06/02/2015 - More than 50 international financiers and 150 producers-distributors will attend the pitching sessions at the Swedish co-production market between 10 and 12 March

Sweden’s Financing Forum for Kids Content in Malmö, which takes place between 10 and 12 March, has this year programmed 22 projects from nine countries – adding a “Beyond Europe” slot for the US – which will be pitched to more than 50 international financiers and 150 producers-distributors. 

At the Berlin International Film Festival, the Financing Forum for Kids Content is tomorrow (7 February) co-hosting a Berlinale Theme Talk, with Germany’s KIDS Regio and Creative Europe Desk Berlin-Brandenburg, focusing on “The Long Tail: Children’s Films Beyond Linear Cinema, TV and DVD – Additional Business Models and Their Share of Revenues”.

The selection in Malmö ranges from multi-platform projects and games (hailing from Armenia, Croatia, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Ireland, Germany and Sweden), through documentaries (Denmark and Finland), live-action features (Germany, Malta, the Netherlands and Sweden) and animation (Denmark and Sweden), to stop-motion for mobile phones.

“The interest in the forum is greater than ever – it is a new situation for us to be able to present exciting submissions from Armenia, Croatia, Ireland and Malta, and not to mention five from Germany, which a few years ago was a rare participant,” said Annette Brejner, head of Malmö’s Kids Cluster, an initiative by Swedish regional film centre Film i Skåne that aims to support the co-production and co-distribution of children’s products.

First organised in 2007 by the BUFF International Children and Young People’s Film Festival in Malmö, the forum is now part of Kids Cluster.

German directors Markus Dietrich and Pavel Strnad’s Mission: Sputnik [+see also:
trailer
film profile], which was nominated for the German Film Awards and won the German Film Critics’ Award for Best Children’s Film, was first pitched at the 2010 Financing Forum. This was also the case for Swedish director Martin Högdahl’s The Ice Dragon, which received a Guldbagge, Sweden’s national film prize. The title was also selected for the Generation Kplus programme at the Berlinale, before being named Best Film at the BUFF Film Festival in 2012.