15/11/2024 - The new industry player was founded by director Petra Seliškar, Cinéphage Production’s Victor Ede, Icedocs’ Ingibjörg Halldórsdóttir and former Autlook exec Martina Droandi

Silent Observers by Eliza Petkova

Director Petra Seliškar, Cinéphage Production’s Victor Ede and Icedocs’ Ingibjörg Halldórsdóttir are heading to the IDFA market with a brand-new sales firm called Open Kitchen Films. Martina Droandi, formerly of Autlook, joins them as the executive director.

“Reaching an audience is a challenge that all directors, producers, distributors and festivals are facing in our current times. The challenges are manifold when you think about creative films and the diversity of their identities and forms, plus their potential to be meaningful in the current world chaos or to be a necessary step aside,” the team tells Cineuropa. “For us, it’s been a logical step to bring together our expertise and get involved jointly to build our kitchen, open to a wide diversity of films and dedicated to experimenting with ways of sharing them with the audience.”

A company founded by experts from different sides of the industry, and based in France, Iceland and Slovenia, Open Kitchen Films promises to offer “sales services sensitive to the needs of producers and directors, especially their eagerness to connect with audiences”.

As the industry has been facing many challenges in recent years, it will support movies by directors “with a clear artistic vision, working with bold, unconventional perspectives”. The Open Kitchen Films staff aims “to enhance the peculiarity and singularity of the projects, to open up the diversity of origins, and to try all possible avenues to engage audiences worldwide”.

The outfit’s first acquisition, the Bulgarian docu-fiction Silent Observers [+see also:
film review
interview: Eliza Petkova
film profile], will debut in the Luminous strand of IDFA this week. This is the third film in a trilogy helmed by Eliza Petkova, which portrays a remote village in Bulgaria through the eyes of its four-legged inhabitants: a dog, a cat, a horse, a donkey and a lamb.

“We were impressed by Eliza’s work, the original mix of sound with improvised music, and the cinematography, all meticulously crafted. The village of Pirin transforms into a magical fairy tale that we look forward to sharing with the audience,” explains Droandi. Silent Observes is a Bulgarian-German co-production between Red Carpet and Wood Water Films.

Open Kitchen Films’ current catalogue includes the multi-award-winning documentary KIX [+see also:
film review
film profile] by Bálint Révész and Dávid Mikulán, co-produced by HBO Max and Arte, as well as three Cinéphage co-productions, whose delivery is slated over the course of Q1 and Q2 2025. These include Seliškar’s new effort, The Mountain Won’t Move [+see also:
film review
film profile]; Sally Jacobson and Tuva Björk’s Unanimal, narrated by Italian star Isabella Rossellini and co-produced with Sweden’s Story AB; and Pascal Messaoudi’s first feature, Carrousel.