INDUSTRY / MARKET France / Denmark / Lithuania
The Pop Up Film Residency expands to Northern Europe
- Four new hosts from the Nordic countries and the Baltics are joining the film residency network and are raring to welcome the new participants
“By filmmakers, for filmmakers”: this is how the Pop Up Film Residency, which was launched last year by French film activist Matthieu Darras and Slovak producer Juraj Krasnohorsky, is described. The Pop Up Film Residency offers a tailor-made mentorship programme to its resident (as each host only mentors one at a time) during a three-week period, and it unfolds in various locations. The resident of each session is selected by a network of partners, among them the Cannes Critics’ Week, Trieste’s When East Meets West and the Doha Film Institute.
Experienced film-industry professionals become the hosts of each Pop Up Film Residency. At the beginning, the main location was Bratislava, but soon after the 2019 Cannes Film Festival, a network of hosts was created, all of them based around the Mediterranean Basin. In Greece, producers Konstantinos Kontovrakis and Giorgos Karnavas (Heretic) hosted Israeli filmmaker Yona Rozenkier, while Egyptian producer and script consultant Ayman El Amir hosted Belgian director Koen Mortier. Also, Jerusalem-based director and producer Muayad Alayan (PalCine Productions), and Lebanese producer and festival co-founder Myriam Sassine (Maskoon Fantastic Film Festival) are planning to host their future residents once the circumstances allow it again.
Now, the network of the Pop Up Film Residency is expanding towards Northern Europe, with three new residencies (and four hosts) in Denmark, the Faroe Islands and Lithuania.
In Denmark, producers Katja Adomeit (Adomeit Film) and Pål Røed (Paasan), who both founded their respective production companies that they currently head up, will co-host Pop Up Film Residencies in their very own property, situated on the island of Funen in Denmark. Adomeit mentioned: “I have been involved with the Pop Up Film Residency since its beginning. Matthieu wrote to me one day, asking if I’d like to pay for my own trip to be an advisor in Bratislava for a project, which was yet to be chosen. Of course, I wrote back and did not regret it. When my partner and producer Pål Røed and I bought a house in the countryside in the ‘Alps of Fyn’, Denmark, which came with an extra little house, it was clear from the beginning that we would want to host residencies there.”
Going even further north, after establishing his own company, Kykmyndir, producer Jón Hammer decided to relocate to his native Faroe Islands, and he will host a residency there. He commented: “As filmmakers working in a (very) small country, connections to Europe and the rest of the world mean everything for our ambition to develop a local film culture. The residency is a great opportunity for our local talent to connect to international filmmakers and to learn from them, as well as providing us with an opportunity to present our own culture to others.”
Finally, Lithuanian producer Marija Razgutė, founder of M-Films, will be the first new host to welcome a Pop Up Film Residency. Brazilian filmmaker Esmir Filho (The Famous and the Dead [+see also:
trailer
film profile]) will travel to Vilnius to work on his third feature, as part of the Pop Up Film Residency Paradiso, organised for the second year in collaboration with Projeto Paradiso. Razgutė remarked: “I have joined the circuit of hosts at Pop Up Film Residency as I truly believe in the core of it: ‘by filmmakers, for filmmakers’. We, as professionals, need to support each other a great deal – especially in the turbulent times we are living in today. As a producer, I am convinced that every script deserves time, dedication and energy, so I am very happy to be able to provide an opportunity for talents to develop their films here in Vilnius.”
Did you enjoy reading this article? Please subscribe to our newsletter to receive more stories like this directly in your inbox.