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Our striking introduction to Kaloyan (Ognyan Pavlov) in Pavel G. Vesnakov’s potent and profound “Windless” is as an out-of-focus blur, smoking a cigarette in the foreground. Beyond him, trucks trundle down a highway, and bare trees throw their branches to the sky, while birds wheel and scatter against gray clouds.

It is the first of many eerily considered compositions, hemmed in by an audaciously claustrophobic 1:1 aspect ratio, to tell almost the film’s entire story in miniature. Kaloyan is a man at odds with his surroundings — the Bulgarian village where he grew up and to which he has returned after a long, self-directed exile. It is as though the adult he has become is fighting for focus with the ghost of who he once was, the unhappy child who called these bleak, unwelcoming landscapes home. The past is always a foreign country, even if it’s the one...

Titles from “Lupin” co-creator François Uzan, former Netflix top exec Erik Barmack, indie multinational Boat Rocker and Brendan Foley, writer of “Cold Courage,” will be pitched on Wednesday and Thursday at Spain’s Conecta Fiction & Entertainment. The pitch sessions form the industry centerpiece of the meet. Following, profiles of entries in four of the six categories: Copro, High-End, Docudramas and Feel Good:

CoPro Pitch

“Destape,” (Satisfaction Iberia, Spain)

The latest from Pablo Barrera, a co-creator of admired crime drama “Punta Escarlata,” a mystery drama turning on (the fictional) Rosa Burnett, a face of Spain’s ‘70s destape cinema, movies with tantalizing nudity. Now, thought dead, Burnett returns from gthe shadows to wreak her vengeance.

“Fin del Año,” (Têm Dênde Productions, Brazil)

A supernatural suspense drama from Vânia Lima at Salvador’s Têm Demdê Productions, behind Ruy Guerra’s “Time, Knifed,” presented at Ventana Sur. A bus transporting five people who...

Rome’s Mia Market for TV series, feature films, documentaries and factual content wrapped a watershed 7th edition on Sunday, having boosted its standing on the global calendar as a prominent emerging industry hub in Europe.

In a significant indicator of the Eternal City’s Oct. 13-17 event’s restart relevance Mia, organizers on the final day announced a total of 2,000 industry executives from 56 countries, all of whom attended the new-concept market in-person, while there were only 46 online attendees, mostly from Asia and Latin America due to coronavirus constraints that impeded travel to Italy from those countries.

While the Oct. 11-14 Mipcom market in Cannes suffered a reduced presence – and the AFM this year has gone entirely online – Mia reaped the benefits of being conceived more congenially to how the global content industry is evolving because it offered a wide range of product, plenty of which in early stages.

The...

Summer 1993 and My Happy Family also take home prizes from Ukrainian festival.

Peter Brosen and Jessica Woodworth’s fourth feature King Of The Belgians received the Golden Duke Grand Prix - based on voting by festival-goers - at the eighth Odesa International Film Festival (Oiff, July 14 - 22), which came to a close on Saturday evening.

The International Competition jury, headed up by German director Christian Petzold and including actress Sibel Kekilli and Romanian producer-director-festival organiser Tudor Giurgiu, awarded the prize for best international feature film to Catalan director Carla Simón’s autobiographical film Summer 1993.

Handled internationally by New Europe Film Sales, Simón’s film had its world premiere in the Berlinale’s Generation Kplus sidebar where it won the international jury’s grand prix and the Gwff best first feature award.

Meanwhile, My Happy Family by the directorial duo Nana & Simon continued its successful international festival career by picking up the jury’s awards for best director...