Yesterday, the 53rd Karlovy Vary International Film Festival announced the winners of its various industry sections (the Eurimages Lab Project Award, Works in Progress and Docs in Progress), rebranded under the name Eastern Promises.

The Eurimages Lab Project Award went to the Italian-Swedish creative documentary project Normal [+lire aussi :
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Directed and written by Tulli, and produced by Valeria Adilardi, Laura Romano and Luca Ricciardi for FilmAffair, the movie aims to sketch out a disorientating portrait of commonly accepted ideas of normality, and to form a kaleidoscopic mosaic of scenes from everyday life, observing the ritualised patterns of femininity and masculinity in ordinary interactions, from birth to adulthood.

In Works in Progress, 11 projects were presented from the countries of Central and Eastern Europe, the Balkans, the former Soviet Union and, this year, also the Middle East. The jury - which included Matthijs Wouter Knol, director of the Berlinale's European Film Market; Bulgarian director-producer Rossitsa Valkanova; and Rickard Olsson, from Picture Tree International - chose the Lebanese-French-German co-production All This Victory [+lire aussi :
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Written by Ahmad Ghossein, Abla Khoury and Syllas Tzoumerkas, and produced by Georges Schoucair and Myriam Sassine for Abbout Productions, Marie-Pierre Macia and Claire Gadéa for MPM Film and Fabian Massah for Endorphine Production, the film follows a family struggling to survive during a 24-hour ceasefire in the war between Hezbollah and Israel in July 2006 in Lebanon.

Finally, the Docs in Progress jury - comprising Tanja Georgieva, CEO and producer at Elemag Pictures; Noemi Schory, producer, director and founder of the Documentary Filmmakers Forum in Israel; and Shane Smith, director of programming at Canada's HotDocs - decided to give the section's award (a €5,000 cash prize) to the project Projectionist [+lire aussi :
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fiche film]. The Ukrainian-German-Polish co-production, directed by Yuriy Shylov and produced by Gennady Kofman for Docudays UA, Olha Beskhmelnytsina for MaGiKa Film and ESSE Production House, Dirk Simon for BoxeeMedia UG and Miroslaw Dembinski, was picked from among all the projects chosen for the section, hailing from Central and Eastern Europe, the Balkans, the former Soviet Union and the Middle East. A Special Mention was bestowed upon the Polish project Little Poland, directed by Matej Bobrik and produced by Agnieszka Dziedzic and Agnieszka Skalska for Koi Studio.

Here is the list of award winners:

Eurimages Lab Project Award
Normal [+lire aussi :
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Works in Progress Award
All This Victory - Ahmad Ghossein (Lebanon/France/Germany)

Docs in Progress Award
Projectionist [+lire aussi :
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interview : Yuriy Shylov
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Special Mention
Little Poland - Matej Bobrik (Poland)