IDFA Forum and Eastern Europe
Hanka Kastelicová from HBO Europe posted a photo and a text on FB that caught my attention: Miha Čelar and Nenad Puhovski just pitching at IDFA. Good luck, guys, you are only pitchers from Eastern Europe at IDFA Forum this year, we are very proud of your achievement, I wish you to find the right partners in Amsterdam.
I can only support the wish for success for this Slovenian/Croatian project.
But the only one from Eastern Europe… It made me go through the list of projects for the Forum and I found one more from the region, the Polish “The Prince and the Dybbuk” by the couple behind “Domino Effect”, Elwira Niewiera, Piotr Rosolowski.
But only two! Why? Is the simple reason that the selection committee did not find more of good quality for the Forum? Is it because the Eastern European producers and filmmakers did not apply because they prefer to go to Prague for the East Doc Platform in March, or to some of the smaller pitching sessions like the ones at ZagrebDox or Baltic Sea Forum in Riga or the one connected to the Krakow festival?
Is it because the difference in budgets for Eastern and Western European documentary films are so big that – without any bad thoughts – both the selectors and those selecting think that it does not make any sense to have a project with a budget of 100.000€ at the Forum? Where the normal is around 250.000€.
… IDFA announced its winners yesterday. There was a Polish/Swedish, a Latvian/Ukrainian, a Georgian, a Scottish/Georgian.