31/08/2002 - Rai Cinema and Mueller’s newly-established Downtown Pictures sign co-production deal with emphasis on films from culturally unexplored territories

Giuliano Montaldo, the president of Rai Cinema and Marco Mueller, the former head of production at Fabrica, and now the head of a new company called Downtown Pictures, announced the signing of a co-production deal today (Aug 31) in Venice. The aim is to make films from countries whose cultural heritage and stories have not been explored by mainstream filmmakers and the first projects in the pipeline are Fango (Mud), Darvish Zaim’s latest film about the Greek and Turkish Cypriot conflict (scheduled to go into produciton in September) and Oakland a road movie set in America directed by Italian documentarist, Gianfranco Rosi.
Mueller was the driving power behind international hits like No Man’s Land, winner of this year’s Best Foreign Film Oscar and Zhang Yuan’s 17 years, winner of a Golden Lion at the 1999 edition of the Venice Film Festival.