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BERLINALE 2018 Market / France

Doc & Film International has a powerful presence everywhere at Berlin

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- The French company will be at the EFM selling titles such as Touch Me Not by Adina Pintilie, in the running for the Golden Bear, and Game Girls in the Panorama

Doc & Film International has a powerful presence everywhere at Berlin
Touch Me Not by Adina Pintilie

The European Film Market of the 68th Berlin Film Festival (15-25 February) looks extremely promising for Doc & Film International. Indeed, the line-up of the French international sales agent headed up by Daniela Elstner has three titles being showcased in the various different sections of the Berlinale, including one hopeful for the Golden Bear, Touch Me Not [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Adina Pintilie
film profile
]
 by Romania’s Adina Pintilie.

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Starring Laura BensonTómas LemarquisIrmena ChichikovaChristian BayerleinGrit UhlemannHanna Hofmann and Seani Love, the filmmaker’s feature debut hovers on the boundary between reality and fiction as it explores the subjects of (simultaneously alluring and terrifying) intimacy and the possibility of being in love without losing one’s bearings. Touch Me Not, which won the Arte Prize at CineMart and passed through the Cannes Cinéfondation Atelier, was produced by Romanian outfit Manekino Film, in co-production with Germany’s RohFilm Productions, the Czech Republic’s PINK, Bulgaria’s Agitprop and France’s Les Films de l’Étranger, with backing from Eurimages, the Romanian Film Centre, the MDM, the TorinoFilmLab, the Bulgarian National Film Center, the Czech Film Fund and the Eurométropole of Strasbourg.

At the EFM, Doc & Film will also be pinning its hopes on a hard-hitting documentary, Game Girls [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile
]
 by Alina Skrzeszewska, which will be unveiled in the Panorama and which follows two women as it delves into the heart of Los Angeles’ Skid Row neighbourhood, renowned for being "the US capital of homeless people". Production duties were handled by Marseille-based outfit Films de Force Majeure together with Germany’s Blinker Filmproduktion, with support from Arte-ZDF and Eurimages.

The third trump card that Doc & Film will play at the EFM is the US-Japanese documentary Ryuichi SakamotoAsync at the Park Avenue Armory by Stephen Schible, which will be presented in the Berlinale Special programme. 

The market premieres taking place include the French-Swiss documentary No Man Is an Island [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
 by Dominique Marchais (recent winner of the Grand Prix at the Belfort Entrevues Festival), the French-Portuguese "western" Rage [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile
]
by Brazil’s Sérgio Tréfaut (a screening reserved exclusively for buyers), the documentary Amal [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
 by Mohamed Siam (which opened the IDFA – produced by Egypt, Lebanon, France, Germany, Denmark and Norway) and the US doc Hale County This Morning, This Evening by Ramell Ross (Special Jury Award for Creative Vision at the Sundance Film Festival). Also of note is a private screening of Holy Mountain by famous mountaineer Reinhold Messner (who takes a look back at a rescue operation to save an expedition in the Himalayas in 1979).

Other titles worth mentioning are Coincoin and the Extra-humans [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile
]
 by Bruno Dumont (season 2 of the Li’l Quinquin series, which will once again spawn a film version), and the documentaries Each and Every Moment by Nicolas Philibert (who totally immersed himself in a nurse training course), Where Are You, João Gilberto? [+see also:
trailer
interview: Georges Gachot
film profile
]
by Georges GachotSamouni Road [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Stefano Savona
film profile
]
 by Italy’s Stefano Savona (who injected animation into a work centring on a family of farmers in Gaza) and the fiction title Slam [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Partho Sen-Gupta
film profile
]
 by Partho Sen-Gupta (co-produced with Australia by Paris-based firm Dolce Vita Films), all in post-production.

Lastly, one notable addition to the line-up is My Life by Liliana Torres and Sofi Escude Poulenc (a co-production between Spain and France), who shed light on the fate of migrant Osama Abdul Mohsen. After the outcry triggered when a Hungarian journalist attacked him and his son, he obtained a job as a football coach in Madrid but is now cut off from the rest of his family, who are stuck in Turkey.

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(Translated from French)

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