A new market, the MIA (Mercato Internazionale Audiovisivo), will feature for the first time at the upcoming Rome Film Fest (16-24 October). An initiative of the National Association of Film and Affiliated Industries and the Television Producers Association, MIA’s ambition is to “put Italy back on the map of the European and global audiovisual industries” and is described as a content market and matchmaking hub. For the first time in Italy, this event will cover several sectors of the audiovisual industry: films, television series, documentaries and videogames. Within the market, the organisers are also launching a new co-production forum, Make It with Italy, aimed at attracting international producers to the Italian film industry and supporting international projects involving Italian co-producers.

Seven projects slated for minority co-production were selected for the inaugural edition. Included in this first batch are Pascal Adant’s L’Epreuve (Belgium), Sebastian Schindel’s Dante’s Secret (Argentina), Hana Makhmalbaf’s Single Mother (Iran), Valerio Mieli’s Les Filles du Temps (France), Gabriel Le Bomin’s Les Celestes (France), Aku Louhimies’ Cycle (Ireland), and Czech project Il Boemo [+leggi anche:
recensione
trailer
intervista: Petr Vaclav
scheda film], a fictional feature written by Petr Václav, the writer-director of last year’s sleeper hit The Way Out [+leggi anche:
recensione
trailer
intervista: Petr Václav
scheda film].

Inspired by his work on feature documentary Confession of the Vanished, which premiered in the Czech Republic in April, Václav has penned a story revolving around Mozart´s friend and teacher, Josef Mysliveček, who went by the nickname of “Il Boemo” and “rejected his comfortable bourgeois destiny as the eldest son of a Prague master miller to pursue his dream of becoming a composer in Italy“. The synopsis describes the story as “a tale of ambition, identity and love. While Josef has no qualms about exploiting the passions his music arouses in women to advance his career, he finds the one woman he truly loves is beyond his grasp. In the late XVIIIth century, Il Boemo, as he came to be known, was one of the most popular and prolific composers of Italian opera seria.”

Petr Václav is also set to direct this costume drama, which will, similarly to The Way Out and Confession of the Vanished, be produced by Jan Macola of Czech production company Mimesis Film. Set in Italy, the film will be shot in Italian, with the main photography expected to be completed between winter 2016 and summer 2017, on an estimated budget of €5 million.