Match Factory selling five strong Bear contenders

12/02/2010

Booth 29 at the Martin Gropius Bau, where The Match Factory has its European Film Market headquarters, will no doubt be one of the busiest of the market. The Cologne-based sales company has no less than five films vying for the Golden Bear, by multiple award-winning filmmakers from the US (Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman), Denmark (Thomas Vinterberg), Bosnia (Jasmila Zbanic), Turkey (Semih Kaplanoğlu) and Iran (Rafi Pitts).

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Just back from Sundance – where his recent pick-up Howl by the gifted Epstein and Friedman received rave reviews – Match Factory head Michael Weber is actively preparing for the film’s presentation at the Berlinale Palast tomorrow night, where US star actor James Franco is expected along with the filmmakers. Howl is a biopic about US poet Allen Ginsberg and his groundbreaking 1955 poem of the same name.

Saturday will see Vinterberg walk the red carpet for the world premiere of Submarino [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Thomas Vinterberg
film profile], a dark drama about two brothers haunted by a tragic childhood. Vinterberg had his breakthrough with the first Dogma film, The Celebration.

Honey [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Semih Kaplanoglu
film profile], by Turkish writer/director/producer Kaplanoglu (Egg [+see also:
trailer
film profile]), is the third part of the Yusuf Trilogy, which traces the origins of a soul. The film has its world premiere this Saturday in competition, the same day as The Hunter [+see also:
trailer
film profile] by Pitts, who previously vied for a Golden Bear in 2006 for It’s Winter. The thriller about a sniper hunted in the forest by two policemen is produced by Twenty Twenty Vision (Germany) in co-production with Aftab Negaran (Iran).

On the Path [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] is the second feature film by Zbanic, Golden Bear winner for Grbavica (Esma's Secret) [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Barbara Albert
interview: Jasmila Zbanic
film profile] in 2005. It centres on a couple trying to stay on the path of happiness after the husband’s change into a radical fundamentalist.