The second edition of Munich Film Up! has been launched. The eight-month mentoring and residency programme is a joint initiative of the HFF München and the Pop Up Film Residency, in partnership with the Filmschoolfest Munich and the Filmfest München.

Co-directed by Matthieu Darras and Elena Diesbach, Munich Film Up! is designed to support six emerging filmmakers (students and/or alumni fresh out of film schools) each year, developing their professional feature-length debuts. It offers an individual plan specially designed to meet their specific needs. For the duration of the programme, the filmmakers are mentored by top-notch industry figures.

(L'articolo continua qui sotto - Inf. pubblicitaria)

The second edition is made up of three main steps. The kick-off happened in Munich on 16 November, with a four-day boot camp at the HFF München during the Filmschoolfest Munich. Attendees were treated to master classes and lectures given by Hungarian filmmaker Ildikó Enyedi and Polish producer Izabela Igel.

Afterwards, each participant benefits from a three-week Pop Up Film Residency taking place at one of the residencies in the network, planned for March 2023. The hosts of these residencies include well-known European producers, such as Giorgos Karnavas and Konstantinos Kontovrakis (Greece), Marija Razgute (Lithuania), and Ada Solomon (Romania). Finally, the participants will meet again in Munich in June 2023 to present their film projects to the industry representatives present at the Filmfest München, and one of the projects will be granted the Kirch Foundation Award, along with a €5,000 cash prize.

The participants in the second edition of Munich Film Up! are as follows:

Nancy Camaldo - Wolf (working title) (Italy)
Film school: HFF München

Sadeq Es-Haqi - Double Blind (Iran)
Film school: Soore Art University

Ashmita Guha Nehogi - Cold Ashes (India)
Film school: Film & Television Institute of India

Soham Kundu - The Sea Urchin (India)
Film school: University of the Arts London

Viv Li - Hazy Romance (China)
Film school: Doc Nomads Master

Nguyen Luong Han - Rooftop Lempicka (Vietnam)
Film school: University of Texas at Austin

As for the participants’ previous works, Ashmita Guha Nehogi won the First Prize of the Cinéfondation at the Cannes Film Festival with her graduation film, CatDog, in 2020, and it also received support from the Hubert Bals Fund of IFFR. Meanwhile, Nancy Camaldo’s graduation feature, Windstill, was released in German cinemas in 2021. With their student films – respectively, Love Death and Everything in Between and Jouissance – Soham Kundu and Sadeq Es-Haqi were both selected for the competition of the Filmschoolfest Munich this year. Nguyen Luong Hang produced Trinh Dinh Le Minh's award-winning debut feature, Goodbye Mother, in 2019 and has directed several shorts, whereas Viv Li was a recipient of the 2022 Sundance Institute Documentary Fund with her project The Two Mountains Weighing Down My Chest.