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Georgian writer/director Dea Kulumbegashvili’s April won the best film award at the 29th Vilnius International Film Festival known locally as Kino Pavasaris, on March 23.

The drama about an ob-gyn specialist in a small hospital in rural Georgia, who risks herself to care for her female patients, picked up €8,000 for the prize established by Vilnius City Municipality and took home a statuette designed by Lithuanian artist Vilius Dringelis, specially commissioned as part of the festival’s 30th anniversary celebrations.

The Georgia-France-Italy project premiered at the Venice Film Festival in 2024.

The international jury was comprised of Polish film critic and programmer Adam Kruk,...

Paula Korva’s “Sudden Outbursts of Emotion,” a sex-positive comedy about the complexities of modern love and midlife crises, took home the top prize Thursday at the Finnish Film Affair, an annual industry event running parallel to the Helsinki Intl. Film Festival.

The film was one of five fiction feature works in progress and seven works in development that were pitched to an audience of industry guests in Helsinki during the Nordic event’s showcase of local and regional projects. Korva’s feature-length directorial debut, the film is produced by Marko Talli of Helsinki-based Yellow Film & TV.

“Sudden Outbursts of Emotion” follows Jane, a travel agent who sells people on adventure but is happily settled in her own life with her partner, Mikki. Thinking their relationship is strong, Jane is shocked when Mikki suddenly proposes they open it up. To save their love, Jane agrees to attend a sex...

Lithuanian filmmaker Saulė Bliuvaitė’s Toxic, a coming-of-age teenage tale, secured this year’s Work in Progress prize at Meeting Point Vilnius (Mpv), the annual audiovisual industry event that takes place during the Vilnius International Film Festival, Kino Pavasaris.

The award lands the filmmaking team a €5,000 cash prize from the Lithuanian Film Centre,

Toxic is being produced by Lithuania’s Giedrė Burokaitė, with Bliuvaitė, the pair are looking for a sales agent and “a premiere at a film festival” for the title which they anticipate finishing by the end of May this year.

It is about a young girl abandoned...

The industry programme at the Norwegian festival included a focus on UK projects.

Two veryr different projects from female directors have been the talk of the industry at Haugesund’s New Nordic Films market this week.

Amanda Kernell won the pitching prize after the Co-Production Market presentation of her third feature film, The Curse - A Love Story while Thea Hvistendahl’s work in progress Handling The Undead, which reunites Renate Reinsve and Anders Danielsen Lie after The Worst Person in the World, hugely impressed buyers and festival programmers alike

The Curse will follow Kernell’s Venice 2016 premiere Sami Blood and Sundance 2020 selection Charter.

The Sundance Film Festival Asia, an offshoot of the Sundance Institute, is to set up camp in Taipei, Taiwan this summer. The three-day mini festival will run Aug. 18-20 and be put together in association with local organizer G2Go Entertainment.

The event will showcase a handful of films curated by the Sundance Institute and host a short film competition that is open only to Taiwanese productions.

Panel discussions will accompany the festival to foster artistic exchange, providing opportunities for the Taiwan film industry to connect with Sundance’s executive team, and elevating Taiwan’s image and presence in the global independent film industry.

The jury for the Taiwan short film competition, includes: Kim Yutani, director of programming, Sundance Film Festival, Heidi Zwicker, Sundance senior programmer and Mike Plante, Sundance’s senior programmer, for short films. The winning film will receive a Nt$50,000 cash prize.

“The Asia edition is a...

The industry event is part of Helsinki International Film Festival (Hiff) – Love & Anarchy

The annual Finnish Film Affair (Ffa) showcase of Finnish and Nordic filmmaking and works in progress is expanding to include minority Finnish co-productions of fiction and documentary projects.

The industry and networking event takes place September 20-22 as part of the 36th Helsinki International Film Festival – Love & Anarchy (Hiff). Last year, it was attended by over 500 industry professionals.

Previously, only films with majority Finnish production were able to apply. Priority will still be given to projects where the majority co-producer is from a Nordic country but all applications will be considered.

While the chances of getting a feature film into Sundance may be slim, the short film submissions are just as competitive. For its first year back to in-person after two years of a virtual event, the festival received a record number of short films submissions, with 10,980 entries from around the world hoping to play in Park City. Shorts programmers Mike Plante and Heidi Zwicker had the task of whittling it down to 64 films and 4 episodic projects, and they assure aspiring Sundance filmmakers that they watch every single submission.

“We love all these films individually, but part of choosing them is how well they speak together as a program,” Zwicker told IndieWire during a recent interview. “They have to come together to create a cohesive whole, where each one is doing something different.”

Building the program holistically allows for a broad spectrum of genres and budgets, something Plante singles out as being unique to Sundance.

The Sundance Film Festival has outlined some of the specific details for how it intends to go hybrid for the 2023 event, announcing Tuesday that the festival will begin exclusively in person in Utah for its first few days before opening up its online component.

Sundance 2023 runs Jan. 19-29, but the online component of the festival will then become available beginning on Jan. 24. Audiences will be able to view select films from the official selection online, though that includes all competition titles playing at the festival — including in the U.S. Dramatic, U.S. Documentary, World Cinema Dramatic, World Cinema Documentary and Next sections — as well as others across the film, episodic and shorts programs. Finally, on Jan. 28-29, the award-winning films from the year’s festival will be available both at in-person screenings and online.

In in an additional tweak, Sundance is requiring masks in all Sundance Film Festival spaces,...

In-person attendance to be prioritised with limited number of online P&i badges available.

Sundance Film Festival will take place from January 19-29, 2023, as an in-person event in Utah and will expand online on January 24.

In the first details to emerge on next year’s festival, Sundance Institute hierarchy said the digital offering will present an on-demand, curated selection of features. This will comprise all competition titles from the U.S. Dramatic, U.S. Documentary, World Cinema Dramatic, World Cinema Documentary, and Next strands, as well as other work from the overall selection.

The 2023 festival will take place in-person in Park City,...

Haugesund’s New Nordic Films industry event will present 17 upcoming features.

Haugesund’s New Nordic Films industry event will present 17 upcoming features in its annual works in progress showcase.

The most high-profile film to show first footage will be Erik Poppe’s The Emigrants, produced by Sf Studios and the latest adaptation of the famed Vilhelm Moberg novels about a Swedish family that moves to America in the 1850s. The cast includes Lisa Carlehed, Gustaf Skarsgård, Tove Lo and Sofia Helin.

Further projects include Sagres, a Sweden-Finland-Belgium co-production sold by Totem Films. The debut feature from Stockholm-based Lovisa Siren...

Durban–Africa’s Realness Institute, Eave, the Intl. Film Festival Rotterdam, and the Sundance Institute are joining forces to create the Creative Producers Indaba, a professional training program designed to support emerging African producers.

Inspired by initiatives such as the Eave Producers Workshop and Sundance’s Creative Producing, the program will bring together 15 participants to develop the capacity of producers on the continent and create a pan-African network of producing talent with the ability to bring African projects to the international market.

“We decided to launch Creative Producers Indaba to make sure we have more producers that understand the international financing game, international distribution, that can help…African projects to move closer from the page to the screen,” said Elias Ribeiro, of the Realness Institute, at the Durban FilmMart on Sunday.

The organizers will select five African producers with projects currently in development. They’ll be joined by five African participants drawn from government,...

After hiring veteran festival programmer Kim Yutani to lead its programming team, the Sundance Film Festival has now announced a brand new batch of further programming hires. Yutani, who was previously a senior programmer for the festival and has worked at Sundance since 2006, was hired in May for the Director of Programming job left vacant by long-time programming head Trevor Groth earlier this year. The long-time programmer has now rounded out her team with a number of fresh faces, while also elevating some Sundance stalwarts.

Yutani commented in an official statement, “This year’s record-breaking number of submissions are phenomenally strong: we’re invigorated and inspired by the work we’ve been seeing. Our incredible — and growing! — programming team has refined our curation processes, ensuring that the conversations we have as we program continue to center, as always, on a Festival that represents a wide range of filmmakers and on-screen experiences.

Festival to run in Utah from January 24-February 3.

Sundance Institute announced changes to its programming team less than two weeks before it unveils the 2019 festival programme, and unveiled several broad innovations under its inclusion policy, as well as the inaugural Sundance Institute Talent Forum.

Introducing new members to its programming team, the festival said it had expanded and refined the team “with an eye towards fresh perspectives and varied decision-making voices”.

Dilcia Barrera joins as programmer, Stephanie Owens as associate programmer, and Sudeep Sharma as shorts programmer. Ana Souza, formerly a programming coordinator, is promoted to manager, programming / associate programmer.

Egypt’s El Gouna Film Festival has wrapped its second edition, with Singaporean director Yeo Slew Hua’s noir title “A Land Imagined” winning the Golden Star, the fest’s top prize, awarded by a jury headed by Oscar-winning Croatian producer Cedomir Kolar (“No Man’s Land”).

The genre pic, shot mostly at night, is about a jaded Singapore cop investigating the disappearance of a Chinese construction worker. It previously won the Locarno Film Festival’s Golden Leopard in August. The El Gouna award carries $50,000 in prize money, to be divided equally between the director and the main producer, Fran Borgia, and his Akanga Film Asia shingle.

Egyptian director A.B. Shawky’s unconventional road movie “Yomeddine” won Best Arab Narrative Feature award and split honors for the fest’s Cinema for Humanity audience prize with “Another Day of Life,” an animation-documentary hybrid about the experiences of war journalist Ryszard Kapuscinski in 1970s Angola.

El Gouna Film Festival hosted a special panel discussion on the role of film festivals in today’s film industry with festival directors from several international film festivals including Carthage, Tribeca, Guanajuato, Sundance and the Tallinn Black Nights.

El Gouna Film Festival’sCinegouna Platform, the film industry-oriented event created with the objective of nurturing and strengthening promising Egyptian and Arab cinema projects and filmmakers, and helping them find artistic and financial support, hosted a special panel discussion today entitled “The Role Of Film Festivals” which was moderated by international film editor of the Hollywood Reporter, Deborah Young.

The panelists included Mr. Nejib Ayed, Director General of the Carthage Film Festival, Mr. Frederic Boyer, Artistic Director of the Tribeca Film Festival, Ms. Sarah Hoch Founder and Executive Director of the Guanajuato International Film Festival, Ms. Tiina Lokk, Founder and director of the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival and Ms. Heidi Zwicker,...