The 17th HFM Co-Production Platform wraps
by Vitor Pinto
- The HFM came to an end this weekend in Utrecht, with Catalan project Summer 1993 receiving the Emerging Talent Prize
Twenty film projects have taken part in the 17th edition of the Co-Production Platform at the 2015 Holland Film Meeting (HFM), which brought together young directing talents, producers, distributors and sales agents in Utrecht. The winners were announced on Saturday night, and the Catalan project Summer 1993 took home the event’s top award, the Cam-a-lot & Filmmore Cinema Emerging Talent Prize (valued at €10,000 in camera and post-production facilities).
Summer 1993 was a project pitched by Barcelona-based production outfit Inicia Films, and is set to be directed by Catalonia-born London Film School graduate Carla Simón. The plot, based on Simón’s own personal story, centres on a young girl whose mother died of AIDS in 1993. Consequently, six-year-old Clara moves to a small village in the mountains, where she will have to adapt to life with her new family: her uncle, her aunt and their three-year-old daughter.
The HFM was the latest stop for Summer 1993, a project that had previously taken part in several other platforms such as the Script Station - Talent Campus (Berlinale) and the Low Budget Film Forum (Les Arcs). The project also won the SGAE Screenwriting Fund in Spain.
The Co-Production Platform jury also awarded the WarnierPosta Prize (valued at €5,000 in audio post-production facilities) to Unknown Family, a Dutch-Mexican thriller to be directed by Ron Termaat.
A Special Mention was given to Israeli director Yaron Shani’s project Apple of My Eye, with the jury highlighting the director’s unique working method with his actors.
The winners emerged triumphant from a selection that had been made from among more than 80 submissions; the final batch consisted of 20 of these titles, hailing from 13 different countries. Click here to read about the 14 international participants in the forum and here to find out more about the six Dutch projects.
Besides the Co-Production Platform, the HFM also hosted the third Work-In-Progress (WIP) sessions. A Quiet Passion [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile], a co-production between the UK’s Hurricane Films and Belgium’s Potemkino directed by Terence Davies, won the Filmmore WIP Prize (valued at €5,000 in facility services).
The Haghefilm International Post-Production Prize (also worth €5,000 in facility services) went to Upstream [+see also:
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trailer
interview: Marion Hänsel
film profile] by Marion Hänsel, a co-production between Belgium’s Man’s Film Productions and the Netherlands’ SNG Film.
The HFM may have wrapped, but the Netherlands Film Festival will continue until 2 October.
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