BELGRADE: Serbian director Zdravko Šotra is in production with Santa Maria della Salute, a feature film and a TV series shot simultaneously, about the life and work of the Serbian poet Laza Kostić. Shooting started on 1 August 2016 and will wrap at the end of October 2016. The 70 shooting days will be spent on location in Serbia, Montenegro (Cetinje), Italy (Venice) and Hungary (Budapest). The total number of locations amounts to around 150. The film and TV series are being edited as the shoot is progressing.

VILNIUS: Lithuanian director Giedrė Beinoriūtė is currently shooting Breathing into Marble, a Lithuanian/Croatian coproduction based on a novel by Laura Sintija Černiauskaitė. This is the debut feature of Beinoriūtė, whose documentary Conversations on Serious Topics / Pokalbiai rimtomis temomis (Monoklis) was selected as Lithuania’s bid for the 2013 Oscars.

LUBLIN: Polish box office hit director Juliusz Machulski is currently shooting his new comedy Volta, produced by ZEBRA Film Studio with an all-star cast. The film is set to premiere in 2017.

BELGRADE: Serbian actor Nikola Kojo has wrapped production on his directorial debut The Flock / Stado, a satirical comedy about life behind the camera, based on a true story. The project is currently in postproduction with the premiere due for 24 November 2016.

VALLETTA: The film commissioner for Malta, Engelbert Grech, has announced that Netflix is in talks with the Commission to film parts of a series in Malta. Although Grech revealed no details on the Netflix series, he indicated that a further announcement on the deal can be expected in mid-September 2016.

PRAGUE: New Czech production company Cinema Belongs To Us, founded by filmmaker Asmara Beraki, is currently in production with the low budget film The Absence of Closeness. This psychological drama is the debut feature by Josef Tuka, who studied at FAMU under the tutelage of Věra Chytilová.

VILNIUS: Henrik Hellstrom‘s futuristic drama 2060, a Swedish/Lithuanian  coproduction, was shot in Lithuania from 10 to 19 August 2016. The tragicomic story  takes place in 2060, in a nursing home for elderly people, where a newcomer Amanda has to realise what is important in life.

TALLINN: Monika Siimets’s debut feature The Little Comrade tells the story of six-year-old Leelo (Helena-Maria Reisner), whose mother Helmes (Eva Koldits) is sent to a Siberian prison camp during the Stalinist repressions of 1950. Shooting began this week and the premiere is set for 2018, on the occasion of the 100 years celebration of the Republic of Estonia.

WARSAW: Polish Oscar winner Paweł Pawlikowski is in development with Cold War (working title), a drama set in Poland of the 50s and 60s. Pawlikowski told FNE that the film will tell the story of two young people and their difficult love in those times.

BUCHAREST: Ivana Mladenovic’s debut feature Soldiers. A Story from Ferentari, a contemporary gay love story set in the poorest neighborhood of Bucharest, is currently shooting. The film is a Romanian/Serbian/Belgian coproduction, produced by Ada Solomon through HiFilm Productions.

VILNIUS: Lithuanian writer/director Egle Vertelyte is in postproduction with her first feature film Miracle, a Lithuanian/Bulgarian coproduction.

WARSAW: Wiesław Saniewski‘s Squadron 303, the long awaited adaptation of Arkady Fiedler's bestselling novel about Polish pilots who fought in the Battle of Britain, is currently in production. Jerzy Skolimowski, James McManus and Ewa Piaskowska wrote the script.

SOFIA: Serbian writer/director Bojan Vuletic is in postproduction with the dark comedy Requiem For Mrs J, a Serbian/Bulgarian/Macedonian coproduction. Famous Serbian actress Mirjana Karanovic is Mrs J, a middle-aged widow who decides to commit suicide.

PRAGUE: Pavel Sadílek’s Nagano -The Birth of Heroes, a long puppet animated film made under the auspices of the Czech Olympic Committee and the Czech Ice Hockey, is currently in pre-development.

LJUBLJANA: Slovenian director Matjaž Ivanišin is developing his debut feature Wake, a drama about how death and memories affect people’s lives. The first draft of this Slovenian/Czech coproduction has been presented at the Czech Film Springboard in 2016.

VILNIUS: Popular Lithuanian director Emilis Vėlyvis is completing postproduction on the thriller The Night Guards a.k.a. Wings. The film is a Russian production starring Leonid Yarmolnik and Ivan Yankovsky.