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TURIN 2016 Industry

A year of success stories for the TorinoFilmLab

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- 25 TFL films have been released, selected for and awarded at major film festivals this year. New projects include a film starring Bérénice Bejo, directed by Israeli filmmaker Tom Shoval

A year of success stories for the TorinoFilmLab
The pitch for Shake Your Cares Away, new project by Tom Shoval (second from right - © TFF)

“2016 has been an extraordinary journey, with 25 films released and selected for major film festivals, an Oscar, a Golden Leopard and an award for direction at Venice”. At the TorinoFilmLab (the 9th Meeting Event of which is being held from 23 to 25 November as part of the Turin Film Festival), Savina Neirotti and her team are celebrating a “glorious year, but one that is the result of nine years of work”, specifies the director. “Films were released this year that we developed 5-6 years ago, which is important to remember as they are the fruit of long and not always easy work”. The Academy Award that went to Son of Saul [+see also:
film review
trailer
Q&A: László Nemes
interview: László Rajk
film profile
]
by Laszlo Nemes (“who is also working on his second film with us”, Neirotti points out), the triumph at Locarno of Godless [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Ralitza Petrova
film profile
]
 by Ralitza Petrova, and the fact that Fien Troch won the award for Best Director in the Orizzonti section of Venice with her film Home [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Fien Troch
film profile
]
, were the highlights of a year in which TFL films have also been in abundance in the Turin Film Festival programme, practically making up their own section: as well as Jesús [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile
]
, being shown in competition, and The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Mäki [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Juho Kuosmanen
film profile
]
in the Festa Mobile section, 12 films that were developed with the lab are being shown to audiences at the festival this year.

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And in demonstration of the unstoppable nature of this Turin-based hotbed of talent, this year the two days of pitches of new projects seeking co-producers is kicking off before an audience of 300 decision-makers from all over the world. 34 titles from every corner of Europe and South America, as well as Israel, Ivory Coast and Singapore. The project for the second feature by Israeli filmmaker Tom Shoval (whose film Youth [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile
]
 was named Best Film at the Film Festival of Jerusalem) already has its lead actress (Bérénice Bejo) and the likes of Alejandro González Iñárritu on board. The film, entitled Shake Your Cares Away, is being presented in the FrameWork programme, where it will compete for a production prize. It tells the story of a young billionaire whose unusual philanthropy turns into a dangerous passion; the film will be somewhere between ironic and absurd in tone, and has already secured two co-producers: French company Christmas in July and German company One Two Films.

Other titles being presented in the FrameWork section include Romanian project And They May Still Be Alive Today by Tudor Cristian Jurgiu (his debut piece, The Japanese Dog [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
, was awarded at Vilnius and Warsaw), in which a man and a women do their utmost to fall in love with one another (Libra Film Productions); the latest film by Carlo Zoratti and Cosimo BizzarriLa vita nuova (DETAiLFILM with Italian companies Alpis and Nightswim as co-production partners), which was also presented at Script&Pitch last year (see article); a French co-production with the United States, Port Authority [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile
]
 by Danielle Lessovitz (Madeleine Films), which, with the aim of portraying the love of a teenager for a transgender man in Brooklyn, promises atmospheres reminiscent of Darren Aronofsky’s The Wrestler and the work of Xavier Dolan.

Set in a prison in Abidjan is another project being produced by France (Banshee Films) with Ivory Coast, which is being presented in the Script&Pitch section: Zama by Philippe Lacôte (whose debut film Run [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile
]
 was selected in the Certain Regard section of Cannes), in which the young protagonist is forced, as a way of surviving, to tell stories until the break of dawn. Also worth mentioning are the debut piece by Danish filmmaker Marie Grahtø, Teenage Jesus (Beo Starling), which portrays the journey of two women towards the brink of losing control, sex and freedom; the new film by the director of No One’s Child [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile
]
 (which won the Fipresci award and the award for Best Film in Critics’ Week at Venice), Serbian Vuk Ršumović’s film Living, which imagines a near future in which a Serbian peasant and a six-year-old refugee girl cross Europe in search of the girl’s mother (Art & Popcorn); and last but not least, in the Adapt Lab section, Belgian project Harder Than Snow by Kadir Balci (based on the book of the same name by Stefan Hertmans, produced by A Private View), a thriller set against the backdrop of bloody terrorist attacks, in which nothing is as it seems.

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(Translated from Italian)

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