BUDAPEST: Budapest native Andrea Taschler trained as a dramaturg but was talked into working in film production. She started out as an assistant director in 2000, moving up the ranks to location manager, production manager, line producer and finally producer on the 2010 critically acclaimed film Bibliothèque Pascal. 

Danish producer Mikael Rieks is on his second stint with Nordisk Films.

PRAGUE: Czech producer Viktor Taus, raised on both 35 mm and VHS, developed a desire to create both artistically compelling and commercially successful films.

SOFIA: Bulgarian producer Konstantin Bojanov, born in 1968, is a quadruple-threat producer/writer/director/visual artist.

In 2009, EFP Producer on the Move Erika Wasserman of Sweden founded her production company and premiered Henrik Hellström and Fredrik Wenzel's Burrowing at the Berlinale. She has since worked with these directors on The Quiet Roar currently in postproduction. 

BRATISLAVA: Slovak producer Mira Fornay is in the vanguard of a new generation of fearless female Slovak director/producers tackling gritty subjects with unsentimental honesty that male colleagues might envy.

BUCHAREST: For Romania’s Anca Puiu becoming a film producer was a “natural growth.”

SOFIA: Best know as the director of The World Is Big And Salvation Lurks Around The Corner (shortlisted in the Academy awards for Best Foreign Language Film), since 1999 Stefan Komandarev represents Bulgaria as a European Film Promotion 2012 Producer on the Move.

BUDAPEST: "I feel lucky because my job is my hobby too", says Judit Stalter, Hungary's European Film Promotion 2012 Producer on the Move.

"If I don't work, I'm always watching films, reading scripts or just talking films with my friends who are mainly filmmakers," she says. "This is an obsession that requires 24 hours a day."

LJUBLJANA: Ales Pavlin of the production company Perfo (www.perfo.si) represents Slovenia as a 2012 European Film Promotion Producer on the Move.

PRAGUE: Ondřej Zima, European Film Promotion's Czech 2012 Producer on the Move, reckons his biggest success to date is the Czech-Slovak coproduction Love, a box office hit with audiences in Slovakia. "It has been seen by 116,000 people in Slovak cinemas, making it the third most successful Slovak film in the past 20 years," he told FNE.

VIENNA: European Film Promotion 2012 Producer on the Move Constanze Schumann comes to Cannes as a part of one of Austria's leading production companies, Allegro Film (www.allegrofilm.at), which she joined in 2011.

TBILISI: Georgia's European Film Promotion 2012 Producer on the Move Vladimer Katcharava says film production "is adrenalin, it's like being in a war," because "things might change in a minute. You don't have the time for mistakes."

He doesn't have a military background though, but graduated in 2001 in Film Management from the Georgian State University of Theatre and Film (www.tafu.edu.ge).

BUCHAREST: European Film Promotion 2012 Producer on the Move Monica Lazurean-Gorgan emerged as a force in the Romanian film industry in 2007 when she founded 4Proof Film (www.4prooffilm.ro) and was associate producer for Adrian Sitaru's Hooked which premiered in Venice in 2008.

HELSINKI: For Liisa Penttila, whose introduction to production was coproducing Lars von Trier's Dogville in 2001, it is "absolutely essential" to work with good professionals in order to grow.

ZAGREB: For Sinisa Juricic, a European Film Promotion 2012 Producer on the Move, the most difficult task of a film producer is "to keep everyone happy."