With the financial help of Film Sales Support (FSS), totaling €40.900, and awarded by EFP (European Film Promotion), 21 new films from across Europe are receiving exquisite promotional support at this year’s inaugural Las Vegas American Film Market (5-10 November) and at the Tokyo International Film Festival (28 October-6 November).
11 European world sales companies, endowed with FSS to bolster their promotion campaigns, are heading towards Las Vegas to market European cinema to the US, Latin America and Asia. Las Vegas will be hosting the American Film Market (AFM) for the first time, one of the most important film markets in North America.
Half of the supported films promoted on the ground are fresh unfinished titles either in production or post-production, such as the children’s film, A Mouse Hunt For Christmas by Norwegian director Henrik M. Dahlsbakken (Sola Media), suspense thriller Barren Land by Albert Pintó (Spain / Film Factory Entertainment), black comedy Divine Remedy by The Markell Brothers, Thorkell Hardarson & Örn Marino Arnarson (Iceland / Picture Tree International), family animation, Brave Heart Yakari by Xavier Giacometti (France, Belgium, Germany / Epsilon Film), Safe House by Erik Svensson (Norway, Denmark / TrustNordisk), starring Kristine Kujath Thorp, Norwegian Shooting Star of 2023 and murder mystery action movie, The Chase by Juan Carlos Medina (France / SND), to name just a few.
Completed films in the companies’ different line-ups include Word War II-drama, Never Alone by Klaus Harö (Finland, Austria, Estonia, Germany, Sweden / The Playmaker Munich), gothic horror film, The American Backyard by Pupi Avati (Italy / Minerva Pictures), Waves by Jiří Mádl (Czech Republic / Urban Sales) which won the Audience Award at this year’s Karlovy Vary International Film Festival as well as fantasy thriller, A Whale by Pablo Hernando (Spain, Italy / Latido Films).
Brave Heart Yakari, A Mouse Hunt For Christmas (see above), The Kite by Alessandro Tonda (Italy, Belgium) as well as Judas’ Gospel by Giulio Base (Italy), both sold by Minerva Pictures, have green production certificates.
Thanks to Swiss Films which makes available FSS for films from Switzerland, thriller Sew Torn by Freddy Macdonald (Switzerland, USA / The Playmaker Munich) will likewise benefit from a promotional push at the AFM.
Sima’s Song by female director Roya Sadat (The Netherlands, Spain, France, Taiwan, Greece, Afghanistan), which portrays inclusive topics, is celebrating its world premiere at the 37th Tokyo International Film Festival and will be represented by FSS beneficiary Pluto Film.
The FSS awards were confirmed by the Czech Film Center, Cinecittà, the Finnish Film Foundation, German Films, ICAA (Spain), SEE NL, The Norwegian Film Institute, Unifrance and Swiss Films.
See comprehensive list of supported films here
FSS, a long-standing and well-established financial support mechanism for European world sales companies which augments individual promotion and sales campaigns in order to advance the export of European cinema beyond Europe is backed by the Creative Europe MEDIA Programme of the European Union since 2004.
