Nova Lituania, Karolis Kaupinis’ debut feature, which premiered a year ago at Karlovy Vary International Film Festival as part of their East of the West competition, will be the official submission to the Academy Awards by Lithuania.  In February we will find out if the film got enough votes to progress to the next round of voting. For now we keep our fingers crossed and let the campaigning begin!

Lasse Linder’s graduation film All Cats Are Grey in the Dark took home the European Film Award for Best Short Film. The film was together with 4 other shorts, including Sun Dog, nominated for the award after winning a qualifier at Sarajevo Film Festival. The upcoming year the film will tour together with the other films through the world as part of the Short Matters! program.

We couldn’t be more happy with the news that we have five films premiering in Cannes selections this year.

The Semaine de la Critique selected the newest short film by Ismaël Joffroy Chandoutis, called Maalbeek, as well as Dustin, the debut short film by Naïla Guiguet. The films will be shown online as well as in the Cinematheque in Paris in October.

Although most of Festival de Cannes has been cancelled, the Short Film Competition will still be in the running for a Palme D’or in November. We will be presenting I am afraid to forget your face by Sameh Alaa, O Cordeiro de Deus by David Pinheiro Vincente as well as Stephanie by Leonardo van Dijl.

During the Berlinale Forum the debut feature by Alex Piperno had it’s world premiere. Chico Ventana También Quisiera Tener un Submarino is a slowly unraveling mystery box, in which we get transported from a ship into different worlds. It ended up winning the Tagesspiegel Jury Award in Berlin.

Fuera del Camino by José Permar competed in the International Feature Film Competition at Visions du Réel in Switzerland, where it won the Interreligious Award. In this documentary we follow three characters in the preparations for the “Baja 1000”, the world’s largest annual all-terrain car race at the Mexican-US border.

No swimming in the Lago Maggiore this year or hanging out at the Piazza Grande, but luckily the Pardi di Domani section is going online and we will be part of it with 4 new short films.

We will once again be working with Phạm Ngọc Lân’s new short Giòng Sông Không Nhìn Thấy (which is part of the anthology MEKONG 2030), Jacqueline Lentzou’s The End of Suffering (a proposal) and Gabriel Böhmer’s Push this Button if You Begin to Panic. And we are happy to have Samuel Patthey and Silvain Monney join the family with their animated documentary Ecorce. 

Starting in 2020 we will be working with two new exciting short films that will both premiere at the Ammodo Tiger Short Competition at International Film Festival Rotterdam, the Netherlands:

3 Logical Exits is Mahdi Fleifel’s new documentary, in which he returns to the Ain El-Helweh refugee camp in Lebanon  to once again follow his friend Reda.

Sun Dog is the graduation film by Belgian Dorian Jespers. The narrative takes place in Murmansk where we follow a young locksmith who goes from client to client, but slowly gets lost in his fantasy world.

We’re happy to announce two world premieres at IDFA this edition, as well as the Dutch premiere of All Cats Are Grey in the Dark by Lasse Linder in the Best Of-section.

Punks by Maasja Ooms will play in both the Feature-Length and Dutch Competition. We’ve worked with Maasja’s previous film Alicia a few years back, so we’re happy to have her back. In Punks we follow a group of teenagers who try to get their lives back on track while on a remote farm in France.

Speak So I Can See You, the debut feature by Marija Stojnić take part in the First Appearance Competition. The film is a cinematic exploration of the unique soundscape of one of Europe’s oldest radio stations, Radio Belgrade.