KARLOVY VARY: Popular Czech musican Ondrej Havelka will direct his debut film Hastrman, based on his adaptation of a Czech book. The project at the third annual Pitch and Feedback forum of upcoming Czech and Slovak films organized at the Karlovy Vary IFF.

KARLOVY VARY: Director/scriptwriter Jan Kobler makes his feature film debut with The Beauteous, a drama about two young gay men who meet and separate on a single night.

BUCHAREST: Ana Lungu is in production with her debut feature, The Adventures of a Dutiful Daughter / Aventurile unei fete cuminţi (working title), an independent production of Mandragora.

KARLOVY VARY: Slovenian director Sonja Prosenc, in Karlovy Vary to premiere her first film The Tree in the East of the West competition, spoke with FNE about her next project with the working title History of Love.

KARLOVY VARY: Slovak director Juraj Lehotsky, whose 2013 film Miracle received the Special Mention when it premiered at the Karlovy Vary IFF last year, was back at the festival this year to pitch his new project Erik about an eight-year-old boy suffering through his parents’ divorce.

KARLOVY VARY: Polish director Tomasz Mielnik has completed shooting on his debut film Journey to Rome, which was presented at the Karlovy Vary IFF Works in Progress.

KARLOVY VARY: Slovak documentary director Ivan Ostrochovsky will make his feature fiction debut with a Slovak/Czech road-movie drama lightened by quirky touches, Goat.

KARLOVY VARY: Award-winning Slovak director Mira Fornay, who is serving on the main jury at the Karlovy Vary IFF, is in preproduction with Cook, F**k, Kill (Frogs with No Tongues) for a summer 2015 shoot.

WARSAW: Alvernia Studios will produce DISCOPOLO, a dark comedy about a social phenonenon of disco polo music starring Joanna Kulig and Dawid Ogrodnik.

KARLOVY VARY: Film production in the Czech Republic rose 23% in 2013, to more than 5 billion CZK with most of the increase due to foreign film production which rose 82% to 2.84 billion CZK.

KARLOVY VARY: Animated director Jan Balej gave industry pros the first look at the upcoming animated puppet film Little from the Fish Shop which has completed the production phase after 410 days of shooting.

KARLOVY VARY: Slovak director Matej Mináč in in preproduction with Never Give Up, a hybrid fiction/documentary comedy about a film that was never made.

ZAGREB: Serbian director Mihajlo Jevtić is shooting 4 pasoša/4 Passports a partly animated first-person documentary set against the backdrop of the former Yougoslavia of the last 30 years. The film is a German/Serbian/Croatian coproduction.

PRAGUE: The Czech/Polish/Slovak coproduction I, Olga Hepnarova will move into postproduction after two final days of shooting in the Slovak Tatra Mountains in August 2014, with plans to have the film completed by the end of 2014 and a release in fall 2015.

ZAGREB: The love story/dramedy that Zvonimir Munivrana is developing through Corvus Film will be directed by Goran Rukavina with shooting planned for the first half of 2016.

BUCHAREST: Claudiu Mitcu (Two of Us/Noi doi) is in postproduction with the documentary The Network/Reţeaua which he is producing with Ada Solomon and Călin Peter Netzer through his company Parada Film, the same company that produced Child's Pose/Pozitia copilului.