Montréal’s Festival du Nouveau Cinéma (FNC) celebrated the fifth edition of its Nouveau Marché, which has become a key hub for co-production meetings and the discovery of emerging talent. Twelve international feature-film projects in development were presented to a jury made up of Gilles Duval (ArteKino, France), Kishori Rajan (Viva Maude, USA) and Daniel Bekerman (Scythia Films, Canada).

The line-up of projects hailing from Haiti, Kenya, Nigeria, Kyrgyzstan, Portugal, Chile, Kosovo, Japan, the Philippines, the USA and Canada also had a strong European footprint, with five of the 12 selections being European co-productions (see the news). The European project Sun in Saturn ended up scooping the Grand Prize (see the news).

Here we take a closer look at the European projects presented:

Sun in Saturn – Ary Zara (Portugal/France)
Production: Andreia Nunes (Wonder Maria Filmes)
The Grand Prize at the Nouveau Marché (CA$25,000, or €15,350) went to Sun in Saturn by Ary Zara, produced by Andreia Nunes for Wonder Maria Filmes (Portugal), “for the sensitivity of its writing and its formal audacity in the service of a universal emotion”. The movie, a Portuguese–French co-production, follows 58-year-old Hélèna, forced to leave Canada against her will to return to northern Portugal, where she cares for her widowed father. She finds herself trapped in the country she fled as a young woman. Three years after they last met, her 30-year-old son Sol, a trans man, pays her a surprise visit. It is the first time they have seen each other since his transition. Although the reunion is filled with emotion and pride, Hélèna senses a shadow in this moment of joy, as if something unspoken is lurking behind the smiles.

Lost Frames – Samir Karahoda (Kosovo/Germany/Switzerland)
Production: SK Pictures in co-production with Britta Rindelaub (Alva Film)
With Lost Frames, Kosovar filmmaker Samir Karahoda – who previously turned heads at Cannes and Sundance with the shorts Displaced and Rrugës – teams up with Germany and Switzerland (Britta Rindelaub, of Alva Film) to tell the story of a funeral videographer whose life unravels after the loss of compromising footage. Blending social drama with a meditation on collective memory, the film builds on the pared-back, political aesthetic of his documentary work.

My Name Is Nina Shakira – Samuel Suffren (Haiti/France)
Production: Carine Ruszniewski (GoGoGo Films)
From the Caribbean, My Name Is Nina Shakira by Samuel Suffren is a Haitian–French co-production backed by Carine Ruszniewski (GoGoGo Films, France). The film follows a young girl in Port-au-Prince who discovers writing as an act of emancipation in the face of poverty and violence. This north–south collaboration reflects the French company’s drive to support stories from under-represented territories.

A Decorous Woman – Natalia Luque (Chile/France/USA)
Production: Rodrigo Diaz (Parina Films), Tomsa Films
In A Decorous Woman, Chilean director Natalia Luque, in co-production with France (Tomsa Films) and the USA, paints a delicate portrait of a hairdresser grappling with solitude after her daughter moves abroad. With an intimate, feminist gaze, the movie examines womanhood and uprooting through migration and intergenerational transmission.

Adults Making Big Decisions – Karin Franz Körlof (Sweden)
Production: Hanna Hannerz Simå (Nordantill Film)
Adults Making Big Decisions by Sweden’s Karin Franz Körlof blends absurdity and political satire in a story where children, trapped in adult bodies, run a country plunged into chaos. Beneath its off-kilter humour, this Swedish-Danish co-production interrogates the maturity of modern democracies and Europe’s relationship to political responsibility. The project is spearheaded by the director and producer Hanna Hannerz Simå (Nordantill Film).