19/07/2011

Of the 100 or so projects submitted, the Austrian Film Institute accepted 45 funding applications and allocated €3.16m (€2.35m in selective grants and €809,000 in automatic funding). Of this sum, about €2m went to a total of eight feature-length projects.

Production company Sigma received backing for narrative film Monte Piano by Ernst Gossner (who helmed award-winning Austrian/US co-production South of Pico). After his documentary Global Warning, here the director focuses once again on the conflicts in his native Tyrol during the First World War.

Another funding recipient, Wega Film is producing Umut Dag’s Kuma, about a Turkish woman living in Vienna, a new situation which puts her family loyalty to the test.

Meanwhile, Amour Fou is preparing a co-production with German company Filmgalerie 451: Fever by DoP-director Elfi Mikesch. The film traces a young woman’s real and imagined travels between Austria, the East and the Balkans.

The Institute also awarded funding to Dor Film for Hans Hofer’s love story Zweisitzrakete, starring Manuel Rubey and Simon Schwarz.

The Institute also chose to back four documentaries: Johannes Holzhausen’s The Big Museum, about Vienna’s Art History Museum (produced by Navigator Film); Marco Antoniazzi and Gregor Stadlober’s 365 Tage Vollgas, a Mobilefilm production which offers viewers a behind-the-scenes look at folk music; ABC of the Future, co-produced by Prisma Film with German company Rommel Film; and Hubert Canaval’s Unter Strom, about the energy sector.

(Translated from French)