26/07/2024 - The country’s film agency backed 16 new projects including three animated features, three fiction features, two documentary features and four fiction series

Director Theo Papadoulakis, recipient of a production bursary for his fiction feature Recrucified

This week, Film Fund Luxembourg announced the recipients of its latest round of funding. On this occasion, the film agency backed the development and the production of 16 of the 27 eligible projects. In detail, these are three fiction features, three animated features, two documentary features, four fiction series, one animated series, one fiction short, one documentary short and a VR project.

The three fiction series that received the fund’s development bursaries are Eric Lamhène’s Am Déïwen Daischteren (€120.000, staged by Samsa Film), Loïc Tanson’s Marginal 2 (receiving the same amount, also produced by Samsa Film) and Emile V. Schlesser’s Plus One (€60.000, produced by 35M Films). Next, two fiction features received a development grant of €30.000 each, namely Sacha Wolff’s Miracle (a Les Film Fauves presentation) and Santiago Amigorena’s Mon Traitre (a Red Lion production). The other projects receiving development support were Fred Neuen’s animated series Les Krostons (€30.000, produced by Digital Voodooh), Philippe Rolland’s animated feature La Ligne (€45.000, staged by Melusine Productions), Fabrizio Maltese’s documentary feature Lost and Found (€109.966, a Joli Rideau Media production) and Mathieu Chartier and Thomas Recayte’s VR project The Eiffel Tower (€45.000, produced by Skill Lab).

Zooming in on production bursaries, two animated features received the grants of the biggest magnitude (worth €3 million each) – Carlo Vogele’s comedy The Lion Queen (produced by Iris Productions with Belgian and French partners) and Federico Milella's adventure comedy The Last Dinosaur (produced by Fabrique d’images with Belgian, French, British and Indian co-producers). Milella's film sees a dinosaur thrown into today’s world and forced to team up with a group of nerds, geeks and marginal animals to travel back to his age, 65 million years ago. Meanwhile, Vogele’s project logline states: “When an old lion can’t rule others anymore, he must learn to love them.” 

The only series in receipt of production backing (€1.5 million) is De Burgo, co-helmed by Julien Becker, Jyri Kähönen and Samira Radsi and produced by Deal Productions with German partners. The action thriller show starring Julie Kieffer as a brilliant scientist who embarks on a mission to save our planet will enter production in October.

Moreover, two features received production bursaries - Theo Papadoulakis' action drama Recrucified (€730.000, produced by Amour Fou Luxembourg with Greece, Italy and Cyprus) and Donato Rotunno’s documentary Capitales Europe – La bataille des sièges (€500.000, produced by Tarantula Luxembourg with France). Recrucified, penned by the director himself with Alexandra Dyranis-Maounis, is set in an alternate near future and zooms in on a young anarchist living on a Greek island under Turkish occupation and forced to portray Jesus during the annual show for the Easter Passion of the Christ.

Finally, the two shorts backed by the Luxembourgian agency are Anne Simon’s drama Fade to Black (€130.000, produced by Amour Fou Luxembourg) and Katarzyna Kot’s doc La forêt qui murmure (€120.000, produced by Iris Productions).