Alternative Wave, the industry platform of the Batumi International Art-house Film Festival (BIAFF), took place for the fourth time at the Georgian event that unspooled from 17-23 September. Organised and run by producer Lasha Khalvashi and director Tinatin Kajrishvili, with support from the Georgian National Film Centre, the platform is intended for the development of new projects from Georgia and its neighbouring countries. For the full list of projects, scroll down. 

"Before we established Alternative Wave, we were bringing individual industry people from Europe, but four years ago, we decided to make it a separate event, and we wanted Lasha and Tinatin, who are very well connected with the European industry, to run it," says BIAFF director Zviad Eliziani. "It is aimed at low-budget films, which are the most numerous in our region anyway, and at filmmakers who are either debutants or have made one or two feature films. In addition to lectures, they have one-on-one meetings with experienced professionals, and they also get trained to pitch, which they say is very useful."

This year, the directors, writers and producers of five projects from Georgia and, for the first time, one each from Turkey and Ukraine, worked on script development and strategies for co-production, financing, festivals, and distribution and marketing.

The trainers included Turkish producer and Istanbul IFF's Meetings on the Bridge organiser Gülin Üstün, Turkish pitching trainer Aysegul Ekmekioglu, Greek writer Nikos Panayotopoulos, British journalist Nick Holdsworth (The Hollywood Reporter), Slovak producer and MIDPOINT organiser Katarina Tomkova as well as guest speakers, such as Golden Globes chairman and film critic Sergei Rakhlin, Russian screenwriter Oleg Negin (best known for the films of Andrei Zvyagintsev), Luxembourgish producer Paul Thiltges and Cineuropa's own Vladan Petković.

"Alternative Wave is simple and small in scale, but it has great potential to bring people together to enable them to think, discuss and work on projects together, in addition to working with trainers," says Turkish producer Nefes Polat, who was at the event with the project Penny Bank, directed by Ferit Karol. "We discussed very specific topics, like the importance of a good logline, or how to connect with film critics and what they are interested in, and it was very valuable to be able to hear advice from both a US and an Eastern European critic – this is very useful to us." 

Here is the list of projects that took part in Alternative Wave: 

56. Spring - Rusudan Pirveli (Georgia)
Child - Nino Basilia (Georgia)
H-Easter-ics - Sopho Chincharauli (Georgia)
The City Shadow - Tornike Tikaradze, Giga Liklikadze (Georgia)
The Victim - Amiran Dolidze (Georgia)
Life of Anton - Yulia Mironenko (Ukraine)
Penny Bank - Ferit Karol (Turkey)