He productions include the festival winner Boy Eating the Birds Food and Eternal Return of Antonis Paraskevas.
About being nominated he says, “Well Cannes is the place to be if you are in the film business and POM offers you a great potential for knowledge sharing and networking with European colleagues. What we do is based on human relationships so I am sure I will meet interesting producers and that we will get to know each other, mingle and hopefully do something together in the short or midterm.”
He also told FNE about his recent productions. “I am finishing a music documentary titled My Friend Larry Gus, a project I have been working on the last three years, and hope will be ready by the end of the year. The next feature project is Hungry Mouth the new film by the Wasted Youth director Argyris Papadimitropoulos that we are going to shoot by the end of the year and it is going to be a Greece, Netherlands and France co-production. It is a film whose premise brings to mind Allen’s Match Point and Pazolini’s Theorema. I’m very much looking forward to it; it is a very strong, stylish and relevant project.”
Ireland`s Producer On the Move Conor Barry is a 2000 graduate from IADT film school. He collaborated with writer-director Brendan Muldowney, founding SP Films and producing award-winning shorts. They also produced Muldowney’s feature debut “Savage” and his latest film Love Eternal. Barry is now co-producer on Simon Pummell`s transmedia project Brand New U.
He told FNE, “Very simply, being an EFP Producer on the Move offers a terrific platform to promote the projects I have, and also to discover other projects. It is amazing to see the number of productions that have been made because of the Producer on the Move initiative.”
His production Pilgrimage is in advanced development with the Irish Film Board and has also received MEDIA development support. Written by Jamie Hannigan, with Muldowney attached as director, it is the story of a group of monks who escort a holy relic across the perilous war-torn landscape of 13th century Ireland, but at a cost to their faith and sanity. The film is a tale about the loss of faith, and about a band of people coming together to overcome huge obstacles.
Kosovo producer Valon Jakupaj graduated from London`s College of Printing in 2001. Then he produced his first feature film, the comedy Adventures of Santa Clause. In 2003 he helped in setting up the first Albanian production company, Sanderberg Media. He launched Gegania Film, a company producing short music videos and TV commercials.
He told FNE, “At the moment I am producing a film which will be directed by writer/director Bujar Alimani. His last film Amnesty won the C.I.C.A.E Prize in Berlin in 2011.”
Speaking about being chosen for POM, he told FNE, “For me, to be selected as a Producer on the Move is an opportunity of a life time. I have been a filmmaker for nearly 15years when most of my work was self-financed. But now that I have been selected, I hope that I can meet other like-minded producers for exchanging experiences and collaboration on our upcoming projects.”
