnaobi Ifeatu Nnaobi August 2018 – October 2019 November 2019 Start production

FINANCING Production budget Still required

Budget €

€ 19.705 € 19.705

| Borno

Development | Pre-Production Writer 200 Producer | Director 200 Travel/subsistence 860 Other (gratuity to interviewees) 96 Other (translation costs from Kanuri and Hausa to English) 135

€ 1.491

Production Hotels, travel & food 1.401 Production travel and expenses 1.593 Production personnel (game development) 1.500 Director 400 Technical staff(Camera person 2) 200 Equipment 3.557 Broadcast requirements (filming

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permits) 531 Translation costs from Kanuri and Hausa to English 135 Graphics for game

Post-Production Editor/editing system Sound design and mix Titles and animation

Overhead Overhead at 10% Contingency at 5%

Total budget (summed)

1.300

€ 10.617

3.000 1.370 300

€ 4.670

1.951 976

€ 2.927 € 19.705

Individual Meetings Project Crossmedia

Director Ali Eslami, Mamali Shafahi Production Ali Eslami Status Development Country The Netherlands, Iran Format VR | 25’

nerd_funk nerd_funk is a digital identity existing on Instagram, following the contemporary digital culture.

In this VR journey, User will explore the new reality that emerged out of social media.

Synopsis In the current climate of the Internet, we have reached an irreversible state in our social life and inherently the way we think and comprehend our reality. It’s a situation we have all dived into, floating and yet struggling to find ourselves in it. To investigate this phenomenon and allow others to investigate it with us, we decided to create a virtual identity called nerd_funk, a hybrid between a person and a collective, who exists in Instagram and follows contemporary digital culture.

Through the lens of this profile, the user will set out on a journey that represents an archive of collected moments and stories shared by others. Bringing the user into an interactive journey composed and directed on the basis of nerd_funk’s Instagram stories feed.

The experience will be a confrontation of the user with different sets of curated social media contents, which transforms participants between the chaos of information and order. By providing an alternate hyper-reality, we attempt to compare and thus better perceive our current state of existence in social media. A dynamic that represents a kaleidoscopic portrait of the present that can provide an alternative perspective on the reality of ourselves and our societies.

Genre

• Human Interest | Social Issues

Pitch Type Individual Meetings

Project | Crossmedia

Project Description To investigate this emerging digital culture and allow others to investigate it with us, we decided to use VR. This VR project will zoom in on this phenomenon and capture it as a kaleidoscopic portrait of the present that can be explored experimentally, starting from nerd_funk’s profile as a reference point, to create a usercontrolled, interactive self-interrogation.

The visitor will first enter a physical, real room, but where UV light, illuminating a grid pattern on walls, floor, and ceiling, will refer to the grid of the VR environment, and an installation of diverse objects will create a disorienting atmosphere.

Once the VR mask is on, the visitor will find him/herself in the ‘Home’, in this case parodying the typical Homes created by VR companies, combining reassuring, ‘new age’ effects and sheer mess.

Through a transition user will transform into nerd_funk’s social media profile which unfolds as a huge desert landscape including a big statue of nerd_funk’s avatar accompanying his phone with all of his Instagram feed randomly scrolling through contents that he’s following.

The visitor will move into @nerd_funk’s mouth to deeply explore his profile.

Once inside his head, the visitor will confront a giant Transformer-like sculpture where the body of this sculpture is shaped out of screens filled with nerd_funk’s Instagram feed. From this point, the transformer sculpture that resembles the information overload and chaos will reshape itself into new orders and forms. By doing this every time it swallows the visitor and brings them into new spaces inside itself.

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These spaces are themed and ordered by nerd_funk’s area of interests based on his Instagram feed. Topics included so far are: 1- Body, Cyborg 2- Earth, Nature 3- Sound 4- Persona, Avatars 5- Mixed Reality Future Whereby in each space, the visitor has the agency to navigate through the curated set of nerd_funk’s feed in hyper-real environments that resemble the theme itself.

To explore a series of major contemporary issues in a self-directed experience exploiting thousands of other people’s Instagram stories.

Putting the user in such psychological dynamic between the chaos of information (Transformer Sculpture) and ordered spaces of contents is an impactful narrative to tap on one of humanity’s major issues in the 21st century.

Also at the same time, preserve and rise awareness our new reality and culture which is emerged and shaped with social media.

We decided to collect, archive and exploit Instagram stories because they enable the experience of exploring

132 IDFA Forum catalogue 2018

the social media content of someone you don’t know.

In instagram stories, the feeding frenzy of consumption is paused but the AI driven matrices that uphold this virtuality continue; developed for someone else, but adapting to your desires almost instantly. The feed is alive, it senses you, arranges this foreign content to your desires. No longer do we walk in someone else’s shoes; we swipe in someone else’s feed. nerd_funk is a VR immersive and interactive Installation with a playable area of 2m x 2m. There would be eventually a physical installation that will go along with the VR experience which will be as large as 4m x 4m. Our installation would be evolving before and after the user puts the headset on, so when they come out of the virtual experience we change the lighting to evolve the physical space for participants.

It’s a standing experience, and the time frame of the user’s experience can be clamped to around 30 minutes.

The Project is being developed as High-end VR which supports Oculus Rift/HTC Vive/Windows MR headsets with motion controllers.

Production Details |

Biographies

nerd_funk

PRODUCTION COMPANY Ali Eslami www.alllesss.com

Ali Eslami Producer | Director Ali Eslami (1991) is a VR Artist and practitioner from Iran. He has been working with VR technology since 2014.

Develops and designs Interactive VR Experiences to explore new pathways in this emerging medium. Further than that, re-imagine and construct possible futures through the speculative design of virtual space, time and bodies. His realities span between fiction and non-fiction to reflect his practiceled research in VR. Besides content production, Ali is active in running VR Masterclasses and workshops.

Ali has self-taught 3D for Architectural Viz since 2005 and further expanded his focus to other fields like creative coding, data-viz, 3D art, and programming. In 2016, his VR project won the IDFA DocLab Award for ‘Best Immersive non-fiction’.

+31 687037038 alless91@gmail.com

CREDITS Production Director

Created by Production scheme Release Production status

Ali Eslami Ali Eslami, Mamali Shafahi Ali Eslami: DeathTolls Experience (2016 | director) Snow VR (2016 | director) Re-creation of Magritte’s paintings in VR (2015 | director) Mamali Shafahi: Nature Morte (2017 | director) Broken SD (2015 | director) Blonde Descending the Staircase (2008 | director) Ali Eslami, Mamali Shafahi June 2018 – August 2019 September 2019 Development

FINANCING Production budget Still required

Budget €

€ 60.000 € 60.000

| nerd_funk

Development | Pre-Production Research 4.000 Writing and Documentation 500 Design (UX, Interactivity, Architecture, Narrative) 1.500 VR Prototype Development 1.000 Lawyer (Copyright law expert consultancy) 4.000 Video Archiving (Instagram Stories) 800

€ 11.800

Production VR Development and Programming 15.000 3D Art - Modeling & Texturing 3.000 3D Animations and Dynamics 1.000 Video Edit & Classification (Instagram

Stories) 3.500 Director 1 6.000 Director 2 6.000 Stock Material and 3D Assets 2.500 Sound design and mix 1.000 Music 400

€ 38.400

Post-Production Editing 500 VR Optimization | Debugging 1.500 Titles and Animation 500 Physical Installation Materials 1.500 Physical Installation production 1.000 Writing 300

Overhead Overhead Contingency

Total budget (summed)

Mamali Shafahi Director Mamali Shafahi was born in Iran in 1982. After studying photography and video in Tehran, he moved to France to attend the Beaux Arts in Limoges and Paris-Cergy. His work brings together drawing, painting, photography, video, installations and performance in longterm, themed projects. His work in France includes the video In search of Jesus stolen (2006), an installation of light boxes at Wochdom, Paris (2007) and Blonde Descending a Staircase, a video performance filmed at the Pompidou Centre (2008). Mamali Shafahi’s practice, swaying from installation to sculpture and film, bears a deep fascination for biotechnologies, augmented reality and, ultimately, any misrepresentation of the future.

Ali Eslami Producer | Director

Mamali Shafahi Director

€ 5.300

2.500 2.000

€ 4.500 € 60.000

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Round Table Pitch | Arts & Culture

Director Fred Scott Production Archer’s Mark Status In Production Country United Kingdom, Sweden Format HD | 90’

Being A Human Person Roy Andersson is set to complete his last film. Startlingly original, Roy’s work has defied convention. Over the course of a career spanning decades, he’s remained enigmatic and reclusive... until now.

Synopsis Roy Andersson is about to make his last film. As with all of the productions, it’s been a long road.

The film – About Endlessness – will mark the end of a major chapter in cinema. For when Roy stops making films, they will never be made in this way again.

In an age of the franchise, where the studio conveyor belt relies on cookie-cutter storytelling, Roy’s methods are - without hyperbole - totally unique, and hark back to a bygone age of film production.

But this film’s concerns stretch far beyond simply evaluating Roy’s contribution to cinema or charting a ‘behind the scenes’ of his final film. In fact, it is essential that the film eschews the conventions of a traditional ‘fly on the wall’ documentary. In keeping with Roy’s own films, our primary gaze is toward something more mercurial and enigmatic - the human condition.

Being a Human Person is an exploration of time, place and people. Or, more specifically, mortality, belonging and existence. Told poetically, with the production timeline of Roy’s swan-song intentionally blurred, this disregard for chronology will allow us to spotlight the many lives, both past and present, that have most directly influenced Roy’s artistry.

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Genres

• Human Interest | Social Issues • Art | Music | Culture Pitch Type Round Table Pitch | Arts & Culture

Most importantly, it will explore the philosophical and emotional stresses of a creator accepting that this will be his last work of art. As Roy wrestles with what it means to call time on his career, so too he wrestles with the meaning of his own life and the fragility of human existence.

Comparable films include Fire At Sea and Casting JonBenet, both of which shape a greater story in a thematic, lyrical sense by broadening the boundaries of the film’s visual world beyond the central protagonist or issue. Whilst tonally operating in a much darker space, both documentaries still create a natural sense of warmth and humour through the composite voices of connected people, each of whom are complete with their own idiosyncrasies and world view.

Our ultimate goal is to create a film with a distinctly anthropological approach: rich in humanity; full of deep insight into the mind of an unrivalled storyteller; and a fascinating head-first dive into a hitherto unknown part of Roy Andersson’s extraordinary world.

Project Description Echoing Andersson’s own compartmentalised production methods, the film will be structured as a series of vignettes, each starring one of the many non-actors who have found themselves immortalised in Roy’s films.

In hearing the stories, voices and experiences of the real people behind the powdered faces, we will draw upon Roy’s many philosophies on humanity, and provide a counterpoint to the present-day production of About Endlessness.

Johan Carlsson – Roy’s longtime producer – has proven a keen and willing collaborator, and will be integral in helping us find the most interesting and captivating characters who have collaborated with Roy. He has also given us unrestricted access to Studio 24’s extensive archive, allowing us to fully contextualise each person’s respective journey with Roy, and offering never-beforeseen insight into his unique methods.

Roy’s own voice will also prove central to the film, both in terms of contemporary interviews plus, where relevant, archive interviews dating back several decades. I am also hoping I can encourage Roy to provide a series of short voiceover lines that add an additional layer of testimony, which I see as an expressionistic take on narration, and will serve to chapterise the film. This could take the form of brief monologues, anecdotes, or even excerpts from Roy’s own scripts read out aloud. Then as the narrative continues we would hone in on the theme highlighted by Roy during these brief interludes. Used in this way his words will serve a practical function - in the form of a segway - but, most importantly, they will be both contextualised and humanised by the subsequent chapter.

This will deliver a reflective feel to the film’s narrative, almost as if it were a series of memoirs. I will film him actually recording the voiceover in his office at Studio 24 in-vision, in order to deconstruct the process, so that - just like in Roy’s own work - it becomes a device of realism rather than existentialism.

Continuing this theme of voices, I would like to feature testimony from Roy’s highest-profile advocates (such as Alejandro Iñárritu, Darren Aronofsky, Lana and Lilly Wachowski, Ruben Östlund, and Mike Leigh, amongst others). I will use each of these conversations to highlight a different theme, subtly pulling together the narrative strands of both Roy’s films and the present day lives of our spotlighted non-actors.

In terms of locations, Roy’s world revolves around a fourstorey townhouse in the Östermalm district of central Stockholm - his apartment is the top floor, and the basement is his studio. Roy rarely leaves the building, a troublesome hip affecting his ability to move, and on an

average day the furthest he gets is to the Indian restaurant, a two-minute walk down the road. He has often street cast people from here, staring out the window from his regular seat at passersby, and I am hoping to film Roy in this location in order to fully contextualise his world.

Despite allowing me to film extensively in his basement studio over the past 18 months, where he has proven remarkably candid, Roy has never allowed anyone to film in his home on the top floor. I am hoping that, with time, Roy will see the value this location holds to our story and grant access. For similar reasons, I also hope to persuade Roy to let me accompany him to Lund, the picturesque town in the south of Sweden where he travels by train every three weeks to spend the weekend with his partner, Anne-Marie, who lives there permanently.

I am optimistic that Roy will allow us into this more private part of his life. As a storyteller himself, Roy will no doubt see the value this material holds to our larger story, especially in the aftermath of About Endlessness’ production (should our filming continue past this), as we explore the direct fallout that five years of routine and purpose has had on Roy, both creatively and emotionally (including the toll on his health), and how he continues now it’s over. With profession and art so intrinsically linked to character, we explore the human cost of ending the thing that defines you.

Regardless of where following the lives of our non-actors leads us, will always circle back to the production of About Endlessness - each portrait crafted to reflect the changing tone of the set, or mirroring the themes presenting themselves in the lives of both Roy and his team. In this way, footage of craft and toil serves to mirror the routine and ritual of both life at the studio as well as a broader notion of existence beyond its walls.

Across all component parts of the film, we will explore the themes that draw a connective thread across the making of About Endlessness, the lives and opinions of our contributors, and the journey of Roy himself - both creatively and emotionally.

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Biographies

Jo-Jo Ellison Producer

Steve Jamison Producer

Mike Brett Producer

Fred Scott Director

Archer’s Mark Production Company Mike Brett and Steve Jamison are the founders and managing partners of award-winning independent production company Archer’s Mark.

Their debut feature Next Goal Wins won the British Independent Film Award for Best Documentary in 2014, earning them recognition as two of BAFTA’s 2014 Breakthrough Brits and as Screen International Future Leaders for 2015. Together with Jo-Jo Ellison, Head of Film at Archer’s Mark, the trio produced the Emmy Award-winning New York Times Op-Doc Notes on Blindness.

The short was developed into a feature-length documentary of the same name, which won the British Independent Film Award for Best Documentary in 2016 and was nominated for three BAFTAs, including Best Documentary, Outstanding British Film, and Outstanding Debut for Jo-Jo and directors Peter Middleton & James Spinney.

The company is now in production on Middleton and Spinney’s sophomore film, an exploration of the life and art of Charlie Chaplin. Archer’s Mark has partnered with some of the most prestigious financiers and distributors in the world .

Studio 24 Production Company Studio 24 is an independent production company based in Stockholm.

Established by Roy Andersson in 1980, Studio 24 is renowned for producing critically-acclaimed feature films, shorts, commercials, books and exhibitions, including Songs from the Second Floor (Prix Spécial du Jury 2000 at Cannes Film Festival), A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence (Golden Lion at Venice Film Festival 2014) and the short World of Glory (named one of the ten best shorts in film history by Clermont-Ferrand Short Film Festival).

Fred Scott Director Fred Scott is a London-based filmmaker who has been working extensively across documentary, commercials and music promos for over 15 years, including promos for high-profile musicians such as Laura Marling, Elbow, Mumford & Sons, and The Maccabees. His debut TV documentary Payday aired on Channel 4 in 2014 and was Griersonshortlisted, while The Road to Red Rocks - which followed Mumford & Sons in the build-up to the biggest gig of their career - was nominated for ‘Best Music Film’ at the 2014 Grammys. Being a Human Person will be Fred’s debut feature-length documentary.

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Production Details |

Being A Human Person

PRODUCTION COMPANY Archer’s Mark 120-124 Curtain Road EC2A 3SQ London United Kingdom www.archersmark.co.uk

jojo@archersmark.co.uk +44 7949645167 mike@archersmark.co.uk +44 2074265160

CREDITS Production

Director

Co-production Editor Production scheme Release Production status

Jo-Jo Ellison, Steve Jamison, Mike Brett Notes On Blindness (2016 | producers) War Book (2015 | producers) Next Goal Wins (2014 | directors/producers) Fred Scott Payday (2014 | director) The Road to Red Rocks (2013 | director) Studio 24 – Sweden Michael Aaglund January 2017 – October 2019 January 2020 In production

FINANCING Production budget Still required Own Investment

Budget €

€ 335.739 € 166.444 Archer’s Mark Studio 24 (archive material)

| Being A Human Person

Development | Pre-Production Writer 1.000 Director expenses 1.739 Travel/subsistence 6.000 Equipment 4.000

€ 12.739

Production Hotels, travel & food 12.500 Production travel and expenses 10.500 Production personnel 44.000 Director 35.000 Technical staff 23.000 Equipment 15.000 Broadcast requirements (insurance, etc) 11.000 Locations 5.000 Contingency 10.000

€ 134.295 € 35.000

€ 166.000

Post-Production Editor/editing system (incl. conform, grade & deliverables) 40.000 Sound design and mix 15.000 Titles and animation 13.000 Music 22.000 Archival rights & reproduction 45.000

€ 135.000

Outreach and distribution Publicity (trailer and key art) 11.000 Website 1.000

€ 12.000

Overhead Overhead 10.000

Total budget (summed)

€ 10.000 € 335.739

Round Table Pitch | Arts & Culture

Director Anna-Karin Grönroos Production Tuffi Films Status In Production Country Finland Format HD | 80’ & 58’ Genres

• Art | Music | Culture • Human Interest | Social Issues Pitch Type Round Table Pitch | Arts & Culture

Conductivity

How does one become a leader?

Young conductors are in search of their place in the hierarchical world of classical music.

Synopsis Conductivity is a film about creative leadership told through the story of three young conductors; I-Han Fu from Taiwan, Emilia Hoving from Finland and James Kahane from France. They study orchestral conduction in the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki, Finland.

I-Han is an Asian virtuoso and a shy young artist who is looking for his place as an interpreter of Western classical music. Emilia is a natural leader but struggles with the conductor technique. James tries to cover up his insecurity, but ends up revealing it. We follow them on their rocky road, where tension, anxieties and elements out of their control can create insurmountable obstacles.

When stepping on the podium, they are put under a magnifying glass.

Two completely different conductors guide the students on their study path: the supportive and warm Professor Atso Almila, and Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra’s Chief Conductor, an admired Visiting Professor forging an international career, Hannu Lintu. He is a though leader, and by scarce eye contact he electrifies the atmosphere and fills the people around him with awe.

Almila has a softer approach, his encouraging style is meant to bring out the students’ strengths.

The film addresses the theme of leadership by looking at communication: What creates authority? What sort of characteristics make a person a leader? Can one decide to be a leader or is it for others to decide? What kind of meaning can a look or its absence convey? A good leader is strong without being gruff, friendly without being weak, humble without being fearful. Leadership means bringing out your own vision so it is conveyed to the world around you. Conductor training, in essence, is leadership training.

Sibelius Academy is one of Europe’s largest music colleges, and its orchestral conduction class is worldfamous. It’s an especially coveted place of study because here students conduct a live symphony orchestra every week, which is highly unusual in music colleges around the world.

Project Description Director’s Note Looking at the material we have shot, I get the feeling that there is something mystical about the work of conductors. In a way, it is a technical performance, but on the other hand, a perfect technique will not help if there is no emotion and sensitivity. A conductor is like a dancer whose movements are the result of rigorous training but whose performance crumbles if it lacks the sense of fast living in the moment. It combines personality, technical skills, physical properties, corporeality, communication. It requires good self-knowledge and

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at the same time self-confidence and humbleness. You have to be your genuine self. Or is it about a built role of a grand maestro that one has to learn?

At the beginning of the film the viewer will be thinking about the work of a conductor in rather concrete terms: what will the conductor do if the orchestra does not act the way he or she wants? Who are the young hopes that become conductors, and what drives them ahead?

We have now followed I-Han, James and Emilia in their studies for two years and learned that they have to overcome different obstacles in order to achieve the common goal of becoming successful conductors.

I-Han is an interesting observer - culturally an outsider, but at the same time his musicality raises admiration and appreciation in the community. James is analytical and ambitious but also very insecure. During the studies his confidence grows and he begins to challenge the professors. Emilia is still early in her studies and struggles with the technical aspects of conducting. As a

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beautiful young woman, she learns that she has to find a clear strategy on how to gain authority and artistic credibility. Globally, only 5% of all orchestral conductors are female.

Through the film, I will study communication and leadership in the world of classical music. However, I think that the fundamentals encountered here apply also to other places where people interact with each other. What sort of hidden attitudes have we got about leadership, what sort of skills or characteristics can make a leader?

Life gets even tougher for our main characters as they go from learning the ropes of orchestral conducting to searching for their place in the professional world.

Access We have gained unlimited access to film the Sibelius Academy conducting class, its students and its famous teachers as well as the main orchestras that the students train with.

Production Details |

Biographies

Conductivity

PRODUCTION COMPANY Tuffi Films Vanha talvitie 19 A 00580 Helsinki Finland www.tuffifilms.com

Venla Hellstedt Producer Producer Venla Hellstedt studied literature, film and anthropology in London.

She has worked in documentary, drama, VOD and news productions for i.e. BBC, ITV, Discovery Channel and Yle. Venla returned to work in her native Helsinki in 2009, after nearly 14 years in the UK, and has since worked as a Producer of many award-winning films and international Co-productions.

She is a graduate of EAVE Producers’ Workshop from 2012 and is a partner at Tuffi Films.

venla@tuffifilms.com +35 8409309905

CREDITS Production

Director

Co-production Screenplay Editor Production scheme Release Production status

Venla Hellstedt Stupid Young Heart (2018 | producer) Ecopolis China (2013 | producer) Dance of Outlaws (2012 | producer) Anna-Karin Grönroos Letters Home (2017 | director) Tenth Grade (2014 | director) Ecopolis China (2013 | director) Inselfilm Produktion – Gregor Streiber – Germany Anna-Karin Grönroos Okku Nuutilainen February 2018 – April 2019 May 2019 In production

FINANCING Production budget Still required Broadcasters

Funds and Institutes

Own Investment

Budget €

€ 466.560 € 79.635 AVEK | Outi Rousu YLE | Erkko Lyytinen Finnish Film Foundation | Piia Nokelainen Svenska Kulturfonden Finland | Anna Wilhelmson MES (Musiikin edistämissäätiö) | Hannu Saha Creative Europe Media | Jolien Willemsens Tuffi Films

| Conductivity

Development | Pre-Production Script 3.000 Pre production crew 44.960 Transportation and accommodation 1.431 Other pre production costs

12.860

€ 62.251

Production Crew 129.168 Cast 2.500 Transportation and accommodation 28.330 Art direction 1.500 Wardrobe 750 Make-up 300 Studios and locations 7.800 Technical equipment 31.100 Original materials 1.000

€ 51.500 € 30.000 € 120.000 € 60.000 € 40.000 € 40.000 € 45.425

€ 202.448

Post-Production Editing and image post production 60.903 Post production sound 18.769 Music 29.700

Outreach and distribution Costs of the screening copy Marketing costs

Miscellaneous Miscellaneous costs

Overhead Administration 5% Contingency 10 %

Total budget (summed)

€ 109.372

6.800 22.934

€ 29.734

1.900

€ 1.900

20.285 40.570

€ 60.855 € 466.560

Tuffi Films Production Company Tuffi Films is a production company established in Helsinki, Finland in 2010. The company is formed of two producers and three writer-directors.

The company develops projects with a wide range of genres from contemporary drama to comedy, as well as versatile creative documentaries. Tuffi’s films have enjoyed international success at the Academy Awards, and at festivals such as Sundance, Berlinale, Locarno, Visions du Reel and Clermont-Ferrand.

Tuffi Films produces quality films and series on contemporary topics with a human touch, made to stand the test of time.

Venla Hellstedt Producer

Anna-Karin Grönroos Director

Selected filmography: 2018 Stupid Young Heart (feature film, Dir. Selma Vilhunen) Official selection in Toronto International Film Festival.

2017 Hobbyhorse Revolution (documentary feature, Dir. Selma Vilhunen) Winner of the national film award ‘Jussi’ for the best documentary, Audience Award at Cinekid, Tampere Film Festival: Risto Jarva Main Prize and National Competition - films over 30 minutes - Grand Prix Main Prize.

2012 The Date (short fiction, Dir. Jenni Toivoniemi) Winner of the Short Film Jury Award, Sundance Film Festival 2013, Special mention at Berlinale Generation, Best Nordic fiction at Minimalen, Best Short Film at Nordic Lights Film Festival.

Anna-Karin Grönroos Director Anna-Karin Grönroos has since 2003 worked as a screenwriter, director and producer of documentaries and factual tv-series. Her latest film Letters Home won main prize at the National Short Film competition Kettupäivät in 2017. Her first one-hour documentary Ecopolis China premiered in the Mid-Length competition at IDFA in 2013. The film was awarded with a Finnish state prize for cinema and for best political documentary at Aegan Docs 2014. At the moment Anna-Karin directs independent documentaries, and is studying for her MA in documentary film at ELO Film School Finland.

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Round Table Pitch | Arts & Culture

Director Simone Manetti Production NACNE S.a.s.

Status Development

I’m in Love with Pippa Bacca In April 2008, news broke into the italian newspapers: the body of the artist Pippa Bacca was found lifeless a few kilometers from Istanbul. Raped and strangled. Dressed as a bride.

Synopsis The Milanese artist Pippa Bacca had been working on her artistic project for about two years, The Journey of the Brides, her performance, during which she was brutally killed.

Pippa’s idea was to create a traveling performance, a hitch-hiking trip during which the artist, dressed as bride, would have crossed many countries of Eastern Europe and the Middle East, recently devastated by wars or by ongoing conflict, to bring a message of peace and brotherhood between peoples.

An opportunity to collect images, sensations, testimonies of different cultures on the role and condition of women in a performance where the roles of viewer and artist overlap. An ideal and symbolic marriage with the world; a provocation that opposes the archetypal strength of love, family and peace to the logic of violence.

I’m in Love with Pippa Bacca is not the story of her death but it is the story of her life that precedes that fateful moment.

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Country Italy Format 4K | 72’ Genres

• Human Interest | Social Issues • Art | Music | Culture Pitch Type Round Table Pitch | Arts & Culture

Project Description What really happened in detail will be discovered only 11 days after the discovery of Pippa Bacca’s body. The Turkish criminal Murat Karatas first gave the hitchhiker dressed in white a ride and then, near Ballikayalar, raped her inside the car and strangled her to simply silence the body he had used. Finally he tried to clumsily hide the corpse under some leaves fallen from the trees of that damned wood where she was found.

Murat stole Pippa’s phone and video camera, with whom, just a few days later, he took pictures of her cousin’s wedding, her too, naturally, dressed as a bride. Using the phone, and inserting its card inside, he is traced in a stupid and involuntary way by the Turkish police.

A wedding-dressed artist who traveled hitchhiking met a lowlife who gives her a ride. The lowlife was the wrong person, carrying with him her tragic and unjust fate. He raped and killed her during her artistic performance.

The feminine universe, the sisters, its different personalities are the real beating heart of Pippa’s artistic world.

With her sisters she animated and organized colorful parties in the large family home in Casirate d’Adda, in the province of Bergamo. A villa surrounded by a birch forest that opened its doors from time to time to collect festive brigades of friends under the watchful and careful “supervision” of Pippa and her sisters. At one of these parties, the “feast of the neuron”, Pippa met Silvia Moro, also a performer artist from Milan devoted mostly to the art of embroidery. The affinity that binds the two women soon found its crowning point in the conception of a common artistic project, born from a dazzling intuition of Pippa: Brides on the Road.

The idea is to create a traveling performance, a hitchhiking trip during which the two women dressed as brides will cross many countries of Eastern Europe and the Middle East, recently devastated by wars or by ongoing conflict, to bring a message of peace and brotherhood beetween peoples. An opportunity to collect images, sensations, testimonies of different cultures on the role and condition of women in a performance where the roles of viewer and artist overlap. An ideal and symbolic marriage with the world; a provocation to oppose the archetypal force of love, family and peace to the logic of violence.Pippa and Silvia decide to set a very significant and symbolic day all over the world as the date of their departure: March 8, the Women’s Day.

Her mission during the performance will be to do the ritual of washing the feet of a midwife in each place that will host them, while Silvia will be asked for embroidery on her dress by local women. Two exact copies of the clothes worn during the trip are kept intact in Milan. On their return they will be compared.

They would always have to travel together. Only at one point, the fatal one, they split up. But before all this, before this tragic end, there was however a fascinating and unique path.

It’s a gamble, a difficult journey, even dangerous. But Pippa does not stop, she never doubts. The project becomes her priority. Everyone around her support the initiative, even if they know very well that a hitchhike trip in war-torn countries is a wild card, it’s very, very risky, but our protagonist’s enthusiasm is contagious and so the day of departure becomes a big party with gypsy music and a square full of friends waving to the two brides who leave the place on a Vespa scooter and then hitchhike. Pippa is radiant, it will be a great adventure.

Her greatest adventure. There is also the TV that takes over Pippa while announcing: “Travel has always been a means and an end at the same time, it is a way of life and for someone the only possible way to live: it’s the metaphor of life itself”

The story will be developed on three levels: 1. The anthological part: interviews with the people who knew her, from her boyfriend to her friends, from her mother to her sisters (Pippa had 4 sisters).

2. The journey: we’ll go back to the places Pippa visited and will talk with people Pippa met, until the moment her life came to an end.

3. The archival material: both photos and videos will become the visual and emotional memory of the story.

Finally, it’s important to underline the total access to the story thanks to an agreement with the Piero Manzoni Foundation of Milan, that allowed us to use the archive of Pippa that includes her works, her writings, the diary of her last trip together with the photos and videos shot by herself.

Our documentary about Pippa Bacca is a biopic, not a crime story. The journey started from Milan and then crossed Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, until Turkey, her final unpredicted destination.

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Biographies

Federico Schiavi Producer

Simone Manetti Director

Federico Schiavi Producer Born in Rome in 1972, Federico Schiavi is a producer, editor and director. He worked over 10 years in the production company SUTTVUESS (which he co-founded).

From this long-lasting experience, he founded Nacne S.a.s. in 2013 with Silvana Costa.

Production Details | PRODUCTION COMPANY Nacne S.a.s.

Via Bagno A Ripoli, 37 00146 Rome Italy www.nacne.eu

Simone Manetti Director Born in Livorno in 1978, Simone Manetti is a film director and editor. Graduated in film editing at the il Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia di Roma he debuted in the motion picture industry signing the editing of the film La Prima Cosa Bella by Paolo Virzì.

For this debut he was nominated as Best editing at the David of Donatello Price 2010, the Silver Ribbons and Ciak D’Oro Price.

Alongside the cinema industry scope Simone Manetti has been working as photographer, collaborating with magazines such as Rolling Stone, Vanity Fair, Asian Geographic and others.

In 2016, he realized the feature documentary Goodbye Darling, I’m off to Fight, his real debut as director. The film is a biopic about the life of Thai box champion Chantal Ughi. The film has received more than 10 official awards, including, among others, the nomination as Miglior Documentario del Cinema del Reale at the 2016 Nastri d’argento and the Best Writing Prize at Doc.it Awards.

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federico.schiavi@gmail.com +39 3285995253 paolo.barberi@gmail.com +39 0645421811

CREDITS Production

Nacne S.a.s.

Production Company The company comes from the 10 years’ experience of SUTTVUESS, that produced over the last years social, historical, feature documentary, reportage for the main Italian channels (RAI, LA7, History Channel, NAT GEO, Current TV) and international networks (NHK, SVT, RTP, ESPN e RTS, AL Jazeera).

NACNE, with the support of excellent collaboration with RAI and other major European broadcasters, started in recent years many international productions. Among others: Togliatti(grad) (2014), Blank Lands (2015), The Remnants (2017) & Trying Hard To Breathe (2018).

I’m in Love with Pippa Bacca

Director

Executive Production

Federico Schiavi, Paolo Barberi The Remnants (2017 | producer) Blank Lands (2014 | producer) No Bajen los Brazos (2013 | producer) Simone Manetti The Remnants (2017 | editor) Ciao Amore, Vado a Combattere (2016 | director) A New Family (2014 | director) Paolo Barberi | NACNE S.a.s.

January 2019 – June 2020 June 2020 Development

Production scheme Release Production status

FINANCING € 260.000 € 175.000 A&E Networks Italy | Francesco Agostini Nacne S.a.s.

Esplorare la Metropoli | Paolo Barberi

Production budget Still required Broadcasters Own Investment

Budget €

| I’m in Love with Pippa Bacca

Development | Pre-Production Writer 4.000 Producer | Director 11.000 Travel/subsistence 16.100 Casting and Crew 12.000 Research activities and/or scouting 16.740 Rights acquisition

4.000

€ 63.840

Production Archival rights & reproduction 5.000 Hotels, travel & food 24.000 Production travel and expenses 8.158 Production personnel 8.000 Director 8.800 Technical staff 16.000 Equipment 17.500 Stock Material 2.500 Broadcast requirements 4.500

€ 50.000 € 20.000 € 15.000

€ 94.458

Post-Production Editor/editing system 34.240 Sound design and mix 6.700 Titles and animation 4.000 Music 6.000 archival rights & reproduction 4.500 Color Conforming 4.000 Translations 2.340

€ 61.780

Outreach and distribution

Overhead Overhead 7% Contingency 7%

Total budget (summed)

€ 8.000

15.965 15.965

€ 31.931 € 260.009

Round Table Pitch | Arts & Culture

Director Denis Delestrac Production Polar Star Films S.L. Status Development Country Spain

ONE, with Steve McCurry Over 40 years photographer Steve McCurry has braved hardship and personal risk to create some of the most enduring images of our time.

We reveal the longing for human connection at the core of his art.

Synopsis Steve McCurry is the photographer of the Afghan Girl and many other iconic pictures. Over the past four decades, his magnetic flair for poignant subjects has led him to countless countries to capture conflicts, vanishing cultures, and humanity in all its strength and vulnerability.

McCurry has become one of the greatest photographers of our era. He has been a member of Magnum since the late eighties, 2.4 million fans follow him on Instagram and he has been awarded more than 30 of the most prestigious photography prizes, including the Robert Capa Gold Medal, and two World Press Photo awards.

Yet entering hell-like landscapes of war and empathizing with its victims is more than a profession, it resonates within him. Only a tough man with a bleeding heart will risk his health, or even his life, to capture the boundless beauty and contradictions of the human condition.

ONE is a portrait of the legendary photographer shot over several years. It explores his public persona, his work and the most intimate parts of his life: a difficult childhood, a physical disability and a deep sense of isolation, all counteracted by an unwavering curiosity and a life long struggle for creative freedom.

Format HD | 90’ Genre

•A rt | Music | Culture

Pitch Type Round Table Pitch |

Arts & Culture

McCurry strives to expose a larger truth through his art.

Along his life’s journey, he has learned that the simple fact of crossing borders makes them disappear; that whether you live in Baghdad, Bombay or the Bronx, we are all animated by the same essential hopes and dreams; that - as a metaphor of life itself - the most important is the journey, not the destination.

Project Description One of the most important ingredients of making a great documentary is to have great access. For this film, our team has been able to secure a direct and unique access to one of the most successful photographers of our era.

For the first time, lone wanderer Steve McCurry will open up to the world and show what travelling the globe to faraway and inhospitable places for forty years has been like. The film tells the story of a complex and at times contradictory character who fled an unhappy suburban childhood to spend the next 40 years effectively on the run, becoming, in the process, one of the world’s most celebrated photographers and a unique witness of our globalizing world.

We will talk to McCurry about his most famous picture, the Afghan Girl, whose piercing eyes reflect on the suffering of an entire nation. It is one of the most widely recognized photos of our era, and Steve will explain to us what it is like for him to be always be referred to as the photographer of this one picture, whereas his work encompasses many more amazing images. We will discuss his full body of work, replete with photographs that manifest his ability to capture mesmerizing gazes of his subjects; his strong visual language; the use of colour; capturing the world’s cultural heritage and the eradication of ethnic richness at the hand of globalization.

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McCurry’s work expresses the ordinary, which is what we all share as human beings. He’s an old style, all-American hero, a tough guy and a loner, and in many ways the quintessential individualist, but paradoxically his work reveals our similarities.

The film’s core visuals will combine live action scenes and McCurry’s still photographs. McCurry’s photographs (published and non-published) will provide the narrative thread in two ways: They will illustrate the story of his life and provide punctuation as we see him at work in remote places around the world. In other cases, key photographs will be used to trigger a scene or theme and the photographer will tell the story behind the image, placing it in broader perspective.

The film will be shot using the highest standard of cinematography. Throughout the film we will seek beauty and aesthetics. The live action scenes will be shot in natural light and the colour grading of the film will be designed to enhance realism. This way, we maintain a contrast between our work and the photographer’s images, which are shot in soft light, with saturated colours.

The film will have us enter into what we call the ‘McCurry Universe’; a construction in which the most iconic work of the photographer will be exhibited on white, semitransparent veils. Disconnected from time and space,

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the camera will move through this ‘McCurry Universe’ and it will allow us to discover the details and the beauty of McCurry’s work. Similar semi-transparent fabrics surround McCurry on the main set for interviews.

The live action scenes will portray Steve McCurry on the field, in perpetual motion and always in search of “a face that tells a story”. Thanks to the exclusive access the photographer grants the filmmaker, we will at time be a fly on the wall and observe him behind the scenes, in the intimate moments of reflection he allows himself while traveling from one place to another.

Along with the live action and the photographs, a third level of narration will be the interview. We will avoid using a voice over and let people close to the photographer talk about our subject. Different interviews with McCurry himself will punctuate the entire film. Gathered over a year and in dozens of hours, in-depth interviews will take the photographer on an introspective journey - very much like therapy - reviving naked emotions from the past and giving an unprecedented profundity to the character’s portrait.

Director Denis Delestrac has known Steve McCurry for nearly twenty years, and over this time they have built a relationship of trust, which is key to making this film possible.

Production Details |

Biographies

ONE, with Steve McCurry

PRODUCTION COMPANY Polar Star Films S.L. Rossello, 320, local 1 08025 Barcelona Spain www.polarstarfilms.com

marieke@polarstarfilms.com +34 9324004777

CREDITS Production

Director

Production scheme Release Production status

Marieke van den Bersselaar, Carles Brugueras Time Thieves (2018 | producer) Facing the Wind (2018 | associate producer) Freightened (2016 | producer) Denis Delestrac Freightened (2016 | producer) Sand Wars (2013 | director) Pax Americana and the Weaponization of Space (2009 | director) December 2018 – February 2020 May 2020 Development

FINANCING Production budget Still required Funds and Institutes

Other Financiers

Own Investment

Budget €

€ 1.023.688 € 701.000 Creative Europe | MEDIA Slate Funding ICEC | Regional Development Funding Silversea Cruises Ltd. TAX credit Polar Star Films S.L.

| ONE, with Steve McCurry

Development | Pre-Production Writer 5.475 Director (development) 10.000 Producer (development) 16.000 Translations and transcripts 4.500 Market visits 7.742 Travel during development 39.654

€ 83.371

Production Archival rights & reproduction 25.800 Hotels, travel & food 141.656 Production travel and expenses 7.783 Production personnel 108.925 Director 80.000 Technical staff 45.200 Equipment 35.760 Stock Material 17.800 Insurance (including E&O) 11.029 Additional shoots in studio 12.600 Archive researcher 3.400 Social Security 32.130

€ 32.000 € 25.000 € 180.000 € 40.000 € 45.688

€ 522.083

Post-Production Editor/editing system 65.800 Sound design and mix 23.200 Computer graphics, After FX credit design 26.000 Music 24.000 Dubbing and subtitling 5.000 Postproduction manager and assistant 20.000 Color correction, masters and copies 13.500

€ 177.500

Outreach and distribution Marketing and press campaign Premieres and festivals

Miscellaneous Administration and audit

Overhead Overhead 10% Contingency 5 % Production fee 5%

Total budget (summed)

51.500 8.500

€ 60.000

10.120

€ 10.120

85.307 42.654 42.654

€ 170.615 € 1.023.688

Marieke van den Bersselaar & Carles Brugueras Producers Carles Brugueras established Polar Star Films in 1997. Polar Star Films is an independent production company based in Barcelona, with a track record in creative documentaries, short fiction and commercials made for national and international audiences. Experienced in working in Spanish documentary, fiction and animation productions, Marieke van den Bersselaar joined the Polar Star Films team in 2012 as Head of the Documentary Department. Among her filmography we find the feature documentaries: Time Thieves (2018, producer), Freightened (2016, producer), Falciani’s Tax Bomb (2015, line producer) and the fiction film Facing the Wind (2018, associated producer).

Denis Delestrac Director In 2001, after having worked in the United States as a writing journalist and photographer, Denis Delestrac switched careers into documentary film making. The result is a list of prizewinning documentaries, that have sparked public debate in numerous occasions and that even have influenced political decision-making on an international level. Some of his best films are Pax Americana and the Weaponization of Space (2009, produced by Mark Achbar, director of The Corporation) and Sand Wars (2013), which was selected at over 40 festivals and won 15 awards including a Gold Panda, the Greenpeace Prize and a Gemini Award. In 2016 he worked with Polar Star Films for the first time and directed Freightened. The film was selected at more than 60 festivals and was broadcast in more than 20 territories worldwide. Denis Delestrac met photographer Steve McCurry on one of his first films in 2001, when he was working on the series Nomads.

The encounter between the two creatives lead to a friendship that lasts until today. After making numerous films that unstitch the hidden mechanics of our society, Delestrac is now embarked on creating an unforgettable portray of one of the greatest photographers alive today. Among Denis’ filmography we find titles such as: Captain’s Dream (2018), Freightened (2016), Banking Nature (2014), Sand Wars (2013) and Pax Americana and the Weaponization of Space (2009).

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Marieke van den Bersselaar Producer

Denis Delestrac Director

145

Round Table Pitch | Youth

Director Susanne Kim Production Neufilm GmbH, expanding

focus GmbH

Status Development

Cabinets of Wonder (WT) - Created with, for and by Children If childhood would be a place, where would it be? Children take us on a trip into their inner worlds.

On this journey they cope with topics like friendship, belonging and fear in an intriguing way.

Synopsis Cabinet of Wonder is set as a feature length documentary movie, accompanied by a VR experience series and a media literacy program for schools and educators. We also see a high potential for a serial spin off for TV or web for this program.

In our search for the essence and mystery of childhood, we found children who touched us deeply, each in their own way: Wisdom (9), a German boy of Cameroonian heritage, Joline (10) a girl with dyslexia, Elias (12) with a diagnosis of autism and Roja (11) who fled from Iran to Germany two years ago. All very different, they have one thing in common: they do not fit into the framework of our function-driven society and wish for a place where they can stay timelessly, as long as they want and where no one tells them what to do.

Either they are slower and cannot keep up at school, are emotionally between two cultures, or they have no friends. Meanwhile, Elias lives on his own planet with an imaginary companion, and Wisdom travels with a raft to Africa, to meet the spirit of his grandfather. Joline has her own battle to fight against an army of glittering blue bugs tickling under her skin, but she manages to shake them off. In her memories, Roja crosses the sea; but this time without fear.

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Country Germany Format 4K and 4K360 | 1 x 75’ Movie,

5 x 3’ VR, 5 x 15’ Serial

Genre

• Youth Pitch Type Round Table Pitch | Youth

The children leave reality and get together in a secret place that is inaccessible for adults.

Leni, an 11-year-old reporter, goes on search to find the vanished children. Enigmatic is that not only the children, but also the guinea pigs disappeared from their barns. Leni meets helpless adults: a politician, parents, a scientist, a classmate and a teacher, until she finally finds the island of the children. The kids develop there their own games and rules and a manifesto of childhood.

In documentary observations, animated sequences and staging of their “invented” stories that stand for metaphors of desires and inner conflicts, we immerse in the inner world of the protagonists.

And the additional VR experience even makes the cabinets of wonder of our children accessible.

The term “cabinet of wonder” does not only define a collection of objects, but also of inner landscapes, moreover our brain or thoughts. There, you can go for a walk, curiously look around and be astonished. And it is all about astonishment.

Project Description Our project consists of three main pillars: movie, VR and educational program, which all are standing for them selves, but referring content-wise and visually to each other. These three pillars are accompanied by a TV or web series.

The working process on the project is like a table tennis match with the kids where we catch the balls they throw us, taking that way the next step of development. We draw from the resources of “our” children and use their music suggestions, pictorial ideas, stories as initial position for the film dramaturgy and image composition.

We always tell the stories from the kids’ (camera) position. Our project is especially designed for children from 9 to 12 years of age.

We also see a high potential in a web or TV series for this topic. We are reaching out to Snapchatters, Youtubers and Childbloggers to further investigate this possibility.

With the open-minded view of “our” children we would like to offer them creative visual imagery, poetry, humor, entertainment and depth of content.

Our Child Heroes

While the movie captivates the kids through its dramaturgical structures, the “natural” space can be broken up in the virtual world and every user can follow the dramaturgy of the story that he playfully chooses.

Together with the children we developed spaces of their inner life – with the use of a mixture of 360 stereoscopic photos, our documentary film material, drawings and 3D models.

Our primary platform will be the Oculus Go to also implement light interactions (through gaze control and the bluetooth controller) and set free small animations, transitions, sounds and riddles.

The “Main Hall of Wonder” serves as the entrance in the personal world of each child. Here you find a motley mix of collective items, such as sparkling diamonds, a talking fish, crashing sculptures, guinea pigs, a lamp which plays water music, a lion and much more - all derived with our young protagonists, to build their “perfect” cabinet of wonder.

A mini game leads into the world of a child. For example, you will find a chameleon with the blue eyes of Elias. You can “paint” the chameleon with the help of the controller and the paint pots standing beside. By choosing blue, the transition to Elias’ planet is unlocked and the user lands in his world.

Here begins our idea of an educational program. We want to give children the chance to “learn” about VR in a creative, self-determined way. The stories and feelings of Roja, Elias, Joline and Wisdom should inspire other children to build their own cabinet of wonder.

In workshops the children can build their own inner worlds in 360, via photographs. Furthermore, we plan to organize anti-bullying-workshops and offer programs that give child-friendly insights into stories about migration and colonialism. Therefore, we would like to cooperate with learning platforms and educational institutions. The documentary as well as the VR experience offers an inspiring communication basis to enter those topics.

Wisdom – the traveler When nine-year old Wisdom Enow is asked which story he would like to tell, he decides for a story about a journey. His inner map will bring him to Cameroon one day, the land where his parents lived before they came to Germany. Wisdom is very affectionate, but there is also anger in his heart. He cannot stand to be “foreigner” anymore and being ridiculed because of the color of his skin. He grew up with the true family legend that his grandfather once fought a lion and defeated him.

Joline – the story collector Joline is 10 years old and when she tries to read a text, the words are jumbled up and some letters seem to scatter away; she can only stutter her way through its meaning. Joline, however, knows how to describe her feelings precisely. In a group, she is often the annoying child, the one who does not fit in. Her mother is very concerned about Joline’s future, because she has the feeling that her daughter does not really strive to learn or reach something. Joline’s greatest desire: “I wish that life weren’t so stressful”.

Elias – the child in the bubble Autism spectrum disorder was the diagnosis that Jenny, Elias’ mother, received when she consulted a specialist.

An IQ test showed that Elias would never learn to read and write. This shock did not make her doubt on her son’s intelligence: nowadays, he can read and write well, although he needs a bit longer for some school subjects.

Today, Elias is 12 years old and loves technology. His favorite pastimes are visiting electronic markets and try virtual reality glasses on as well as collecting fans. Most of the time, he says, he lives in a world of his own. Cat people, cats and guinea pigs live there, too. And there are no schools.

Roja – the fighter Roja, 11 years old, is participating in a swimming competition to get her first swimming badge. She loves to be in the water and is happy to learn how to swim, especially because she often dreams of her boat trip over the sea.

Two years ago, Roja and her family came from Iran to Germany. She was so scared then because she could not swim at that time. What Roja misses the most is speaking her mother tongue and her chicken.

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Biographies

Holm Taddiken Producer

Alex Herrmann Producer

Susanne Kim Director Born in Dresden, I lived with my parents for some time in Syria.

Shortly before the fall of the Berlin Wall, I traveled with them on holiday to Hungary. We had no intention to return home. We reached West Germany via Austria. After my studies in Journalism and Political Sciences and my attendance at the European Film College (EFC) in Ebeltoft (Denmark), I made my first short film. During a visit to Damascus I met a Korean guy, Jeong Rae, who was traveling in search of the best Falafel recipe.

Soon thereafter our daughter Hannah was born. In my movies I collect curious moments, pieces of memory puzzles and desires that touch the heart. For these stories, I try to create the right framework that won’t constrain them.

Neufilm Production Company Since we make films, we are constantly confronted with the phenomenon of a separation of art and commerce. ‘Arthouse’ and ‘mainstream’ seem often incompatible in the industry. The aim of Neufilm is to connect these two poles and make the author film accessible to a broader audience.

Production Details | PRODUCTION COMPANY Neufilm GmbH Altenburger Str 9 04275 Leipzig Germany www.neufilm.com

Susanne Kim Director

htaddiken@neufilm.com +49 1735689696

2ND PRODUCTION COMPANY Expanding Focus GmbH Westwerk - Karl Heine Straße 93 a-c 04229 Leipzig Germany www.expanding-focus.de

alex@expanding-focus.de +49 1759484906

CREDITS Production

Director

Created by Editor Production scheme Release Production status

Expanding Focus Production Company After evaluating scripts for Universal Studios, consulting the Red Bull Media House, working in the department for New Media at the Film Academy Ludwigsburg and producing 360 commercials, Alexander Hermann founded Expanding Focus GmbH, based in Leipzig/Germany, which focuses on narrative VR and AR format creation.

Cabinets of Wonder (WT) - Created with, for and by Children

Holm Taddiken, Alex Herrmann Holm Taddiken: Once Again (2018 | producer) Imagine Swimming (2016 | producer) Path through the Labyrinth - Penderecki (2014 | producer) Alexander Herrmann: Numerous VR Experiences for Samsung, BWM, Smart Future of VR (2015 | producer) Wendehammer (2012 | executive producer) Susanne Kim Zusammengebacken (2003 | director) White Box (2010 | director) Imagine Swimming (2016 | director) Susanne Kim Marion Tuor April 2019 – April 2020 June 2020 Development

FINANCING € 480.998 € 411.998 Funds and Institutes Mitteldeutsche Medienförderung MDM | Alrun Ziemendorf & Nadja Albus-Hilbert € 69.000 Production budget Still required

Budget €

| Cabinets of Wonder (WT) - Created with, for and by Children

Development | Pre-Production Writer 19.000 Producer/ director 18.930 Travel/ subsistence 4.450 Test filming 5.820 VR development 20.800

€ 69.000

Production Hotels, travel & food, expenses 13.576 Production personnel 18.582 Director 31.386 Technical staff 33.500 Equipment 31.285 VR production Staff 38.000 VR filming staff 15.000 VR Digital artists 24.000 VR App programming 35.500 VR Technology costs 17.000 VR Incedental costs 21.341 VR renting and Travelling costs 7.000

€ 286.171

Post-Production Editor/ editing system 28.320 Sound design and mix 11.400 Titles and animation 12.500 Music 5.500 Grading, DCP and Subs 7.300

Outreach and distribution Playouts tranfers, office Marketing material FBW submission

Miscellaneous Insurances film & VR VR Subsistence costs VR Expences

Overhead Overhead 7,5 % Contingency 2,5 % Audit fee for funding

Total budget (summed)

148 IDFA Forum catalogue 2018

€ 65.020

2.000 1.150 1.650

€ 4.800

1.450 1.280 2.000

€ 4.730

32.229 11.549 7.500

€ 51.278 € 480.998

Round Table Pitch | Youth

Director Line Hatland Production Medieoperatørene as Status Development Country Norway

Kids Cup Kids Cup follows 6 young football players from different parts of the planet on their quest to win the biggest youth tournament in the world, 2019.

Most kids loose, few kids win.

Synopsis Kids Cup is a character driven coming of age story at the world’s biggest sports for kids. We dive into a preteen’s universe and follow six 12-14 year-olds from different parts of the world, through a week at Norway Cup. The story starts after the tournament in 2018, where we meet our characters in their home countries. In Tabriz, Iran, a 14-year old girl tries to persuade her older brother to handing in her visa application. She is captain in the football team and an excellent player. Her hope is to take part in the tournament in 2019 as the first Iranian girls team ever. Last year they waved goodbye and headed for the airport and Norway, when they were told their visa applications were turned down. The girls cried bitterly on their way back.

In New York, USA, Brandon (13) is safe at home, rehearsing in the back yard for the next tournament.

During Norway Cup 2018 he spent most of his time longing home. Instead of being with his team at the local school at night, he stayed with his mum at an Airbnb.

Only after having scored a remarkable goal, he dared to sleep together with his buddies. The elder children hid his stuff...

In Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, Khalidi (14) tries to secure his striker position at the team. He aims to be a profes-

Format HD | 80’ Genre

• Youth

Pitch Type Round Table Pitch | Youth

sional football player. But, Khalidi isn’t very talented. This frustrates his dad. At Norway Cup 2018 he scolds his son in public. Khalidi hopes to come back in 2019 to justify the money spent on him.

From Northern Norway, via the Gaza strip to Brazil, the characters in Kids Cup will be a mix of personalities. But, they have a process in common which forms the basic dramatic structure: they have a secret hope to win. They have to earn their right to play. They all have to leave their families behind, many for the first time. They have to check in at a local school for accommodation, unless they are wealthy enough to stay at a hotel. They eat the same food in the big hall, they play matches and have to accept the referee’s decision. Some cry, some flirt, some break barriers. In the end only the winners receive a medal. But most of the kids have a new friend.

Project Description Director’s Note It was just another tournament for me, but as a good football mum, I prepared my 12-year-old daughter for her first match at Norway Cup, in Oslo. I warned her cautiously; her team might loose. She was to play a team from abroad for the first time. The opponents were energetic and had a strong will to win. Unfortunately, it seemed like they hadn’t played much football. When they started to loose they became frustrated and shouted abuse. So did their coach. Then the aggression escalated. I have never seen 12-year-olds foul like that.

After the match my daughter asked me: Why are they so angry? I told her that the girls came from an orphanage in Palestine. My 12 year old looked perplexed. It was a grown up answer that didn’t really answer the question for her. The Palestinian girls lost every match, I was told later. It was their first trip abroad.

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After the match I started to look around at the field and got very curious about the other kids present. Who were they and why were they here? There are many football tournaments in Europe, but not this size and not open for everyone.

Project description Kids Cup is a documentary for kids aged 10-12. The film follows a selection of children playing in the Norway Cup from around the world. We concentrate the cast (aged 12-14) with what they have in common: the love of the game. But they all enter the field with different personalities and backgrounds.

Norway Cup is probably the biggest football tournament for kids in the world. 30 000 children from 50 countries play 6000 matches in the last week of July. The age range is from 6-19. One third are girls. The tournament is open, with no pre-qualifications. Consequently there are teams that have hardly played before, next to teams from professional clubs like AC Milan. But they all play by the same rules, and occasionally new talents are discovered.

It is a week filled with adrenaline, grazes on every other knee and a few broken hearts. Norway Cup is somewhat reminiscent of a peace conference at the UN building.

Nations unite in the hot dog queue; after the matches; before bedtime.

We filmed Norway Cup in 2018 to investigate the different types of characters. We will cast characters with personal dramatic curves, including and/or inspired by some of the characters we filmed in 2018. Based on this research we look for this range of characters: 1. The funny one: Many of the kids who do not excel on the field try to secure their position in the group by being funny. It works, but they sometimes can use humour, and then what happens?

150 IDFA Forum catalogue 2018

2. The rebel: Like one of the sassy football girls from Iran, whose visas were rejected for 2018. They will try again in 2019. Some of the girls want to play without their hijab, but they are not allowed.

3. The small kid with the overkill mum: We look for him among the boys from a small island at the west coast of Norway, where all social life circles round the football team. In 2018, 22 Winnebagos and 4050 tents left the small island heading for Norway Cup. Is it social suicide for a child to quit?

4. The conservative kid whose opinions are challenged: A Muslim boy, who, when his team had to share accommodation with Nordic girls in short summer dresses, declared that if my sister dressed like that I’d have to kill her. After a week of play and friendship, he told his friends that the girls were all right and his sister would be allowed, too.

5. The boy who is under pressure to secure a future: Anything but to win the final is failure. More often than not they do fail, and often there is an over-eager parent in the background.

6. The flirt: For some, flirting is a most essential part.

This generation flirt by Snap; it is noncommittal. But if they really do fall in love, he/she is going to leave after a week...

7. The angry one who needs a break from home: We are looking among the orphans from the Gaza strip. Football is a way of taking a break, both mentally and physically.

8. The shy/underdog: This person wants to not cry and enjoy themselves, but its hard. This kid often has a coming of age curve during the tournament.

We follow their individual journeys through a week filled with challenges. Kids Cup will be a humorous, warm and surprising film. It is about friendship, homesickness, hormones, love, disappointment and victory. The film will give the young viewer a glimpse into a world of these cross-cultural pre-teens.

Production Details |

Biographies

Kids Cup

PRODUCTION COMPANY Medieoperatørene as Grønlandsleiret 23 0190 Oslo Norway www.mop.no

Medieoperatørene Production Company Medieoperatørene has for more than 20 years been one of Norway’s most award winning producers of documentaries. Their films have won international awards at festivals like HotDocs, received more than 25 national film awards and have been screened around the world. Filmography includes: Tongue Cutters, Dugma - the Button, Good Girl, Reunion – Ten Years after the War, Diary from the Revolution and Imagining Emanuel.

ingvil@mop.no +47 95754529 mari@mop.no +47 41456363

CREDITS Production

Director

Production scheme Release Production status

Ingvil Giske, Mari Monrad Vistven Ingvil Giske: The Future of Iraq (2018 | producer) Tongue Cutters (2017 | producer) Dugma - the Button (2016 | producer) Mari Monrad Vistven: The Voices in My Head (2017 | producer) Between Us (2017 | producer) Line Hatland Beyond the Pale (2016 | director) The Shadow (2013 | director) How Happy Can You Be (2005 | director)

Mari Monrad Vistven Producer

Line Hatland Director Line Hatland is a director and writer, known for Skyggen (2013), Den gode kapitalisten (2009) and Beyond the Pale (2016).

July 2019 – January 2020 February 2020 Development

Line Hatland Director

FINANCING Production budget Still required Funds and Institutes

Budget €

€ 301.100 € 281.100 Norwegian Film Institute | Helle Hansen

| Kids Cup

Development | Pre-Production Writer 5.000 Producer | Director 25.000 Travel/subsistence 10.000 DOP 2.500 Editor 3.200 Equipment 5.000

€ 50.700

Production Archival rights & reproduction 1.000 Hotels, travel & food 3.000 Production travel and expenses 4.500 Production personnel 22.000 Director 42.000 Technical staff 18.000 Equipment 11.000 Broadcast requirements 1.000

€ 20.000

Post-Production Editor/editing system 51.000 Sound design and mix 30.000 Titles and animation 900 Music 10.000 Picture post 20.000

Overhead Overhead 5% Contingency 5%

Total budget (summed)

€ 111.900

18.000 18.000

€ 36.000 € 301.100

€ 102.500

IDFA Forum catalogue 2018

151

Rough Cut Project

Director Rachel Leah Jones,

Philippe Bellaiche

Production Home Made Docs Status Rough Cut Stage Country Israel

Advocate

Format HD BlackMagic | 100’ Genres

• Politics | Society • Human Interest | Social Issues Pitch Type Rough Cut Project

(working title)

Lea Tsemel defends Palestinians: from feminists to fundamentalists, from non-violent demonstrators to people engaged in armed struggle.

As a Jewish-Israeli lawyer who has represented political prisoners for nearly 50 years, Tsemel, in her tireless quest for justice, pushes the praxis of a human rights defender to its limits.

Structured as “a year in the life of Lea Tsemel,” we follow her current caseload in real time. At pivotal junctures, we revisit her landmark cases. Through these cases, we reflect on the ever-changing political significance of her work and the personal price one pays for assuming the role of ‘devil’s advocate.’ The questions raised by Lea Tsemel’s trajectory echo far beyond the practice of cause-lawyering in Israel/Palestine: are human rights indeed universal? Can civil rights be guaranteed? Does security jurisprudence serve justice? Must political solidarity be unconditional? And what happens to these categories when a victim is also a perpetrator?

Project Description Synopsis She’s a force to be reckoned with: opinionated, determined, indefatigable. Never afraid to speak her mind or fight for what’s right, she’s also not afraid to lose a battle. She was the first (and for many years only) Jewish lawyer willing to take on people accused of violent acts of resistance. As far as Palestinians are concerned, she’s a righteous person; as far as Israelis are concerned, she defends the indefensible. Today, her clients include the children of the latest uprising: desperate kids who go into the streets with knives stolen from their mother’s kitchens. Fluent in Arabic with an office in East Jerusalem, she’s known as a woman with no red lines, but in fact has three: no settlers, no collaborators, no rapists of any nationality.

152 IDFA Forum catalogue 2018

Available upon request.

Production Details |

Biographies

Advocate (working title)

PRODUCTION COMPANY Home Made Docs Israel

Philippe Bellaiche Director | Producer Born in Paris, France in 1967, Bellaiche is an award-winning cinematographer whose credits include (partial list): Between Fences (Berlin 2016); Once I Entered a Garden (Rome 2012); Z32 (Venice 2008); and Avenge But One of My Two Eyes (Cannes 2005) by Avi Mograbi; Gypsy Davy (Sundance 2012)

by Rachel Leah Jones; The Flat (Tribeca 2012) by Arnon Goldfinger; The Settlers (Sundance 2016) and Hothouse (Sundance 2007) by Shimon Dotan; Incessant Visions (Jerusalem 2011), The Journey of Van Nguyen (IDFA 2005) and Raging Dove (DocAviv 2002) by Duki Dror; Route 181: Fragments of a Journey Through Palestine/Israel (Yamagata 2005) by Eyal Sivan and Michel Khleifi; From Language to Language (DocAviv 2004) by Nurith Aviv; Forget Baghdad (Locarno 2002)

by Samir Jamal al-Din; One Day in September by Kevin MacDonald (US Academy Award 2000). In 2013, Bellaiche received the Cinema Arts Award from the Israel Film Council.

homemadedocs@gmail.com

CREDITS Rachel Leah Jones, Philippe Bellaiche Philippe Bellaiche: Gypsy Davy (2012 | producer) Director Rachel Leah Jones, Philippe Bellaiche Rachel Leah Jones: Ashkenaz (2017 | director) Gypsy Davy (2012 | director) 500 Dunam on the Moon (2002 | director) Co-production Megafun – Paul Cadieux – Canada,

Close Up Films – Joelle Bertossa – Switzerland Distributor/Sales Agent Philippa Kowarsky | Cinephil Screenplay Rachel Leah Jones Editor Yael Bitton Production

Production scheme Release Production status

January 2015 – January 2018 January 2019 Rough cut stage

FINANCING Production budget Still required Broadcasters

Funds and Institutes

Other Financiers

Own Investment

Budget €

€ 654.245 € 205.409 Channel 8 | Edit Pinkas RTS | Gaspard Lamuniere Radio Canada | Jean Pelletier EO | IKON docs | Margje de Koning DR | Anders Bruus YLE Finland | Erkko Lyytinen Makor Foundation | Amit Goren Swiss Federal Office of Culture | Ivo Kummer Bertha Foundation | Rebecca Lichtenfeld Sundance Documentary Fund | Hajnal Molnar Szakacs Cineforom Swizerland | Gérard Ruey Canadian Tax Credits Home Made Docs

| Advocate (working title)

Development | Pre-Production Writer 27.074 Delegate Producer 36.586 Travel 9.757 Research (hebrew+arabic) 12.684 Filming (crew+equipment+transportation) 9.149 Animation (tests)

€ 79.442 € 57.278 € 42.263 € 15.000 € 7.000 € 5.500 € 50.976 € 39.634 € 27.805 € 23.171 € 17.791 € 50.976 € 32.000

15.245

€ 110.495

Post-Production Editor | Editing System 61.586 Sound Design and Mix 6.977 Titles and Animation 65.856 Music 7.954 Archives (rights+reproduction) 10.489 Subtitles | Transfers | Masters 21.126 online 9.757

€ 183.745

Production Production (travel+expenses) 13.843 Production Personnel 5.123 Directors 76.090 Technical Staff (DOP+Sound+Light) 40.978

Outreach and Distribution Print (graphics+posters+postcards) 4.392 Shipping (regular+electronic) 1.220 Internet | Social Media 4.879

Equipment 15.978 Stock Material 2.744 Broadcast Requirements (Insurance, etc.) 19.514

Miscellaneous Post Production (flights+accomodation+perdiem) 41.955

Location Rental

2.440

€ 176.710

Overhead Overhead 5% Contingency 10% Coproducers 10%

Total Budget (summed)

Rachel Leah Jones Producer | Director

Philippe Bellaiche Producer | Director

Rachel Leah Jones Director | Producer Born in Berkeley, California in 1970 and raised between Berkeley and Tel Aviv, Jones is a critically acclaimed documentary filmmaker whose directing credits include: 500 Dunam on the Moon (2002) commissioned

by France Channel 2; Ashkenaz (2007) commissioned by Israel Channel 8; Targeted Citizen (2010) commissioned

by Adalah: the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel; and Gypsy Davy (2012) commissioned by Israel Channel 8 (Sundance 2012). In addition to making her own films, Jones has produced extensively with others and has been affiliated with progressive media outlets such as Democracy Now! in New York Home Made Docs Production Company Home Made Docs is the production platform of Bellaiche and Jones, who have worked — together and apart — on dozens of award winning and critically acclaimed documentaries. Gypsy Davy was their first collaboration as producers. Advocate (working title) will be their co-directing debut.

€ 10.491

€ 41.955

26.170 52.340 52.340

€ 130.849 € 654.245

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Rough Cut Project

Director Bénédicte Liénard,

Mary Jiménez

Production Clin d’Oeil films Status Rough Cut Stage

By the Name of Tania

Country Belgium Format Original 2k & 4k | 90’ Genre

• Human Interest | Social Issues

Pitch Type Rough Cut Project

Based upon real testimonies, this hybrid film tells the story of Tania, a teenage girl forced into prostitution in the gold mining regions of Peru.

Synopsis

Project Description

Based upon real testimonies, this hybrid film tells the story of Tania, a teenage girl forced into prostitution in the gold mining regions of Peru.

Background information Iquitos, the port adjacent to Belén, is a city enclaved in the jungle on the banks of the Amazon River. It is the largest isolated city in the world. Belén is Peru’s poorest area and has been called the ‘floating slums’.

Tania remembers how she was taken from her home lured with false promises of wealth and riches and how she slowly lost her identity in the process, changing her life forever. While sharing her story with a police officer, Tania’s voice takes us from one memory to another.

While she talks, the camera takes us on her journey from the jungle to the mining region, from her home where her grandmother died to the heart of her exploitation in the prostitution bars.

The Amazon’s beautiful scenery, the floating slums and the jungle are in sharp contrast with the darkness of the story, the poverty and the poignant testimony of a young girl. And though she is now safe, where her youth-like sense of worthiness and innocence once shined, a deeper and darker self-knowledge has settled in.

The feverish rush for gold combined with the destruction of the environment echoes as an allegory for the destruction of life in a capitalist world.

154 IDFA Forum catalogue 2018

Hundreds of kilometers south is Huaypethue, one of the most humanly and ecologically devastated areas in Peru. Huaypethue is an open-pit gold mine that sprawls over 100 square kilometers on what was previously primary rainforest. The mercury needed to extract the gold contaminates the rivers and land. This massive gold mine is illegal, yet highly profitable. What mining does to the land mirrors how people’s humanity is also stripped away and polluted. Due to poverty, cheap, undemanding labour is readily available so the gold can be mined for a fraction of the profits it generates. Young men leave their homes addicted to the prospects of money. Girls are abducted, families torn apart.

Narrative base At the heart of By the Name of Tania is the spiral of poverty that lures men and women into the trap of slavery and ends in the loss of their dignity. In Peru, the Indians of the Andes are exploited in gold mining areas.

Young girls get ‘captured’ and brought in to cater to the miners. The devastation this has caused in the lives of these girls, who have experienced their bodies being treated like merchandise, was a motivation for the directors to dig deeper.

Dozens of statements from a police sergeant specialized in human trade tell the story of girls who have escaped forced prostitution. The crude language in these statements put the unimaginable horror into words, materializes a whole world and feels like a dramatic driving force of a film. The statements hold the barbarity of what humans can do to each other, but also the will to live that still exists in spite of that.

By the Name of Tania combines several of these stories into one. The film takes the form of the journey of a seventeen-year old girl. Her story is emblematic of many other girls’ stories. It reveals the various facets of the perversity that feeds this system and the suffering it brings about.

Style This film is a hybrid of documentary and fiction. It’s composed of: -Scenes of the girl’s experience and her view on the world throughout the film, scenes that support the voice-over interrogation and heighten the audience’s imagination.

-Cinema direct sequences that immerse us in the girl’s daily life and intimacy as she comes in contact with the film’s other characters. These are documentary scenes that integrate Tania. Through them, we witness real life on the journey, in the mines, between people.

-The reconstitution re-enactment of Tania’s police interrogation.

Visual approach The film opens with luminous, smooth images inviting the audience into the mysteries of another world. We are mesmerized by life on the river and the lush vegetation.

Slowness clings to the throbbing life and plunges the audience into the temporality of the jungle climate.

In the slum, in Belén, during the rainy season, our camera glides along the aquatic labyrinth between the stilt houses. The sensation our images produce resonates with what is said in the police interrogation voiceover. It conveys the hopeful dreaminess for another life and ends up with the feeling of being cornered in a dead-end.

The cacophony of sounds suggests the lack of privacy in the packed houses above the water. Voices and music mingle, awakening our imagination to the dense and animated life off camera.

On the river, the film plunges into the community of passengers where Tania finds herself. The camera slides onto this overcrowded deck, picking up intimate, secret movements. Our images embrace the bodies of the passengers and reveal the sensuousness of the heat, the humidity and the beauty of the dark-skinned faces. In cinema direct, the camera continues to take on Tania’s point of view, capturing other passengers’ stories.

Beyond life on the boat, the river opens onto a vast landscape. The light changes. Storms and torrential rains morph into fiery sunsets, fusing us with the untamed nature of the Amazon forest. Night-time navigation plunges us into total darkness, interrupted only by the boat’s light that intermittently shines on fringes of an impenetrable jungle. At dawn and at dusk, we hear the animals concealed by the forest.

In the gold mine, our perspective changes. The shock waves of Tania’s story literally propel us into the harsh life of a miner.

The camera plunges into the miner’s constant battle with mud, machines, water and gold. Our images then become raw, physical and agitated. They are close to the miners’ movements and their bodies. They examine the coveted gravel, dive into murky waters, shake with the machines that spit out mud and lay bare the extenuation of the miners’ bodies.

The earth is pealed and the ochre from the mercurystained mud crushes the blue. The rumbling of machines and men shouting replaces the sounds of nature.

The reconstitution of the police interrogation is sober.

It is not meant to reproduce the ins and outs of a police station, but rather to depict a relationship built on questions and answers. It is meant more for observation of the relationship between the girl and the police officer than for suggestion.

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Biographies

Hanne Phlypo Producer

Bénédicte Liénard Director

Mary Jiménez Director

Clin d’oeil films Production Company Clin d’oeil Films is a Belgian production company founded and managed by Antoine Vermeesch and Hanne Phlypo out of their love for film. The company focuses on creative documentaries and author-driven film with a clear preference for films with a social or political statement by creative and innovative filmmakers. Antoine and Hanne work in close collaboration with their filmmakers. Titles include Waiting for August by Teodora Ana Mihai (EFA nomination Best Feature Documentary, Best International Documentary - Hot Docs and Karlovy Vary), Sunnyside

by Frederik Carbon (Slamdance 2018 nominee), A Family Affair by Tom Fassaert (EFA nomination Best Feature Documentary, Gouden Kalf - Nederlands Filmfestival, Special Jury Award - IDFA), Samuel in the Clouds by Pieter Van Eecke (Gold Hugo at Chicago International Film Festival, Genziana d’Oro Miglior Film - Trento Film Festival) and Manu, by Emmanuelle Bonmariage.

Mary Jiménez Director Born in Peru, Mary Jiménez initially studied architecture in Lima before pursuing film studies at the INSAS film school in Belgium. During her career as a filmmaker she has also taught filmmaking in Belgium, Cuba and Switzerland. Being a writer and a director for more than 30 years, Mary’s work includes films like Du Verbe Aimer, La Position du Lion Couché, Le Dictionnaire selon Marcus et Héros sans Visage, all of which have been selected at numerous festivals worldwide.

Bénédicte Liénard Director Bénédicte Liénard studied film direction at the Institut des Arts de Diffusion. After her studies, she worked as assistant director on the films of Jaco Van Dormael, Manu Bonmariage, the Dardenne brothers and Raymond Depardon. Her first feature film Une Part du Ciel was supported by Eurimages and screened in the ‘Un Certain Regard’ section at Cannes, as well as at the Festivals of Toronto, San Sebastian and New York. She went on to direct numerous hard-hitting documentaries, widely screened both in festivals and on television. Titles include D’arbres et de Charbon which was in competition at Visions du Réel and Sobre las Brasas, directed with Mary Jiménez. They also directed Le Chant des Hommes. By the Name of Tania will be their third collaboration.

Production Details | PRODUCTION COMPANY Clin d’Oeil films Rue Decoster 2 1320 Beauvechain Belgium www.clindoeilfilms.be

hanne@clindoeilfilms.be +32 484744442

CREDITS Production

Director

Co-production

Executive Production Screenplay Editor Production scheme Release Production status

Hanne Phlypo Manu (2018 | producer) Samuel in the Clouds (2016 | producer) Waiting for August (2014 | producer) Bénédicte Liénard, Mary Jiménez Bénédicte Liénard: Sobre las Brasas (2013 | director) A Piece of Sky (2002 | director) BALDR Film – Katja Draaier – The Netherlands, Cinétroupe – Mary Jiménez – Belgium Dérives – Julie Freres – Belgium Hanne Phlypo | Clin d’Oeil films Bénédicte Liénard, Mary Jiménez Marie-Hélène Dozo February 2018 – December 2018 March 2019 Rough cut stage

FINANCING Production budget Still required Broadcasters

Funds and Institutes

Other Financiers

Own Investment

Budget €

€ 473.500 € 50.000 RTBF | Isabelle Christiaens € 40.000 VRT Canvas | Simon Vrebos € 15.000 Centre du Cinéma Wallonie-Bruxelles | Véronique Pacco € 80.000 The Netherlands Filmfund | Doreen Bonekamp € 50.000 DGD | Elise Pirsoul € 35.000 VAF | Myriam De Boeck € 33.750 Creative Europe | Isabelle Houman € 29.000 CBA | Javier Packer (partly in kind) € 22.000 Tax credit € 65.000 Terre des hommes | Christophe Roduit € 4.620 Clin d’Oeil films € 23.380 Dérives (partly in kind) € 18.250 State Funding FWB script € 7.500 | By the Name of Tania

Development | Pre-Production Writers 20.000 Director 20.000 Travel/subsistence 35.000 Other 15.000

€ 90.000

Production Hotels, travel & food 25.000 Production travel and expenses 2.500 Production personnel 20.000 Director 45.000 Technical staff 30.000 Equipment 25.000 Other 5.000

€ 152.500

Post-Production Editor/editing system 50.000 Sound design and mix 24.000 Titles and animation 5.000 Other 15.000

156 IDFA Forum catalogue 2018

By the Name of Tania

€ 94.000

Outreach and distribution PR, trailer, poster, promotional campaign 30.000

€ 30.000

Miscellaneous Taxshelter financing costs 29.000 Insurance 6.000

€ 35.000

Overhead Overhead 7,5% 30.000 Contingency max 10% productie | postproductie 12.000 Producers fee 7,5%

Total budget (summed)

30.000

€ 72.000 € 473.500

Rough Cut Project

Director Sun Hee Engelstoft Production Final Cut for Real Status In Post-Production Country Denmark

Forget Me Not Forget Me Not follows three unwed mothers in South Korea, who face the impossible task of deciding whether to keep their baby or give it up for international adoption.

Synopsis Forget Me Not takes place at Aeshuwon, an institution, for young pregnant unmarried women at the South Korean island of Jeju. In South Korea there are many such institutions for unwedded mothers. Here they seek refuge from their normal environment in order to hide their pregnancy and stay there until they have given birth to their baby. During their stay the women must make the crucial choice of whether to keep their child or give it up for adoption.

The choice has great consequences for the women since educational institutes and work industries often refuse unmarried mothers, so it’s about choosing between two entirely different lives in Korean society.

We follow three women and their process towards the difficult decision, which is influenced by huge pressure from the outside world. Typically the disgrace of the family, the reluctance of the boyfriend and the disdain of Korean society towards the women’s behaviour have a big impact on the their final decision.

However, at Aeshuwon, situated in the countryside, far away from rest of society, the strong-willed manager Mrs. Im supports the women and their fight for independence.

But in the end, the decision – and its consequences – will always rest on one person alone.

Format HD | 83’ Genre

• Human Interest | Social Issues

Pitch Type Rough Cut Project

Project Description It’s considered shameful to have children outside marriage in South Korea and without abortion as a legal option, many pregnant girls are sent away to institutions to keep their pregnancy secret. Director Sun Hee, an adoptee herself, returns to South Korea after years of wondering why her mother gave her away and journeys to Jeju, the ‘Honeymoon Island,’ to find some answers.

Here she meets the women living at the institution.

One woman is arriving at the Aeshuwon Institution, her pregnant belly barely showing. A second woman is about to give birth, and a third woman has a one-yearold child that lives with her at the institution. All of them struggle with the same question about what to do in the future, even though they are at different stages in the process of becoming a mother.

Ms D, 17, is pregnant with a baby girl. She purposely waited to tell her mother about her pregnancy until it was too late to safely carry out an abortion. She thinks she’ll be happy if she raises the child, but she knows that money is a problem. Her absent boyfriend turns against her after some of his friends find out about the pregnancy. Just as a typhoon storms down on the institution, her water breaks. The parents offer to raise and register the newborn as their own child, saving D from the public shaming that they know will come – D’s mother experienced it herself when she alone raised D. But D doesn’t want her baby to grow up calling her ‘sister.’

Ms H, 18, is caring for her 2-week-old baby. Her boyfriend is still around, but her parents are pressuring both of them to send the baby away. She recognizes that if she gives her baby away, he will one day find her and resent her. At group sessions, tearful women around her with

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their own stories offer their perspectives on adoption, one regretting that the baby in her hands could have had a brighter future with another set of parents. H says she wants to keep the baby, but after every visit from her parents, she changes her mind. A lady from the adoption agency, Holt International, flies in from the capital for a final meeting. Here, H decides whether the agent will get back on the plane with or without her baby in her hands.

Ms E, 17, was raped and is now caring for her one-yearold child at the institution while she decides what to do. A foster family arrives to meet the baby for the first time and take it with them. They seem like a nice couple, and her peers tell her that their Christian background is a great match with her own family’s. She’s promised visitation rights whenever she wants. Yet, E can’t hold back the tears.

Forget Me Not is a reflection by director Sun Hee on her own life as an adoptee and the absence of her mother.

She creates a close bond to the mothers at the shelter, and together they lean on the other in their search for answers that can only come from within.

Director’s Statement “Are you happy that you have been adopted?” The question comes from a young pregnant Korean woman and completely catches me off guard. I’m in South Korea in 2005 to learn more about Korean culture and also search for my biological family. I am visiting an institution for young women who have sought refuge there so that their upcoming birth is kept secret. I would easily have been able to answer the question had it come from anyone but a woman in her specific circumstance. I stammered a “yes,” which is true, but I wanted to say so much more. The question has followed me ever since, and it seems almost unnecessary to emphasize the

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connection between the young unmarried pregnant woman’s situation and the situation that my own biological mother was in when she gave me away for adoption.

I wish to make a film that focuses on the emotional development and dilemmas during the crucial choice that an unmarried pregnant woman in Korea faces.

Either decision our main characters make has such an enormous impact on the life their new-born children are going to live. That is something I have felt in my own body. I believe this insight will be significant in finding the answers I seek. This film is for my birth mother in South Korea, whom I do not know. – Sun Hee Engelstoft, 2013

Access and the participants Forget Me Not is the only film that tells this story from inside of one of these shelters. Sharing the story of these women is a very sensitive matter and has demanded great care, which is why it has taken 5 years to produce.

Some of the women have found husbands, live new lives, and have never told anyone about having had a child; therefore, it is imperative we blur their identity in the film.

Four women in particular need to be anonymous in the film. For these four women we will use unconventional face blurring, or ‘face masks,’ to keep them anonymous, as they would face grave backlash within their communities if their identities were made public. By using animation we are creating a look that masks the faces enough while still allowing audiences to discern facial expressions. This is extremely important, because a traditional face blur is typically associated with criminality, and we need our characters to be human, sympathetic, and remindful of the moral struggle in their hearts.

Production Details |

Biographies

Forget Me Not

PRODUCTION COMPANY Final Cut for Real Forbindelsesvej 7 2100 Copenhagen Denmark www.finalcutforreal.dk

monica@final-cut.dk +45 26270275

CREDITS Production

Director

Co-production Production scheme Release Production status

Monica Hellstrom The Distant Barking of Dogs (2017 | producer) The Fencing Champion (2014 | producer) The Sumo Wrestler’s Son (2013 | producer) Sun Hee Engelstoft Arrivals & Departure (2014 | director) Without Words (2011 | director) Badawi Boys (2010 | director) Minch&films – Min Chul Kim – South Korea September 2018 – January 2019 January 2019 In post-production

FINANCING Production budget Still required Funds and Institutes

Own Investment

Budget €

€ 501.328 € 85.000 Danish Film Institute | New Danish Screen | Mette Damgaard-Sorensen DMZ Docs Fund | Jin-hee Kwon West Danish Film Fund | Steen Risom Kofic | Dae-hee Lee Final Cut for Real

| Forget Me Not

Development | Pre-Production Writer 67 Producer | Director 30.372 Travel/subsistence 2.031

€ 32.470

Production Archival rights & reproduction 8.182 Hotels, travel & food 21.225 Production travel and expenses 10.862 Production personnel 83.115 Director 83.115 Technical staff 9.362 Equipment 12.103 Stock Material 9.936 Broadcast requirements 2.304 Participants 500 Social costs 5.400 Locations 413

€ 332.629 € 30.655 € 26.918 € 19.159 € 6.967

€ 246.516

Post-Production Editor/editing system 43.602 Sound design and mix 130.557 Titles and animation 848 Music 11.332 archival rights & reproduction 9.551 Other 7.748

€ 203.637

Overhead Overhead 18.704

Total budget (summed)

€ 18.704 € 501.328

Monica Hellström Producer Monica Hellström has been a producer at Final Cut for Real since 2010. She previously worked at Upfront Films, The Danish Film Institute’s Film Workshop and the fiction film company Bald Film. She graduated from EAVE Producer Workshop in 2010, holds an MA in film from the University of Copenhagen (DK) and a BA in film from the University of Bedfordshire (UK). She has worked in the film industry in the UK and Denmark since 1998. Monica has produced: The Distant Barking of Dogs (2017), The Dvor Massacre (2015) by George Larsen & Kasper Vedsmand, The Fencing Champion (2014) and Chikara – The Sumo Wrestler’s Son (2013) by Simon Lereng Wilmont, Moonrider (2012) by Daniel Dencik. She co-produced among others Good Favour by Rebecca Daly (2017), The Nile Hilton Incident by Tarik Salah (2018), Concerning Violence by Göran Olson (2017), Varicella by Victor Kossakovsky (2015), Ruth by Hanna Heilborn (2015), Dancing for You by Erlend E. Mo (2015), Chapter 7 by Ania Winiarska (2015).

Final Cut for Real Production Company Final Cut for Real is a two-time Oscar Nominated production company based in Denmark dedicated to producing high-end, creative documentaries and fiction films for the international market.

Sun Hee Engelstoft Director Sun Hee Engelstoft is a Danish documentary director based in Copenhagen, Denmark. Born in Busan, South Korea 1982, she was adopted to Denmark in 1982. Having attended several schools for photography, she was accepted at the prestigious The National Film School of Denmark, which she graduated from as documentary director in 2011. Her filmography includes: Arrivals & Departure (2 x 7 min 2014), Without Words (28 min, The National Film School of Denmark 2011), Badawi Boys (20 min 2010, made in collaboration with IMS), On the Balcony (20 min, The National Film School of Denmark (2009), Before I Go (16 min, The National Film School of Denmark 2008), Close (12 min, Debut short film 2007).

IDFA Forum catalogue 2018

Monica Hellstrom Producer

Sun Hee Engelstoft Director

Min Chul Kim Co-producer

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Rough Cut Project

Director Renzo Martens Production Pieter van Huystee Film Status Rough Cut Stage

A Gentrification Program Artist and filmmaker Renzo Martens launches a settlement in the middle of Congo. At this settlement, plantation workers produce art that is critical of economic inequality. When the NY Times says their art is the ‘best of the year’, the living conditions of their community improve drastically.

Synopsis In this documentary artist and filmmaker Renzo Martens radically examines his own presence in a social experiment set in the middle of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. After his film Enjoy Poverty (2008) in which he examined why the NGO’s make more money from poverty than poor people receive, Renzo now takes his critique one step further. In a provocative and cinematographically multi-layered style he unfolds an intriguing story of how he engages the plantation workers to become involved in producing critical art about themselves and their own poverty resulting in international exhibitions. The film takes place on a former palm oil plantation in the DRC and the rich and glittering art world in New York, London and Berlin.

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Country The Netherlands Format HD | 90’ Genre

• Human Interest | Social Issues

Pitch Type Rough Cut Project

Project Description Renzo Martens examines the economic relations between the West and Africa, at the same time creating a platform for critique and social change. The term ‘gentrification’ is normally used in urban planning to describe the positive effects that new cultural art initiatives can have on the development of impoverished inner cities. Traditionally museums exhibiting critical art made by Western artists dealing with poverty and exploitation, result in the inner cities (for example Berlin or London) receiving social and financial benefit: tourists visiting and spending money, the creation of jobs and boosting real estate prices. However, the people on display, namely the poor and oppressed, see no such immediate result. By encouraging plantation workers to take their destiny into their own hands Renzo Martens aims to make critical artistic reflection profitable for the people who figure as the subject of this art. In this real-life experiment Renzo wants to set off a gentrification process by producing a hub for critical art that will stimulate the economy in a remote piece of Congolese rainforest.

The film is shot entirely in and around the Settlement in Lusanga (Bandundu Province in the Democratic Republic of the Congo), the venue for the long-term art program.

The plantation-workers will be the main characters of the film, participating in several master classes by visiting artists such as Baloji. Curators from the MoMA and Tate Modern are flown in to organize exhibitions and debates.

Thus, the artistic potential of the workers is developed in high-end collaborations. First exhibited locally, their artwork will later be displayed at key art institutions around the world. The success will result in them earning multiple of what they earn on the plantation, something they might not have expected or even realised would happen. By reinvesting their money in promising local initiatives gentrification starts to take place. However,

for Renzo Martens tension is sure to build and problems will occur, as he will be subject to the expectations and demands from the economical processes of the (artistic) world at large.

Stylistically the filmmaking is related to the cinemavérité style, presented with a twist. The camera registrates without commentary or interpretation. Yet while watching the situation evolve around the filmmaker and others, the viewers will become an accomplice in a situation they have no control over. They get puzzled about the filmmaker’s intentions and consequently about their own role. Plantation workers, whether they pick cacao beans or shoot film images, produce for Western consumers who they will never actually meet, provoking all kinds of questions for the viewer: how does this affect the plantation-workers? Does it lead to art that expresses meaning? What is the value of criticism, when it brings in money? Will it improve their lives?

Director’s Statement For me the central question, that every filmmaker filming phenomena like poverty in Africa, should ask himself is: how can I deploy my own engagement with these phenomena in order to understand these phenomena from within? Or, to put it differently, how do I deal with my own indebtedness to a social system that, on the one hand exploits people, but on the other hand enables me to criticize the system? And how do I relate to an audience that is compassionate but is not going to change the situation. How can I, given these questions, avoid telling lies? In examining the relationship between poverty and critical art, I cannot simply depict poverty. The film should delineate its own position. A Gentrification Program is a sincere effort to transcend the visual and economical regimes that we live in and to make love and truth possible. Consequently, nothing in the film will be staged.

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Biographies

Pieter van Huijstee Producer

Renzo Martens Director

Production Details |

Pieter van Huystee Film Production Company In 1995 Pieter van Huystee started his own production company.

Since then he has produced many film projects and international Co-productions, most of them documentaries with both renowned Dutch filmmakers such as Johan van der Keuken, Heddy Honigmann, Renzo Martens, Leonard Retel Helmrich, and many young talented directors. Many of the documentaries and features are sold to broadcasters all over the world, and screened at festivals globally and have been awarded many times.

PRODUCTION COMPANY Pieter van Huystee Film Donker Curtiusstraat 125 1051 MC Amsterdam The Netherlands www.pvhfilm.nl

pieter@pvhfilm.nl +31 204210606

CREDITS Production

Director

Co-production

Renzo Martens Director Renzo Martens is a Dutch artist who lives and works in Amsterdam and Kinshasa. He became known for his provocations, including Episode III: Enjoy Poverty (2008), a documentary that suggests that the Congo market their poverty as a natural resource. In 2010 Renzo Martens initiated a gentrification program on a palm oil plantation in the Congolese rainforest.

Screenplay Editor Production scheme Release Production status

Pieter van Huijstee The Long Season (2017 | producer) Deaf Child (2017 | producer) Instant Dreams (2017 | producer) Renzo Martens Episode III - Enjoy Poverty (2008 | director) Episode I (2003 | director) Inti Films – Peter Krüger – Belgium Renzo Martens Jan de Coster June 2012 – September 2019 January 2020 Rough cut stage

FINANCING Production budget Still required Broadcasters Funds and Institutes

Peter Krüger Co-producer

A Gentrification Program

Own Investment

Budget €

€ 551.738 € 50.000 VPRO | Barbara Truijen Dutch Cultural Media Fund | Ruurd Bierman Netherlands Film Fund | Suzanne van Voorst CoBo Fund | Jeanine Hage VAF Netherlands Film Fund Incentive | Ellen Hoffmann Pieter van Huystee Film

| A Gentrification Program

Development | Pre-Production Writer 8.095 Director/Producer 14.259 Travel/subsistence 4.190 Research 11.431 Production personnel 2.725 Miscellaneous 1.500

€ 42.200

Production Archival rights & reproduction 17.000 Hotels, travel & food 6.870 Production travel and expenses 35.986 Production personnel 43.125 Director 72.900 Technical staff 24.790 Equipment 44.693 Broadcast requirements 6.827 Research 9.475 Location costs 8.000

€ 269.665

Post-Production Editor/editing system 69.500 Sound design and mix 12.140 Titles and animation (postproduction

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€ 53.500 € 140.000 € 108.000 € 100.000 € 50.000 € 46.538 € 3.700

deal) 22.802 Music 8.000 Translations, transcriptions, subtitles 19.488 Postproduction hotel and travel

2.500

€ 134.430

Outreach and distribution publicity poster, flyer, website 3.900 premiere 1.500 publicity and impact producer 5.475

€ 10.875

Miscellaneous phone costs 1.096 accountancy 4.800 legal costs 1.250

Overhead Overhead 4% Contingency 8% Producers fee 8%

Total budget (summed)

€ 7.146

19.885 33.769 33.769

€ 87.423 € 551.739

Rough Cut Project

Director Hemal Trivedi Production Manjusha Films Status Rough Cut Stage

The Half Truths When schoolteacher Soni condemns against the state’s abuse of tribes in Central India, she is arrested, tortured and raped. On her epic quest for justice, the lives of 3 million tribals are at stake.

Synopsis In the heart of India’s densest tropical forest, is the world’s finest iron ore. NMDC, a government owned mining corporation, is at war with the Maoist rebel army for the forest’s control. The Government brands the Maoists ‘terrorists’ and intensifies its crackdown against their resistance. The war escalates into the country’s bloodiest conflict: with over 500,000 tribals displaced, 800 villages burned down and 13,000 civilians and armed forces dead.

Soni, 37, is a tribal schoolteacher who runs an orphanage for children of the war. The government approaches her to spy on the Maoists from her orphanage. When Soni declines, she is accused of being a terrorist and is arrested. In the jail the policemen sexually assault her.

They insert stones in her anus and vagina and give her electric shocks. Her story makes headlines across India and ignites a movement to free her.

Country India, United States Format HD | 90’ Genre

• Politics | Society

Pitch Type Rough Cut Project

the anti-Maoist operation in the forest and controls the police force of about 50,000 policemen. Through unprecedented access to police officials and their operations, the viewers will see that the police foot soldiers are also victims of the same conflict and they are also the ‘collateral damage.’

Finally, after two and half years of steadfast effort by pro-bono lawyer Colin Gonsalvez and his team, Soni is released from prison. The national political party, offers Soni a spot on their ticket in her local elections and she returns to her forest in her new avatar as a politician.

Soni loses the election, but continues to work to unite tribals. Today, she is the symbol of resistance against the state and has been instrumental in getting over 70 tribals, wrongfully imprisoned by the state, released.

The filmmakers began following Soni’s journey even before she was arrested. Filmed over six years, The Half Truths presents a complex and nuanced understanding of India’s bloodiest war zone. While all mainstream media is barely able to scratch the surface of the conflict, the fiercely independent filmmaking team has been able to penetrate the depths of the conflict.

Project Description

In contrast, the fierce rebel leader Badru controls Soni’s village, killing anyone he suspects of helping the government. In his training camps we see children as young as 10 training to be foot soldiers. Later, Badru surrenders to the police and takes up arms against the very tribals he once vowed to defend.

I. The Forest Under Siege We open the film with Soni Sori, a tribal activist, and an associate from the legal aid group Isha Khandelwal trying to rescue tribals, they believe are wrongfully arrested by the police. We see the green verdant forest turned into a battleground between the Maoists and the police, with the tribals crushed in the middle. In the beginning we also see inner workings of the police on the task to fight Naxals in the forest.

On the other end of the spectrum we meet, the Additional Director General of police R.K.Vij, who heads

We travel deep into the forest with Soni Sori. She explains that the forest Dandakaranya is home to

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world’s finest iron ore. National Mineral Development Corporation, an Indian government owned mining company, and Essar Steel are trying to displace her tribesmen Gondi, for the forest’s control. Some of the tribesmen have joined the rebel group called the Naxals or Maoists (inspired by General Mao’s ideology). In the ensuing battle, 500,000 tribals are displaced, 800 villages burned and over 15,000 civilians and armed men dead. ‘The government is systematically forcing the tribals to leave the land and killing them. It is sort of an ethnic cleansing,’ she says.

II. The Red Salute The film flashes back seven years ago when Soni Sori recounts her rape and torture in prison in a composed manner. ‘He ordered to strip me naked and gave me electric shocks. He wanted me to sign a testimony that accused me of being a terrorist...I refused. Then, they mercilessly inserted stones in my vagina and anus. It was so painful that I passed out,’ she says.

Soni used to run her school for war orphans in a small village in the outskirts of the forest. The government wanted her to be a police informer. Soni feared for her life and refused. To warn her against being a police informer, Maoist leader Badru shot her father in the leg.

Soni was told that she could be next. Soni found herself caught in the crossfire. If she stayed on any longer in the forest, she would either get a ‘red salute’ (a euphemism for an encounter by the Naxals) or be arrested.

Soni escaped the forest with the help of Colin Gonsalves, a leading human rights lawyer. She was eventually arrested and denied bail. Eight days later, she managed to smuggle a letter out of jail detailing her torture.

While Soni was behind the bars, Soni’s limping father becomes the primary caretaker of the children. He tells us, ‘The police fucks us from the front and the Maoists fuck us from behind.’ We follow Soni’s father to his house, where he spends time with Soni’s six-year-old daughter. The little girl breaks down when she recounts meeting her mother in the prison a couple of days back.

The father visits Soni’s school. It lies abandoned. In a village nearby, children as young as 10 are being trained at a Maoist training camp.

Soni’s letter makes headlines across the country. Her lawyer Colin organizes a ‘Free Soni Sori’ campaign outside the Supreme Court of India, social media campaigns, protests and press conferences to get her released. Her bail is denied.

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Colin’s associate Amy goes to meet Soni in jail. The jailer there claims that the attention around Soni’s case is nothing but a propaganda to defame the government. But Soni tells Amy that even in the prison she is subjected to humiliating strip searches and often made to stay naked the whole night.

Soni’s husband is tortured in jail and suffers a brain hemorrhage. He dies soon after. Soni is not allowed to attend his funeral.

Meanwhile, Ankit Garg, the police officer whom Soni accuses of rape and torture, is awarded a Gallantry award by the President of India for being at the forefront of the crackdown against the Naxals.

III. Small Justice and the Greater Cause After being behind the bars for more than two years, Soni finally gets a conditional bail. Soni returns to the forest in the avatar of a politician, on a ticket from a newly formed political party born out of a popular anticorruption wave in India, the Aam Aadmi Party.

Soni contests from Bastar, a war-torn constituency. She refuses security cover on her campaign trail in areas severely hit by violence. She promises speedy trials for tribal prisoners, jobs for young people and getting teachers back into schools.

Soni’s campaign is beset with problems. Her party – which was launched on an anti-corruption plank -- is being torn apart by corruption from within.

Nevertheless, Soni joins hands with the legal aid group run by Colin Gonsalves and managed by his passionate associate Isha Khandelwal. They start a non-violent resistance movement among the tribals. ‘This is just a beginning. We will start a movement that will eventually end the conflict in the forest. I may even be killed in the process, but I will not give up until the forest becomes a peaceful place again,’ says Soni.

There is now even more threat to Soni’s life. She faces a chemical attack and is hospitalized for months.

Nevertheless she triumphs and still continues to unite thousands of tribals to participate in non-violent protests against the atrocities by the police. Their efforts have lead to a release of over 70 innocent tribals from the jails and Soni has become the leading voice against State oppression in the forest.

Production Details |

Biographies

The Half Truths

PRODUCTION COMPANY Manjusha Films 32, Duer Pl., 07086 Weehawken United States

hemalt@gmail.com +1 9193424065

CREDITS Production Director Production scheme Release Production status

Hemal Trivedi Among the Believers (2015 | producer | director) Hemal Trivedi June 2011 – June 2019 June 2019 Rough cut stage

FINANCING Production budget Still required Funds and Institutes Own Investment

Budget €

€ 392.534 € 240.034 IDFA Bertha Fund Equity investment Manjusha Films

| The Half Truths

Development | Pre-Production Travel/subsistence 2.978 Other 976

€ 3.954

Production Archival rights & reproduction 1.345 Hotels, travel & food 24.780 Production travel and expenses 26.480 Production personnel 19.450 Director 30.000 Technical staff 20.000 Equipment 21.980 Stock Material 2.675 Broadcast requirements 3.678

€ 150.388

Post-Production Editor/editing system 65.870 Sound design and mix 20.000 Titles and animation 5.000 Music 20.000 archival rights & reproduction 2.400 Color Correction 20.000

€ 17.500 € 100.000 € 35.000

€ 133.270

Outreach and distribution Festival outreach 6.000 Publicist 15.000 Awards and other submissions 6.000

Miscellaneous Location fees and security

€ 27.000

15.000

€ 15.000

Overhead Overhead 31.461 Contingency 31.461

Total budget (summed)

€ 62.922 € 392.534

Hemal Trivedi Producer | Director Hemal is a Mumbai and New York City based filmmaker for over a decade.

Her work had won one Oscar, three Emmys and seven Emmy nominations.

Her work has earned nominations for Independent Spirits Awards, Cinema Eye Award and MTV Movie Awards.

Her work has been showcased in film festivals including Sundance, Telluride, Tribeca, NYIFF, IDFA, Full Frame and AFI and venues including the United Nations and US Department of State.

Her work has been broadcast on Netflix, HBO, A&E, Showtime, PBS (Frontline and Independent Lens), YouTube Red, Channel 4 and several other broadcast venues. She has served as a speaker, panelist and judge for TEDx, Independent Film Week, the Emmys and other prestigious awarding bodies.

Her recent non-fiction film Among the Believers premiered at Tribeca Film Festival with rave reviews and was screened at over 80 film festivals, in 25 countries. It was shown theatrically in NY, LA, London and Italy.

Released on PBS, the film screened at nine international TV stations, and Netflix Worldwide. Earlier in the year she worked as an editor and story consultant for a three part series for A & E on President Nixon’s Watergate scandal directed by Academy Award winning filmmaker Charles Fergusson.

She is currently directing and producing a feature length non-fiction film on the Congressional race in the swing state of Pennsylvania. The film is supported by Beach Walk Media of Andi Bernstein (found of Oxygen Channel) and Mona Sutphen (former deputy Chief of Staff under President Obama).

Her other credits include: Inshallah Democracy, This is Everything: Gigi Gorgeous, My Big Fat Bollywood Wedding, Outlawed in Pakistan, Saving Face, Shabeena’s Quest, Flying on One Engine, Laughter, When the Drum is Beating and Beyond Mumbai.

Hemal Trivedi Producer | Director

Manjusha Films LLC Production Company Founded by Hemal Trivedi in 2007, Manjusha Films LLC produces and supports non-fiction media of social consequence, for use by advocates, educators and the general public.

By fostering the production and use of non-fiction film and other media, Manjusha Films connects with active audiences to spur serious consideration of pressing social issues.

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Rough Cut Project

Director Mira Jargil Production Moving Documentary Status Rough Cut Stage Country Denmark Format HD | 85+

Reunited An unpolished reality filled with human drama and political undertones. Two children are living alone in Turkey. Mother has fled to Denmark, father to Canada, because of the war in Syria. Everybody is trapped in a Kafkaesque system. Will they succeed in being reunited?

Synopsis Two Syrian refugee boys are living alone in Turkey. Jad is 9 years old, his brother Nidal is 15. Three years ago, their mother Rana fled to Denmark, hoping to establish a safe future for her children. She was under the impression that the children would be able to come to Denmark within half a year, but the European refugee policy obstructs the move and throws Rana into an existential crisis, that makes her doubt the choice of leaving her children behind. Reunited follows a family divided by war, and let the audience experience the consequences of choices made under huge amounts of pressure.

Before the war in Syria, the family lived in Aleppo. Rana was a doctor with her own clinic. Mukhles, the father, worked as a surgeon. He travelled to Canada to further advance his education before the war escalated. Like Rana, he has made a plea for citizenship and family reunification, but without any luck.

Nidal and Jad are both affected by the separation, being thrown around in a Kafkaesque game of bureaucratic rules. Still, they are completely dependent on the parents’ actions. Nidal is a caring big brother, acting as a

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Genres

• Politics | Society • Human Interest | Social Issues Pitch Type Rough Cut Project

parent, trying to protect his little brother, but his eyes are dark and worried. Jad is less damaged, even though he still has a strong longing for his parents.

The family’s happy past is seen through the father’s own video recordings from Aleppo, while the rest of the family is depicted by an intimate camera, capturing the family’s raw, unpolished reality. Everything is topped off with pictures of “Fort Europe’s” walls at the borders.

Reunited captures the human sacrifices and dilemmas brought upon families by war. Rana and Mukhles state that they feel alienated from their children, even though they skype with them often. They also doubt they can recover the loving feelings towards one another. It’s been 7 years since they’ve all seen each other.

Project Description Reunited offers an opportunity to get up close with a family divided by war and experience the consequences of choices made under immense amounts of pressure, as well as the possibly fatal aftermath spawned by these decisions. Rana’s motivation was to save her children and ensure a secure future for them, but perhaps her choice has forever traumatized them? Another question is; how will they become a family again, and how will the Danes receive them? The film will also examine how you uphold your strength while being isolated from the very thing that fills your life with meaning and joy.

I met Rana three years ago and was captivated by the fateful situation brought upon her family by the war in Syria. Previously, she lived with her husband and two children in Aleppo, and was an acknowledged pediatrician with her own clinic. As a doctor, Rana helped anyone who sought her out, but as the political situation in Syria became worse, the threats on Rana’s life grew. At last, she felt pressured to leave the country. This put her in a difficult dilemma and before a dangerous journey.

Was she to expose her children to a possibly deadly journey, and bring them onboard a smuggling boat - or was she to leave them in a war-ridden country for a period of time? Rana chose to flee by herself.

In the film, the main focus is on Rana while still maintaining the perspective of Nidal, Jad and Mukhles. They are all paying a high prize in the separation, especially the children. They are the ones affected most by the war in Syria and now in Turkey as well, a country currently in a state of emergency. Internationally, a story with this angle has yet to be told thoroughly. Despite their difficult conditions of life, the children have managed to create a relatively normal everyday for themselves, but their situation is getting harder.

Rana is 49 years old and lives in a small Danish town.

She’s a unique woman and a strong character documentary-wise. She carries a story filled with pain, deprivation and difficult dilemmas, and she’s capable of expressing herself both verbally and non-verbally. She is struggling with language barriers, cultural differences, financial difficulties, and preserving hope. She’s skyping with her children many times a day to maintain her role as a mother. At the same time, her dream of becoming connected with the Danish hospital system as a doctor has been fulfilled through an internship.

Mukhles is in his fifties and lives in the capital of Canada.

He works a lot to be able to support both his mother in Syria, his mother-in-law in Turkey, Rana and the boys.

He started as a dishwasher in a restaurant, but has already been promoted to head chef. Mukhles describes himself as a frozen computer. The photos of the boys, decorating his wall, are all from before the family was separated. It’s also obvious that Mukhles uses his work as a guard against his own feelings.

Mukhles is a talented amateur photographer. He has sent me a video that shows the family’s past in Syria, in a time when the boys were just infants. This allows the audience to identify themselves with what once was but is no more. Back then, the future looked bright and promising. The ocean was beautiful. The family enjoyed picnics on the beach. Aleppo was full of life. They were having barbecues in the garden with no fear of being hit by an airstrike. The sounds that could be heard were from laughter and music, not sirens.

Obstacles On the 25th of September 2017, The Danish Immigration Service approved that Nidal and Jad could come to Denmark to be reunited with their mother. We’re following the boys’ last days, watching as they decide what items to bring with them on their journey. The boys are excited to be finally going to Denmark, but in Istanbul, they’re held back by the Turkish border patrol, and denied permission to leave Turkey. They have to be accompanied by a parent, but neither Rana nor Mukhles can get a permission to enter Turkey, due to their being refugees. The boys are sent back to where they came from. Meanwhile in Copenhagen Airport, Rana is waiting in vain.

Reunited will be a film about hopes, dreams and people with strong wills fighting the battle. Rana and Mukhles are equally stubborn and ambitious in the pursuit of their own as well as their children’s causes. They create new paths regarding their careers, and are willing to do everything in order to prevent their children from becoming second-class citizens in Europe.

Directors statement As a director I’m interested in changes and meaningful moments in people’s lives, and characters with strong wills caught in difficult choices and challenging life situations. My goal is to create a feature film that can accommodate many nuances, complicated questions and dilemmas. I want to evoke emotions and reflection, and encourage dialogue. I believe that the film will do well internationally, because of both the human and thematic aspects of the film.

With Reunited, I want to provide insight into the consequences of the policies in Europe that create stereotypes and divide human beings. I shed light on a family’s destiny in order to provide the debate with a human perspective, and mobilize a common guard against intolerance.

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Biographies

Kirstine Barfod Producer

Mira Jargil Director

Kirstine Barfod Producer Kirstine Barfod has a solid background in filmmaking and has produced several feature documentaries and series, among them Kidd Life (2012), Born to Lose (2015) and Venus (2016) by Lea Glob and Mette Carla Albrechtsen, which was selected in first appearance competition at IDFA 2016. Kirstine is educated producer from the independent film education Super16, and studied cultural studies and literature from Malmö University, Sweden.

Moving Documentary Production Company Moving Documentary is a directorowned production company with great documentaries to its owners’ names. Christian Sønderby Jepsens latest film, Natural Disorder (financed internationally) premiered in the main competition at IDFA. Mira Jargil, is known for the award winning: The Time We Have and the award winning feature Dreaming of a Family. MD recently created the critically acclaimed TV series Till Death do Us Part, which was a huge broadcasting success.

Mira Jargil Director Mira is known for very artistic and high-end cinematic films, they are often character-driven, socially relevant and debate generating documentaries. Mira has won several awards for all of her films, in 2014 she was honoured recipient of The Danish Arts Foundation’s 2-year working grant. Mira is educated director from The National Film School of Denmark.

Production Details |

Reunited

PRODUCTION COMPANY Moving Documentary Sortedam Dossering 95B 3. TV 2100 Copenhagen Denmark www.movingdoc.dk

kirstine@movingdoc.dk +45 60734555

CREDITS Production

Director

Screenplay Editor Production scheme Release Production status

Kirstine Barfod Just Boys (2018 | producer) Venus - Lets Talk About Sex (2016 | producer) Born to Lose (2015 | producer) Mira Jargil Till Death Do Us Part (2016 | director) Dreaming of A Family (2013 | director) The Time We Have (2011 | director) Mira Jargil Rebekka Lønqvist January 2018 – November 2019 November 2019 Rough cut stage

FINANCING Production budget Still required Broadcasters

Funds and Institutes Own Investment

Budget €

€ 530.106 € 209.507 DR | Anders Bruus SVT | Charlotte Gry-Madsen Danish Film Institute | Cecilia Lidin Moving Documentary

| Reunited

Development | Pre-Production Producer | Director 90.927 Development 106.591 Pre-Production 23.454

€ 220.973

Production Hotels, travel & food 17.039 Production personnel 25.813 Equipment 16.028 Stock Material 672

€ 59.551

Post-Production Editor/editing system 106.478 Music 7.460 Insurance 11.425

Outreach and distribution Pre-preperations PR

Overhead Overhead 10 % Contingency 10 % Producer fees 5%

Total budget (summed)

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€ 53.763 € 6.000 € 237.903 € 22.933

€ 125.363

1.344

€ 1.344

33.881 33.881 16.941

€ 84.703 € 530.106

Rough Cut Project

Director Marianna Economou Production Anemon Productions,

Stefi & Lynx productions

Status Rough Cut Stage

When Tomatoes Met Wagner The humorous and uplifting story of two ingenuous Greek cousins and five village grannies, who tackle the world market with their organic tomatoes.

Synopsis Elias, a small farming village in central Greece, is dying out. But two cousins team up with the village grannies to cultivate the tomato seeds they have kept for hundreds of years. With a little help from Wagner’s music –which they use to help their tomatoes grow– the team succeeds to export little jars with organic tomato recipes across Europe, the US and Japan. The film follows the protagonists of this unlikely quest, as they struggle to survive and make their dream come true. Humorous and bittersweet, this is a story about the importance of reinventing oneself in times of crisis and the power of human relationships.

Project Description The mountain-surrounded plain of Thessaly, the largest agricultural land in central Greece, has always provided food to farmers who never felt the need to look beyond.

However, due to the recent economic crisis, they reached rock bottom.

In the middle of the plain, in Elias - a farming village with twenty-three residents, with no shops, no school and not even a priest - the discovery that a ‘treasure’ has been hiding in the soil for centuries, suddenly appears to be the solution to a desperate situation.

Country Greece Format HDcam | 52’ & 75’ Genres

• Author’s Point of View • Human Interest | Social Issues Pitch Type Rough Cut Project

In this plain where only cash crops are cultivated, Christos, a traditional farmer, turns a large part of his land to the organic cultivation of tomatoes. Meanwhile, in the back of his cousin Alexandros’ house, five grannies start to pasteurize the tomatoes in a traditional manner and hand-package them as tomato paste and tomato meals.

They give their little jars out to friends and shops to try and in no time the international gourmet market becomes interested. Soon the little jars find their place on the shelves of prestigious stores in the UK, Germany, Switzerland, Belgium, France, Sweden and recently Japan. What is the secret of their success? Luck?

Storytelling? Curiosity for the world beyond the borders of their plain?

Through the main characters - Alexandros, Christos and five village grannies - the film follows developments when the new ‘business activity’ sets off in Elias. The documentary focuses on the personal and collective dynamics that arise between the villagers. This is a story about an ordinary agrarian community where things start to happen in an extraordinary way.

After centuries of introversion, traditional life is stirred up and the twenty-three elderly inhabitants must respond to a new reality. On top of this, Alexandros does things in a very odd manner. He plays Wagner in the tomato fields to encourage the tomatoes to grow, he carries out poetry readings and philosophical discussions with the farmers and attracts people from all over the world to take part in this new venture. To sell the village tomatoes and encourage the grannies, Alexandros likes to tell the story of Christopher Columbus, who in 1493, brought tomato seeds to Europe from America. Alexandros claims that the villagers of Elias still cultivate Columbus’ 500-year-old seeds in their gardens.

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Against a dilapidated traditional agrarian environment, the presence of original people and ‘extraordinary’ events, give the story a surrealistic tone and a multilayered nature which reflects the complexity of human nature and life.

The trip to Europe As the little tomato jars travel around the world, the group’s urge to see where their tomatoes go, grows.

The trip to Belgium is a turning point. It is there the team realizes the power of the global market. Their tomato meals are on the shelves of organic supermarkets in Brussels, but they have to diversify their recipes in order to expand.

Quinoa, a totally foreign product, is recommended. They are also told that their tomato paste is too expensive and lacks a ‘story’. Alexandros and the grannies realize that they will have to boost their Columbus story and decorate their little jars with pictures of themselves in the fields. They have to promote traditionalism... and somehow add some quinoa to their recipes!

What makes some people react to stagnation and depression with initiative and personal responsibility?

In Elias, Columbus’ tomatoes not only provide a unique opportunity to get out of poverty, they also shed light on how established attitudes can hinder change by creating circular repetitive patterns.

170 IDFA Forum catalogue 2018

By following Alexandros, Christos and the grannies in their effort to cultivate tomatoes in a plain which traditionally only grows cotton and wheat, and export them with a brand name, the film explores the role of ‘real, mental and symbolic borders’ and offers insight into a life that dares look beyond ‘closed plains’. Yet not without difficulty, disappointment, financial hardship and heartbreak.

Director’s approach Today, many of us increasingly need myths to help escape from the reality of our lives. It is myths which can also help us give value to our lives.

When Tomatoes met Wagner is a character-led documentary which combines a poetic, tale-like approach with observational scenes. It is a contemporary story of survival in the Western world.

The film moves on two levels: the pragmatic one which follows a small rural community that first comes into contact with the outside world and another more imaginary level, which like a veil intermingles with reality and empowers the villagers to upend century-old life cycles.

For Alexander, stories are necessary. Like the Pied Piper, he lures his relatives away from their homes but his stories add novel meaning to the villagers’ lives. Myths, philosophical quests, poetry and music become part of their daily lives, and soften their coexistence with a harsh rural routine.

Production Details |

Biographies

When Tomatoes Met Wagner

PRODUCTION COMPANY Anemon Productions 5 Stisihoru Street 10674 Athens Greece www.anemon.gr

Rea Apostolides & Yuri Averof Producers Rea Apostolides and Yuri Averof produce documentaries for Anemon Productions. Based in Athens, the company produces and distributes innovative documentaries, exhibitions, web and educational projects, aiming to inform and inspire action.

Anemon also runs the CineDoc Greece Documentary Festival and CineDoc Kids Children’s Film Festival which screen documentaries and feature films across Greece. The company is a founding member of Moving Docs, an EDN led network focused on audience development for documentaries in Europe.

rea@anemon.gr +30 6944767300 yuri@anemon.gr +30 6944352305

2ND PRODUCTION COMPANY Stefi & Lynx Productions 24, Amyklon street 15231 Athens Greece

s.mavrogenis@stefi.gr +30 2106386200

CREDITS Production

Director

Screenplay Editor Production scheme Release Production status

Rea Apostolides, Yuri Averof, Spyros Mavrogenis Anemon Productions: Dolphin Man (2018 | producer) Kismet (2013 | producer) Sugartown: the Bridegrooms (2009 | producer) Marianna Economou The Longest Run (2015 | director) Food for Love (2013 | director) Bells, Threads & Miracles (2008 | director) Marianna Economou Evgenia Papageorgiou, Niels Pagh Andersen January 2016 – February 2019 May 2019 Rough cut stage

FINANCING € 162.810 € 62.810 Broadcasters Ote TV | Artemis Skoloudi € 5.000 Funds and Institutes Greek Film Centre | Liza Linardou € 40.000

Creative Europe MEDIA | Jolien Willemsens € 25.000 Other Financiers Thessaloniki Documentary Festival Award | Yianna Sarri

(in kind post production services) € 15.000 Own Investment Anemon Productions € 7.500

Stefi & Lynx productions € 7.500 Production budget Still required

Budget €

| When Tomatoes Met Wagner

Development | Pre-Production Writer 1.500 Producer | Director 2.500 Travel/subsistence 3.200 Teaser | trailer pitching 2.800

€ 10.000

Production Hotels, travel & food 13.500 Production travel and expenses 800 Production personnel 17.500 Director 18.000 Technical staff 8.900 Equipment 7.800 Stock Material 1.860 Broadcast requirements 650 Social security 7.900 Producer 13.000

€ 89.910

Post-Production Editor/editing system 12.000 Sound design and mix 4.800 Titles and animation 1.500 Music 12.000 Colour correction, DCP and copies 11.000

Stefi & Lynx Production Company Established in 1971 Stefi – Lynx produces films, commercials, documentaries, TV Programs. Stefi begun to produce films in the 1980’s and since then has produced a range of projects including movies such as Homo Faber, Wasted Youth, Unfair World, Attenberg and documentaries such as The Longest Run which was awarded in Leipzg in 2015. The company has worked with directors such as Volker Schlondorff, Nikos Perakis, Giorgos Panousopoulos, Giorgos Tsemperopoulos, Emir Kosturitca, Giorgos Lanthimos, Argyris Papadimitropoulos and Philippos Tsitos.

Marianna Economou Director Marianna Economou is an award winner director based in Athens Greece. She studied Anthropology, Photojournalism and film production in London and since 2000, directs and produces documentary series and independent films. Her latest film, The Longest Run (2015) was selected for the European Film Awards 2016 and won the VER.DI award at Leipzig Doc festival.

Yuri Averof Producer

Spyros Mavrogenis Producer

Marianna Economou Director

Subtitling 800

Rea Apostolides Producer

€ 42.100

Outreach and distribution Still photography and graphic design poster 2.000 Outreach

2.500

€ 4.500

Miscellaneous Legal 1.500

Overhead Overhead 7 % Contingency 3 %

Total budget (summed)

€ 1.500

10.360 4.440

€ 14.800 € 162.810

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