EFP, a great ship a-sa(i)ling
Film Sales Support (FSS), an initiative launched at the beginning of 2004 by the European Film Promotion to promote and market European films outside of Europe, has just received €400,000 from the MEDIA Programme to keep on with the good work in 2006. This sum adds to the financial support already granted by the Spanish ICAA and the German Federal Government’s Commissioner for Culture and the Media, which will be joined by other partners who are still negotiating the terms of their contributions.
In two years, FFS has proved very efficient: it helped promote 143 films on the international market, notably by granting 60 different European sales agents specific sales incentives to cover the costs of subtitled or dubbed prints and publicity material. This work was very fruitful, and almost 35% per cent of a number of supported feature films and documentaries were sold for local distribution after the festival screenings. South-American buyers were obviously particularly keen on Spanish movies, such as Unconscious [+see also:
trailer
film profile] by Joaquín Oristrell and El Lobo by Miguel Courtois. Asia went for Waiting for the Clouds by Yesim Ustaoglu and One Day in Europe by Hannes Stöhr (read interview), amongst others, while the United-States picked such films as Luc Jacquet's The Emperor’s Journey [+see also:
trailer
film profile] and Thomas Vinterberg's Dear Wendy.
The mission of the EFP consists mainly in ensuring the visibility of our cinema at international festivals and markets, and FSS was present at many non-European festivals. This year, for the first time, it organised screenings at the Toronto Film Festival and many of the films were presented there, such as Adam’s Apples [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Anders Thomas Jensen
interview: Mads Mikkelsen
interview: Tivi Magnusson
film profile] by the Danish director Anders Thomas Jensen (cf. news 11/21) and Something Like Happiness [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Bohdan Slama
interview: Pavel Strnad
film profile], a Czech movie by Bohdan Sláma (cf. news 27/09) are among this year's entries for the Oscar as Best film in foreign language. In 2006, FSS will, again, attend Sundance, Mar de Plata, Buenos Aires, Shanghaï, Toronto, Rio, and Pusan.
(Translated from French)
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