Hungary Launches Three-Pronged Attack on International Market

This year’s Hong Kong International Film Festival (HKIFF) will open with two local films – Soi Cheang’s noir thriller Mad Fate and the world premiere of Ann Hui’s Elegies, a documentary about contemporary local poetry.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent The Locarno Film Festival is launching a first-of-its-kind contest, offering a free complete restoration service to a selected vintage cinema classic. The contest is part of The Swiss fest’s Heritage Online program that was launched in 2021 when its Locarno Pro industry side branched out into vintage cinema creating a platform that serves as a database of film titles that premiered prior to 2005. The goal of the fest dedicated to indie cinema is to play an active role in restoring older films to their former glory and also to become a business facilitator between rights holders and classic film distributors, streaming platforms and other outlets.

Tara Karajica In “Narrow Path to Happiness,” Hungarian director Kata Oláh follows a young gay Romani couple from a remote village in Hungary whose dream it is to make a musical based on their lives. Just as the Hungarian government is becoming increasingly authoritarian and hostile toward LGBTQ+ people, they move to the capital. The film played in the International Competition at the Thessaloniki Documentary Film Festival this week. The younger protagonist, Lénárd Váradi, who was 16 years old at the time, reached out to the National Film Institute in Hungary, asking for contacts and looking for a producer who would help them apply for a script development grant. Oláh, who also edited the film, says she couldn’t believe it. “I thought somebody was joking! It cannot be real! So, I said, ‘Sure, let’s meet.’ And then, we met and I fell in love with them and said: ‘You know, it doesn’t work like that; we can’t just apply for a script grant. But I will start to follow you and I will make a documentary about how you are trying to achieve your dream.”

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent Cannes’ Marché du Film has named Spain its Country of Honor for the upcoming 2023 edition which will take place May 16-24 during the 76th edition of the Festival de Cannes. The Marché du Film will work with ICEX Spain Trade & Investment and ICAA – Institute of Cinematography & Audiovisual Arts to showcase Spanish talent and content, ranging from cinema to documentary, animation and extended reality. Spain follows India which became Cannes’ first official Country of Honor in 2022. The industry event launched the initiative last year to spotlight and celebrate different nations at each market edition. Spain’s cinema sector has been having a banner 2023. Last month, Estibaliz Urresola Solaguren’s debut feature “20,000 Species of Bees” won three awards at the Berlinale, while Albert Serra’s “Pacifiction” won two Cesar awards, and Rodrigo Sorogoyen’s “The Beasts” won the Cesar award for best foreign film. Recent successes last year also include Carla Simón’s “Alcarràs” which won last year’s Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival and Alberto Mielgo’s “The Windshield Wiper” which won best animated short film at The Academy Awards).

Ed Meza @edmezavar The new genre-focused Fantastic Pavilion at the Cannes Film Festival’s Marché du Film has unveiled plans for a series of six yet-to-be-announced special market screenings as well as an original logo that promises to unlock the imagination. Due to the strong response and interest from independent producers, sales agents and distributors – seen again at Berlin’s European Film Market — Fantastic Pavilion organizers are presenting the Fantastic Pavilion Galas. Offering a prime example of what participating sales companies will be offering to worldwide buyers at the Marché du Film, the six special market screenings will serve “as a magnifying glass, giving them a wide promotion to stand out among the crop of content available at the market,” organizers said. The Galas’ six films will be announced prior the Cannes market. Interested parties may contact Fantastic Pavilion organizers via their website.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” held on to top spot at the South Korean box office. But the overall market continued to soften despite a slew of new release titles. Nationwide theatrical grosses totaled just $7.26 million. That made it the slowest box office weekend in over three months. “Quantumania” collected $2.0 million between Friday and Sunday, according to data from Kobis, the tracking service operated by the Korean Film Council (Kofic), and enjoyed a 27% market share. The second weekend increment lifted its 12-day total to $10.6 million. Long-running Japanese animation title, “The First Slam Dunk” earned $1.36 million in its eighth weekend on release. Since Jan. 4 it has accumulated $28.0 million.

Good afternoon Insider team, Max Goldbart here. It has been a wild ride of a week with Berlin drawing to a close. Read below for a good ol’ recap.

European Film Market which at one and the same time has underscored the challenges still facing the international independent film business.  Following by way of an industry wrap, a dozen takeaways on the 2023 Berlin market, including its Berlinale Series Market, an ever more building proposition at the Festival.  The Verdict If the European Film Market is anything to go by, broadly, the international movie market is in some ways making a international comeback, despite still vastly challenging circumstances. On Thursday, the EFM reported “record results” of a total of over 11,500 market participants from 132 countries. “It was a rather busy market, with no single must-have, but much mid-sized product,” recognizesConstantin’s Martin Moszkowicz of this year’s Berlin European Film Market, noting that Constantin received about 90 project submissions prior to market, “which is a lot.” “There’s been more deals happening at the EFM than at Sundance and we sense a new vibrancy in the international markets,” says Nick Shumaker, at Anonymous Content’s AC Independent.

Marta Balaga If you want to attract a younger audience, you have to watch what they watch. Not what you think they are watching, says producer Dean Devlin, best known for “Independence Day” and “Stargate.” But he never designs his shows for one market. “It’s no longer all about gender or age demographic. If you go to a sci-fi convention, they are not just kids, they are not just older people. It’s everybody!” At Berlinale Series Market Selects, which runs as part of the European Film Market in Berlin, with his latest show, sci-fi series “The Ark,” Devlin continues to pay homage to the kind of stories he loved as a child, from Douglas Trumbull’s “Silent Running” to “The Omega Man.”

Ed Meza @edmezavar “Snow,” an Austrian-German co-production and one of 16 titles presented in the Berlinale Series Market Selects showcase, weaves the timely issue of climate change and local folklore into a suspenseful mystery drama set in the picturesque Austrian Alps. Brigitte Hobmeier stars as Lucia, a physician who with her husband and children moves to the village, where she is replacing the local doctor, who is retiring. Things take a troubling turn when her daughter is visited by a strange woman at night. The series presentation at the EFM event brings the title back to Berlin, where it came together in 2020 at the Berlinale Co-Production Market’s Co-Pro Series event.

Shades of Blue creator Adi Hasak didn’t mince his words when discussing the state of U.S. television at the EFM’s Berlinale Series Market today.

Berlin Film Festival. At least not according to the co-chiefs of Turkey’s Antalya Golden Orange Film Festival. “The festival’s opening ceremony started with Ukraine, ended with Ukraine and touched on Iran. But I don’t think they ever mentioned Turkey,” said Ahmet Boyacıoğlu, president of the fest that has historically always been the country’s prime local cinema catalyst.

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent Luc Besson’s ”Dogman,” starring Caleb Landry Jones, wowed buyers at the Berlin’s European Film Market, where it was screened for select buyers. “We hosted only one private screening of the completed film and buyers were stunned, they all came out saying that it was Luc Besson’s best film to date, his most mature movie and some even called it a masterpiece,” said Gregoire Melin, founder of Kinology, which is handling sales on the film. On the heels of the screening, Kinology closed deals with some of the biggest distributors in key international territories, including Italy (Lucky Red), Germany and Austria (Capelight Pictures), Spain and Latin America (Sun Distribution Group), Scandinavia (Svensk Filmindustri), Benelux (Belga Films), Switzerland (Elite Film), Middle East (Front Row), Poland (Monolith), Portugal (Nos Lusomundo Audiovisuais), Czech Republic and Slovakia (AQS) and former Yugoslavia (Blitz).

EXCLUSIVE: Pig and Manodrome producer Ben Giladi is formally launching his production banner Liminal Content at this year’s Berlin Film Festival where Manodrome debuted in Competition.

Liza Foreman Hot on the tail of a recent slew of pickups and sales, Paris-based sales-producer-distributor Alief has snapped up international rights to the West African folktale “Mami Wata.”   North America rights to the film are represented by Marissa Frobes at CAA Media Finance. Alief is presenting the film to buyers and festival programmers at this week’s European Film Market in Berlin. The first film from a Nigerian-based director to play (and win an award) at Sundance, this visually striking feature took home the World Cinema Dramatic Special Jury Award for Cinematography for Brazilian DP Lílis Soares.

Manori Ravindran Executive Editor of International One of the hottest packages at the EFM has been taken off the table for international. Sources tell Variety that Prime Video has snapped up all international rights, excluding the U.S., to Justin Kurzel’s “The Order,” which stars Jude Law and Nicholas Hoult in a story about the titular white supremacist organization that operated in the 1980s. The project is penned by Oscar- and BAFTA-nominated writer Zach Baylin (“King Richard”), who based the screenplay on Kevin Flynn and Gary Gerhardt’s book “The Silent Brotherhood.” Published in 1989, the book details the activities of the radical-right hate group The Order, which was one of the most sinister organizations to emerge in America since the Ku Klux Klan.

Nick Holdsworth Hungary’s National Film Institute Filmlab is positioning itself to become Europe’s go-to facility for 35mm post-production, processing and restoration. Working alongside the NFI Archive — which is moving ahead with an ambitious program of classic film restoration — the Filmlab aims to be a “one-stop shop for digital, analog, VFX, digital restoration and color grading” according to its head, Tamás Bódizs. Bódizs, who was appointed director six months ago, nine years after he first joined the lab, started his film industry career as a television editor. Film is his passion, he says, and putting Hungary on the map as the go-to location for advanced analog work is a goal the lab has been working towards in recent years.

Fifty years ago, the sci-fi thriller “Soylent Green” warned viewers of a distant future—the year 2022—where environmental catastrophe and over-population would cause such dire resource scarcity that the bodies of those who ended their lives voluntarily and with the government’s assistance were transformed into edible wafers to feed the masses. In “White Plastic Sky,” a heady dystopian animated feature from Hungary, directors Tibor Bánóczki and Sarolta Szabó depart from nearly the exact same premise, a reality a century from now where crops and animals no longer exist, but the solution to ensure humanity’s survival is no longer a matter of personal agency but of mandated duty for all citizens.

Hello and welcome back to your weekly International Insider. Berlin’s back and with most of our team in the German capital, it’s Jesse Whittock here bringing you the latest from the worlds of TV and film.

Christopher Vourlias This year, Latvia is sharing a spotlight with neighboring Lithuania and Estonia at the European Film Market, which has dedicated its 2023 Country in Focus Spotlight to the Baltic nations. It’s a sign of the tremendous strides the country has taken to put itself on the world cinema map, with the screen industries both producing more films and TV series than ever before and luring increasingly ambitious international projects to Northeastern Europe. Here’s a rundown of some of the top Latvian projects in the pipeline that their producers will be pitching in Berlin: Blue BloodDirector: Juris KursietisProducers: White Picture, Stellar Film, Asterisk*The follow-up to Kursietis’ Cannes Directors’ Fortnight player “Oleg” is the story of a successful couple whose comfortable life is turned upside-down when the husband is implicated in a massive corruption scandal.Sales: N/A