21/08/2013 - Baltic Bridge East by West Producers’ Workshop includes projects from Lithuania, Slovak Republic, Azerbaijan, Georgia and Kyrgyzstan

Designed for feature film projects from the European Union and the CIS countries and Georgia, the Baltic Bridge East by West Producers’ Workshop has selected the project slate for its second edition. The workshop is held by the organizers of Baltic Event (Estonia) and Northern Seas Film Forum in cooperation with EAVE (European Audiovisual Entrepreneurs), RFilms, CTB Film Company (Russia), and with the support from MEDIA Mundus.

The European Union’s half of the slate is represented by projects from Austria, France, Lithuania, the Slovak Republic and the United Kingdom.

Witcraft Szenario (Austria) will present gangster comedy Kaviar, the debut feature of Elena Tikhonova, a young Russian filmmaker based in Vienna.

Clandestine Films (France) participates with road movie You Hid Saint Petersburg in Your Bag, the second feature by award-winning director Valerie Gaudissart.

The Baltics will be represented by the post-Soviet tragicomedy A Miracle by Egle Vertelyte (writer-director) and Lukas Trimonis (producer) both from Lithuania.

Slovakian drama Out, which takes its main character on a "North-Eastern European Odyssey" from Slovakia to Estonia, is the debut feature of promising FAMU graduate György Kristóf.

Nik Powell and Ian Prior from Scala Productions (UK) will be looking for Russian co-producers for Passing Clouds, the story of a couple's honeymoon on Trans-Siberian Express.

The Eastern front will see projects from Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, and Ukraine.

Young Azerbaijani filmmaker Ru Hasanov participates with his second feature, Northbound.

Georgia is represented by Terzo Mondo, a drama by the award-winning film director Merab Kokochashvili, whose filmography spans over five decades.

Kyrgyzstan presents the drama Centaur, directed by Aktan Arym Kubat, whose films have competed at Locarno and Cannes film festivals.

From Russia, Ella Manzheeva's debut The Gulls is a drama set in the director's native Republic of Kalmykia.

The line-up is completed by the drama Kai, directed by Ukrainian Oleh Sentsov, who is about to start shooting his second feature just as the first workshop of B'EST kicks off.

B’EST consists of two workshops, which take place on September 11-15 in St Petersburg, within the framework of the St Petersburg International Film Festival, and November 26-29 in Tallinn, within the framework of Baltic Event.

German-Kazakh project Good-bye, directed by Anna Hoffmann, from B'EST's last year's slate has meanwhile already been completed, going into production even before the second workshop, and Georgian project House of Others [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Rusudan Glurjidze
interview: Salome Demuria
film profile], directed by Rusudan Glurjidze, has just been presented at Locarno’s Open Doors co-production lab and will be shot in 2014.