Four festivals have picked projects in post-production that will screen for buyers, sales agents and festival programmers.
The Cannes Marché du Film has unveiled the titles that will screen as part of its works-in-progress section "Goes to Cannes" for this year's online-only film market.
Four film festivals — Hong Kong's Asia Film Financing Forum, Poland's New Horizons International Film Festival, the Thessaloniki International Film Festival and the NFDC Film Bazaar from India – will showcase a selection of curated projects, all in post-production, that are looking for sales agents, international distributors or a slot in future film festivals.
The films themselves are as varied and diverse as the festivals that selected them. The New Horizons' selection includes Piotr Stasik's The Moths, a survival tale in which a group of young boys escape their digital detox camp to hide in the woods, without speaking to one another. After 20 days they are found again but one of the boys is missing. Thessaloniki's picks include Esperanto from director Stratis Chatzielenoudas, a look at canary breeders which is billed as an intimate and atmospheric film essay about communication and self-isolation.
The Asian Film Forum has picked, among other titles, Fei Pang Wong's Dear immigrants: What Was Your First Meal?, a documentary that looks at the lives of immigrants to Hong Kong through their first culinary experience in their new homeland. And the NFDC has included among its selection for Cannes Shankar’s Fairies from director Irfana Majumdar, a drama set in 1960s India that follows the friendship between a little girl born into a privileged family and a village man who is the family servant.
The "Goes to Cannes" selection will screen online on June 22 and June 23 as part of the virtual Marché du Film, which runs June 22-June 26. For the first time this year, industry professionals attending the online screenings will be able to organize one-on-one virtual speed meetings on June 24 with the project reps, from between 9 am to 9 pm local time.
"While film festivals around the world are going through a transformation never experienced before, we wish to rally together to bring positive change to the film industry," said Marché executive director Jérôme Paillard. "We are proud to offer these major festivals and markets an online platform to help the filmmakers reach their audience in these unprecedented times."
