Berlinale Co-Production Market hopes to improve its 40% success rate
As the 9th Berlinale Co-Production Market drew to a close yesterday (February 14) at the Berlin House of Representatives, Market Director Sonja Heinen (pictured) expected the outcome, that is the number of projects that actually become films, to be higher than the average success rate of 40%.
”Market participants have told us that our catalogue was a little more commercial this year. We always include commercial projects, but there were unusually many comedies, and two-three other more easy-going pictures,” said Heinen. ”Also, several films were at an advanced stage of financing and did not need much money to complete it.”
The 28 official projects in this year’s market were selected from 311 submissions from all over the world – three of them came by the Rotterdam-Berlinale Express, the collaboration on works-in-progress with the CineMart of the International Film Festival Rotterdam.
”We are primarily looking at the quality of the projects, but also at their ’match-ability’ – whether we think we have the right people among the 487 (this year) participants in the Berlinale market who would be interested in joining. A project is not necessarily bad, when we refuse it – we may simply decide that it is not likely we can help it,” Heinen explained.
”Only projects from experienced producers with several films to their credits will be considered, and they must have 30% of the budget in place. And we evaluate the ’co-producibility’ of the projects – whether the filmmakers have real expectations to the contributions of co-producers and not just are looking for their money,” added Manager Official projects Martina Bleis.
During the first eight years of the co-production market, more than 120 films havde been realised from the projects discussed over the tables – three of them are in this year’s official festival programme, including UK director Barnaby Southcombe’s I, Anna as a Berlinale Special, Israeli director Ami Livne’s Sharqiya in the Panorama and US director Olivia Silver's Arcadia in Generation Kplus.
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