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FESTIVALS UK

Film and Music Entertainment takes five features to major summer festivals

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- Lost in Karastan, The President, Rio 50 Degrees, Amsterdam Express and Monument to Michael Jackson to unspool at the events

Film and Music Entertainment takes five features to major summer festivals
Lost in Karastan by Ben Hopkins

Film and Music Entertainment (F&ME), the London-based production outfit led by Sam Taylor and Mike Downey (read the interview), is launching five features on the international market place over a number of summer festivals, marking the full delivery of the first five features on its $21 million eight-picture 2014 slate.

Kicking off the summer festivals is the Matthew Macfadyen vehicle Lost in Karastan by British director Ben Hopkins, and written by Ida [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Pawel Pawlikowski
interview: Pawel Pawlikowski
film profile
]
writer/director Pawel Pawlikowski, which had its world premiere this week in competition at the Montreal World Film Festival. Shot entirely on location in Georgia, the film is a comedy about globalisation and nation-building, sex and art, money-laundering and love. 

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The second film to be released over the summer is Mohsen Makhmalbaf’s The President [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Mohsen Makhmalbaf
film profile
]
, also a production shot in Georgia, opening the Orizzonti section of the Venice Film Festival. The film tells the story of a dictator who comes face to face with the people he previously subjugated. “This first of two films on our 2014 slate, we have shot back to back on location in Georgia,” says F&ME principal and producer Mike Downey, “and the results from a creative and a commercial perspective are excellent.”

Following its UK premiere in April, Julien Temple’s Rio 50 Degrees, the feature documentary, a political, social and musical history of Rio de Janeiro, will have its international premiere very much on home turf at the Festival do Rio. Tirana veteran Fatmir Koci’s Amsterdam Express, the first ever co-production between Albania and the UK, will also have its festival launch (at Vienna’s Let’s CEE Festival) after its highly successful Albanian release earlier in the year. Downey was also executive producer on Darko Lungulov’s Monument to Michael Jackson [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Darko Lungulov
film profile
]
, which was world premiered at the Karlovy Vary Festival, continued at the Pula Film Festival and has just won the best film at the Montenegro Film Festival in Herceg Novi. F&ME also partnered on Srdjan Dragojevic’s Zero to Hero, which, as a Montenegro-produced film, also screened in Herceg Novi.

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