Fabbrica dei Progetti – New Cinema Network, the co-production market for the International Rome Film Festival, takes stock: after three days of co-production meetings, two days of workshops, and 14 screenings, this year the market has presented 26 projects coming from 20 countries. 14 are by filmmakers working on their second films, and 12 international projects have been selected from around the world, many of them thanks to a collaboration with l’Atelier du Festival de Cannes, Film London, and the Hong Kong Film Financing Forum.  For the competing projects the two prizes are the Best European Project Prize, in the Focus Europe section, and the Clear Channel – La Fabbrica dei Progetti Prize for Best First Film.

This year Fabbrica dei Progetti has hosted 85 production companies from 25 countries (including Celluloid Dreams, Arte, Pandora, Future Films, and Mediaproducciones) – 20 of them Italian (such as Medusa, Rai Cinema, Indigo, and R&C) and 17 international distributors (among them Memento, No Stop Sales, and Indie Circle). The event featured roughly 950 co-production meetings in three days and totalled 1,600 spectators for the 14 films presented.

The jury composed of producers Simon De Santiago, Cedomir Kolar, and Rosanna Seregni  was charged with selecting the winning project in the Fabbrica dei Progetti’s Focus Europe section, and awarded the 30,000-euro Best European Project Prize to Andrea Segre for the project Shun Li e il Poeta (Italy), in recognition of its original approach to the theme of immigration, both poetic and profoundly human. And considering the high quality of the projects presented, the jury also handed out three Special Mentions: the first to Tudor Giurgiu for the project Trixy(Romania), for a commanding portrait of an intriguing and little-known figure in recent European history; the second to Stefan Faldbakken for the project Paradiset (Norway), for a subtle examination of the blurred line between love and incest in high society; and the third to David Oelhoffen for the projectAvant le Feu (France), for a very humane treatment of the meeting of two worlds in the dramatic setting of strife-torn Algeria in the 1950s.

Thanks to the collaboration between the International Rome Film Festival and the Prime Minister’s Council of Ministers – Department of Youth Affairs, 11 young filmmakers with successful short films under their belts were able to take part in the Fabbrica dei Progetti – NCN Lab, featuring encounters with producers Karl Baumgartner, Simon De Santiago, Rosanna Seregni, Cedomir Kolar, Mario Gianani, Giacomo Lopez for Rai Cinema, the director Paolo Virzì, and all the filmmakers showcased in Focus Europe. It was these young filmmakers who composed the jury, presided over by Maurizio Sciarra, that assigned the 4,000-euro Clear Channel Prize for Best First Film, which was awarded toThe Bird Can’t Fly by Threes Anna (Holland) for its forceful visual impact and very personal reinvention of reality, treating characters and their emotions with a sure touch and an original viewpoint. The jury also handed out a Special Mention forNos Retrouvailles by David Oelhoffen (France), for the maturity of the film direction and the expressive awareness with which the filmmaker guides us into the heart of a conflictual human relationship.