The Georgian project Venice directed by Rusudan Chkonia and produced by 20 Steps Production and Nike Studio won the Post Pitch Award with a value of 25,000 EUR in post-production services.

Cyprus took center stage at the Connection Cottbus coproduction market held 5-6 November 2015. The divided island nation figured in three of the 10 projects selected for Central Europe’s first regional pitching forum. All the more surprising, this year marks Cyprus’ first appearance at Connecting Cottbus.

Along with the Cypriot project Menopause (A.B. Seahorse Film Production), Connecting Cottbus provided a platform for Belgrade-based Cypriot producer Christina Hadjicharalambous presenting Domino Effect directed by Radoslav Pavkovic, a Serbian project with a Cyprus coproducer attached: Frame By Frame Images. The crime comedy is set in New Belgrade’s high rise suburban residential district where a hired hit man kills the wrong person when he goes to the wrong address. The story intertwines parallel plots, addressing serious social issues in a fresh and funny way. Hadjicharalambous said the film is in early development and looking for coproducers from post-Yugoslav and Western Europe countries with some key artistic positions still open.

Tank and Venice were also two of the films which were overbooked for meetings with producers and sales agents. Connecting Cottbus’ new artistic director Rebekka Garrido told FNE that all ten of the pitched projects had fully booked schedules of meeting on Friday, with a few film spilling over into additional meeting scheduled during the lunchtime. A reduction in the number of projects from 13 in past years to just 10 this year, and shorter, condensed pitches resulted in more positive feedback for the individual films. Along with Tank and Venice, some of the projects which attracted a surprise amount of interest included Menopause and the first animated children’s film to be pitched at Connecting Cottbus, Sugar Kid directed by Igor Ivanov for the Macedonian company Skopje Film Studio.