With its move to Northern Germany, European Work in Progress Hamburg (EWIP) celebrates its eighth edition, unspooling from 29 September-1 October. This year, it boasts bigger prizes, more partnerships and an even wider platform. EWIP is occurring for the first time as part of Filmfest Hamburg Industry Days (29 September-2 October), followed closely by the International Film Distribution Summit (IFDS), occurring directly afterwards, as well as other related strands, including the Explorer Konferenz.

To learn more about this fresh version of EWIP, we spoke to CEO Torsten Frehse – who wears a second, related hat as the founder of distributor Neue Visionen Filmverleih – to discover what’s new this year and what we might expect to see emerge.

Cineuropa: The buzziest part of the event this year is the move to Hamburg. What was the origin of this change, and what are you most excited about?
Torsten Frehse: With this new cooperation in Hamburg, we really have the chance to build something new. We can work together with the Filmfest Hamburg’s Explorer Konferenz and with the festival’s industry department. The switch offers the possibility to make a much broader event, with more colleagues from the industry than before. I think we have more of a synergy with Filmfest Hamburg, and that was the main reason we went to Hamburg. We hope that in the next few years, this will be an event where European colleagues say, “We’ll go to Hamburg for five days and make it a longer trip, not just for EWIP and IFDS.”

This year’s edition is also one day longer than last year. What are you hoping to accomplish with this expansion?
Exactly – it’s because we have the cooperation with the Explorer Konferenz at Filmfest Hamburg. It has been happening for some years now and also provides perspectives from the producer’s point of view. It’s partially organised by PROG Producers of Germany, the German producers’ association. On the other hand, having producers from their event at ours means that colleagues who presented their projects at EWIP have a bigger audience and a bigger network afterwards for their films.

This year, you have 27 projects as part of the EWIP selection, roughly the same as last year. Could you elucidate on anything unique from this year’s grouping?
It’s not easy to see specific trends, as there is a wide range of topics. A lot of the selected projects are heading towards a more “cinematographic” [sensibility] and are more targeted towards the audience. Filmmakers are having the same discussions that we as distributors are having: how to reach the audience. As a distributor myself, we are also looking at it like this. We were very happy with last year’s selection, as I think around eight films went to A-list festivals. I’m sure that this year, it will be the same, at a bare minimum, because the films are strong in a cinematographic, but not dogmatic, way, so to speak.

The question of geographical spread reemerges again with more and more international co-productions, but naturally, your focus is still the umbrella of “European films”. What does this mean in the context of EWIP?
For us, a film is European if it’s a European co-production. We’re not strict about having a certain definition of what “European” is, as that’s not in the culture of this event. However, we also have our African focus again, for instance. We have selected two projects from Africa, as that has been a tradition for three years. We have also incorporated the delegation of the African European Distribution Academy (AEDA), who are taking part in the programme again this year and have had films selected. But it’s important that we also support European talents. I like European films and sharing these movies across the world – that is one thing we have set out to do from the beginning as the main part of the programme.

EWIP has had several long-standing partners, but the upcoming edition introduces new ones that are contributing financially, in kind and so on. Could you talk about the significance of these new collaborators?
This was based on the switch to Hamburg. Before, we had €65,000 for awards, and now it’s €140,000; that is a big change. The industry was very happy that we came. They had heard about us before, when the event was in Cologne, and they wanted to have us. An alliance called Northern Stars – Hamburg Film Partners amassed €55,000 euros for an award. It consists of five companies together: Loft Tonstudios, CineGate, Zeigermann_Audio, Optical Arts and Zeitkostüm GmbH. That is really good for the event and the participants.

We also have a new partner, OneGate Media, which is coming along for the first time with a cash award. Mostly it’s the works in progress that receive vouchers, but this time, we have this new award where a project gets a licence purchase offer in Germany and Austria, worth €20,000. That can really be a game-changer for some of the films. It can be very attractive for international buyers. It's a huge leap forwards for the programme because we need that conversion rate. We need projects that go to festivals and go to international markets. One big part of this are the awards that are given out here.