The 20th edition of connecting cottbus (8-9 Nov 2018), the East-West co-production market at the FilmFestival Cottbus is full underway, amidst some successful days of matchmaking and networking. During tonight’s ceremony, the award winners out of the 13 cocoPITCH and 6 cocoWIP projects were announced:
The coco Best Pitch Award is traditionally voted for by all market participants. The audience chose OCTOBER by Cristian Pascariu from Romania, in which a boy must convince his father’s suicidal friend to stay alive. OCTOBER was pitched by Cristian and producer Oana Giurgiu (Libra Film Productions), who receives a cash prize of €1,500 as well as the Producers Network Award, a free accreditation to the Producers Network at the Marché du Film in Cannes 2019.
This year’s new Avanpost Pitch Packaging Award went to 9TH STEP by Irma Puzauskaite, produced by Lukas Trimonis (IN SCRIPT) from Lithuania. A recovering alcoholic struggles to make amends with his estranged teenage daughter, risking a relapse into drinking. Romanian postproduction outfit Avanpost will provide the project with in-kind services with a value of approx. €15,000 including strategy consulting and storyboarding as well as production/post-production for a proof of concept. 9TH STEP was selected by an expert jury comprised by Simone Baumann (German Films / Saxonia Entertainment), Denis Ivanov (Arthouse Traffic) and Cristian Nicolescu (Avanpost).
The MIDPOINT Consulting Award went to MEN OF DEEDS by Nicolae Constantin Tanase, produced by Anamaria Antoci and Ana-Maria Voicu (Tangaj Production) from Romania. The story is about moral corruption, which has served a village policeman well, until a chain of events spirals him out of inertia. Our partner MIDPOINT, the training and networking platform for script and project development, will design a tailor-made consultancy for MEN OF DEEDS, which will take place during When East Meets West 2019 in Trieste, Italy.
Sponsored by German post-production studio D-Facto Motion, the D-Facto Motion WIP Award of €35,000 in post-production services was handed out to the work in progress GERANIUM by Cagil Bocut, produced by Asli Erdem and Caglar Bocut (Kolor Film / Beatrice Films) from Turkey. When Defne (20) becomes a murder suspect after her aunt’s suicide, her father could bail her out, but at a cost Defne may not wish to accept. GERANIUM was selected by an expert jury consisting of Sata Cissokho (Memento Films International), Anna Hoffmann (Berlinale Forum) as well as Waheed Zamani and Julia Brachert (D-Facto Motion).
connecting cottbus is funded by Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg, Creative Europe MEDIA, MDM Mitteldeutsche Medienförderung and The State Chancellery of Land Brandenburg.
More information: www.connecting-cottbus.de | fb.com/connecting.cottbus
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