KVIFF’s Works in Progress and Eurimages Lab Project Award winners announced
- KARLOVY VARY 2016: The lucky winners of the awards are Bojan Vuletić’s Requiem for Mrs J and Perseverance by Miha Knific
At the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, Serbian filmmaker Bojan Vuletić (Practical Guide to Belgrade with Singing and Crying [+see also:
trailer
film profile]) has received the Works in Progress Award, worth €100,000, for his drama Requiem for Mrs J [+see also:
film review
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interview: Bojan Vuletić
film profile] (Rekvijem za gospođu J). In addition to a cash award of €10,000 from the Barrandov Studios, the prize also comes with post-production services at UPP and Soundsquare. Produced by Nenad Dukić, Pavlina Jeleva and Tomi Salkovski, the Serbian-Bulgarian-Macedonian co-production is one of eight projects that were selected from among the 57 registered projects from Central and Eastern Europe, the Balkans, Turkey, Greece, and the former Soviet territories.
Requiem for Mrs J tells the story of a middle-aged widow and former administrative clerk who decides to commit suicide when her family’s pet rabbit dies. She plans to kill herself with her late husband’s pistol on the anniversary of her husband’s death. “We decided to award a drama that looks at today's society from a darkly humorous and realistic perspective. Led by a complex performance, this film examines the life of a woman whose struggle with bureaucracy forces her to take an inevitable solution,” pointed out jury members Karin Schockweiler (Film Fund of the Grand-Duchy of Luxembourg), Kim Yutani (Sundance IFF) and Meinolf Zurhorst (Arte/ZDF).
Meanwhile, the Slovenian debut film Perseverance (Vztrajanje) by writer-director Miha Knific was awarded the Eurimages Lab Project Award, worth €50,000. Eight projects were competing for this prize, having been selected out of the 64 registered projects (either in production or post-production) from Eurimages countries. The film is being produced by Siniša Juričić (Sofia's Last Ambulance [+see also:
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trailer
film profile], Velvet Terrorists [+see also:
film review
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film profile]), who is also present as a co-producer of Houston, We Have a Problem! [+see also:
film review
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interview: Žiga Virc
film profile] in this year's East of the West competition at Karlovy Vary. Perseverance consists of 20 stories inspired by true events and characters that span the world and last 60 years. “We were moved by this poetic film that evokes the basic conditions of mankind,” said the jurors, who were impressed by its “visually striking and sensory journey through the secrets, memories and imagination of the human race”.
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