Initiated by the professional online platform Coprocity (read our interview), working in partnership with 14 co-production markets, the first ever Coprocity Development Prize has been awarded ex-aequo to Italy’s Maura Delpero for her project The Mountain Bride and to Sweden’s Frida Kempff courtesy of The Swedish Torpedo.

Out of 15 pre-selected candidates (read our news), the jury decided to single out "two very promising projects offered up by two young women directors who have already made an impression, and two screenplays which are very different in their approach but which both take us back to the 1940s and revolve around strong female characters fighting against adversity."

Having previously scooped a Special Mention in Locarno 2019 by way of her first fiction feature Maternal [+lee también:
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entrevista: Maura Delpero
ficha de la película], Maura Delpero’s The Mountain Bride takes us to the depth of winter in 1944. In a small mountain village in northern Italy’s Trentino region, the war is both far away and omnipresent. When a young soldier turns up seeking refuge, the dynamics of a local schoolteacher’s family change forever. The young man and the family’s eldest daughter fall in love, which leads to marriage and an unexpected fate… Production is steered by Santiago Fondevilla Sancet on behalf of Italian firm Cinedora, in co-production with French outfit Charades.

Having turned heads at Sundance last year with her debut fiction feature Knocking [+lee también:
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entrevista: Frida Kempff
ficha de la película], Frida Kempff took inspiration from a true story, that of Sally Bauer, who defied her family and social conventions in order to swim across the English Channel at a time when Europe was on the brink of war. Production is entrusted to Erik Anderson and David Herdies on behalf of Swedish firm Momento Film, in co-production with Katja Adomeit (Adomeit Films - Denmark), Klaus Heydemann (Inland Film Company - Finland) and the duo Riina Sildos and Elina Litvinova (Amrion - Estonia).

The jury consisted of international sales agent Clémence Lavigne (The Party Sales), distributor and producer Vladimir Kokh (KMBO – Les Films de l’Arlequin) and journalist Fabien Lemercier (Cineuropa). The Coprocity Development Prize consists of 5,000 euros, in addition to the equivalent of a 2,800-euro promotional campaign on the Cineuropa website.