Three cash prizes have now been awarded to selected projects at the Berlinale Co-Production Market (February 14 to 16).
The EUR 20,000 Eurimages Co-Production Development Award went to the project Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman, directed by Pierre Földes. The award was presented in Berlin on Sunday night by the French company Cinéma Defacto and the Hungarian company Proton Cinema. With this award, the Eurimages – European Cinema Support Fund wants to promote the project’s development.
Furthermore, the jury members Ada Solomon (HiFilm, Romania), Pablo Pérez de Lema (ICAA, Spain) and Katriel Schory (Israel Film Fund, Israel) awarded two Special Mentions to the projects Memories from the Cell (D: Alvaro Brechner) from Spain, as well as to The Little Comrade (D: Moonika Siimets) from Estonia.
Today two other, well-established prizes were awarded at the Berlinale Co-Production Market: the EUR 10,000 VFF Talent Highlight Pitch Award, which is provided by the VFF, a copyright association for film and TV producers based in Munich, went to the project Tank. The project was presented in Berlin by its producer Max Serdiuk from Ukraine. Since 2004, the VFF awards this prize to a promising work from the “Talent Project Market”, which is organized by the Co-Production Market in cooperation with Berlinale Talents. Besides Serdiuk, Argentinian producer Cecilia Salim was nominated this year for the VFF Talent Highlight Pitch Award with her project The Moto-Snatcher, as was Norwegian producer Gary Cranner with his project From Grace. They pitched their projects to participants of the Berlinale Co-Production Market and received a cash prize of EUR 1,000 each for their nomination.
The ARTE International Prize was established in 2011 and went this year to Memories from the Cell, the new project by director Alvaro Brechner, which is produced by the company Tornasol Films from Spain. With this prestigious prize - which is endowed with EUR 6,000 - ARTE honours an exceptionally creative project selected for the Berlinale Co-Production Market.
At the 13th Berlinale Co-Production Market, the producers of the 36 selected film projects meet with potential co-production and financing partners. Within three days, more than 1200 individual meetings take place with a total of 550 participants.
To date 217 films that have participated in the Co-Production Market have been completed - this year alone, nine of them are screening at the Berlinale.
The main partners of the Berlinale Co-Production Market are the MDM – Mitteldeutsche Medienförderung and Creative Europe MEDIA, a programme of the European Union.
Once again, the Berlin House of Representatives is the Berlinale Co-Production Market’s cooperation partner and main venue.
The Berlinale Co-Production Market is part of the European Film Market.