FIFF scriptwriting award goes to "La Mosquée"

For its 25th edition, the annual French-speaking film festival of Namur (Belgium), awarded the screenwriting prize to writer/director Daoud Aoulad-Syad for "La Mosquée/The Mosque/Jamaâ".

The Franco-Moroccan production tells the tale of a Moroccan villager whose life is turned upside down when a fake mosque is built on his land for a movie. When the filming is finished, everything is taken down except the mosque. The film was produced by Film du Sud, Aoulad-Syad's own production company.

The Bayard d'Or for best film went to Romania's "Tuesday, After Christmas"(Marti, dupa craciun) by Radu Muntean, written by Alexandru Baciu, Răzvan Rădulescu and Radu Muntean.

Festival website: FIFF

"Sophie Scholl" writer to act as ScriptEast creative advisor

German scriptwriter and author Fred Breinersdorfer, who wrote the Oscar-nominated “Sophie Scholl” is will participate in the 5th edition of ScripTeast as a Creative Advisor. Over 7 days of the workshop in Sterdyn, Poland, he will discuss the scripts submitted by the participating screenwriters at one-on-one meetings.

Educated as a lawyer and writer, Breinersdorfer wrote 12 novels and numerous theatre and radio plays before becoming a screenwriter. He’s an author of 65 screenplays, many of which were internationally recognized and awarded, including the German Film Award and Adolph Grimme Preis mit Gold - called “German Oscar”.

Breinersdorfer gained international acknowledgement as the author of "Sophie Scholl” - the shocking portrayal of one of the legendary fighters of the Nazi regime in Germany. The film was nominated to the Oscar and received 16 international awards, including two Silver Bears in Berlin - Julia Jentsch for The Best Actress and Marc Rothemund for the Best Director and the Prize of the Ecumenical Jury. International recognition of the film is a double success for Breinersdorfer, who was not its screenwriter, but also the co-producer. Breinersdorfer is a member of the German film Academy. He was the President of the German Writers Association and ran for the German parliament.

ScripTeast is a training program for existing scripts from Central and Eastern Europe. One-on-one meetings with international professionals in different creative disciplines allow the authors to sharpen their objectives for the story and determine the best way to tell it. For details, visit ScripTeast.

"4 Months..." picks up main European Film Award

The hard-hitting Romanian drama "4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days" was chosen European Film of the Year at the 20th European Film Awards in Berlin on December 1. Christian Mungiu's tale has had a highly successful career since picking up the Palme d'Or in Cannes this year. The young Romanian also picked up the European Director award, despite the presence of heavyweights such as Stephen Frears.

The awards are traditionally heavily biased towards art-house movies, and Fatih Akin picked up the script award for "The Edge of Heaven". In a moment of comic relief, Jean-Luc Godard received a Lifetime Achievement Award but chose not to pick it up. "When someone says I have created a life's work, I have to accept this," he told Die Ziet. "But it is my way of criticism not to go there. I don't have the impression that I have made a career. In French, the word also means quarry and in this sense I can accept it." Eh? Methinks something got lost in the translation. In the same interview, he also admitted to stealing money to help finance his early films.

WINNERS OF THE EUROPEAN FILM AWARDS 2007

EUROPEAN FILM 2007
4 LUNI, 3 SAPTAMINI SI 2 ZILE (4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days), Romania
directed by Cristian Mungiu
produced by Mobra Film SRL

EUROPEAN DIRECTOR 2007
Cristian Mungiu for 4 LUNI, 3 SAPTAMINI SI 2 ZILE

EUROPEAN ACTRESS 2007
Helen Mirren in THE QUEEN

EUROPEAN ACTOR 2007
Sasson Gabai in BIKUR HATIZMORET (The Band’s Visit)

EUROPEAN SCREENWRITER 2007
Fatih Akin for AUF DER ANDEREN SEITE (The Edge of Heaven)

EUROPEAN CINEMATOGRAPHER 2007
Frank Griebe for DAS PARFUM – DIE GESCHICHTE EINES MÖRDERS (Perfume: The Story of a Murderer)

EUROPEAN COMPOSER 2007
Alexandre Desplat for THE QUEEN

EUROPEAN DISCOVERY 2007
BIKUR HATIZMORET (The Band’s Visit) by Eran Kolirin, Israel

EUROPEAN FILM ACADEMY PRIX D’EXCELLENCE 2007
Uli Hanisch for Production Design DAS PARFUM – DIE GESCHICHTE EINES MÖRDERS

EUROPEAN FILM ACADEMY CRITICS AWARD 2007 - Prix FIPRESCI
COEURS by Alain Resnais

EUROPEAN FILM ACADEMY SHORT FILM 2007 – Prix UIP
ALUMBRAMIENTO by Eduardo Chapero-Jackson, Spain

PEOPLE’S CHOICE AWARD 2007 for Best European Film
LA SCONOSCIUTA by Giuseppe Tornatore

EUROPEAN FILM ACADEMY LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD
Jean-Luc Godard

EUROPEAN ACHIEVEMENT IN WORLD CINEMA 2007 – Prix Screen International
Michael Ballhaus

EUROPEAN FILM ACADEMY DOCUMENTARY 2007 –Prix ARTE
LE PAPIER NE PEUT PAS ENVELOPPER LA BRAISE
(Paper cannot Wrap up Embers)
by Rithy Panh, France

PRIX EURIMAGES
Margaret Ménégoz and Dr. Veit Heiduschka
HONORARY AWARD
presented by the European Film Academy on the occasion of the 20th European Film Awards
Manoel de Oliveira

"4 months, 3 weeks and 2 days" to open in... Romania

After four months of travelling successfully around the world, the multi award-winning "4 months, 3 weeks and 2 days" is only now set to open in its home territory, Romania. The hard-hitting movie will open at the Bucharest National Theatre (that's one premiere I'd like to attend) before moving to other venues. There are also reports that the film will be shown outside major towns in mobile cinemas, a move which is interesting.

The reason I mention this is to underline the difficulty of coordinating movie releases in Europe. Although the 25 countries are technically a single market, only the major studios actually enable Europe-wide releases. All the countries act like separate markets. There are large distributors and movie chains such as UGC and Kinepolis, of course, but every movie has to find a local distributor and start individual campaigns that fit around the majors' releases.

Another way to look at this as writers is that although you always hope that you are writing something with global appeal, you are largely dealing with a series of local audiences. It's also interesting to note that many of the most successful European films have been intensely local. This has been true of "Billy Elliot", "Goodbye Lenin", "L'auberge espagnol", "Adam & Paul", "12:08 East of Bucharest" and now "4 Months".

For more about "4 Months...", visit the blog.

UPDATE: Nov 25. "4 Months..." was awarded the Bronze Horse for Best Film 2007 at this year's 10-day Stockholm film festival ending Sunday November 25.

"California Dreamin'" sways Brussels

Cristian Nemescu's "California Dreamin'" (co-written with Tudor Voican) was the clear overall winner in the recent Brussels European Film Festival, picking up awards as Best Film, the Audience favourite and an award from TV channel Canvas. Producer Andrei Boncea picked up the awards in the absence of the director, who tragically died in a car accident during post-production. Another noted winner was Gabriel Range's "Death of a President".

The festival also runs a pitching competition, this time won by Spain's Susana Lopez Rubo for "You Can Change Your Life in Ten Seconds" and Belgium's Robert Scarpa for "Délocalisé".

for the full list of winners, visit the BEFF.

"Death of Mr Lazarescu" picks up new awards

Romania's contender for a foreign-language Oscar "The Death of Mr Lazarescu" looks like being this season's hot ticket in European cinema, as it has picked up another set of awards in Namur. The film, scripted by Cristi Puiu and Razvan Radulescu, is the tale of an elderly man being shipped between hospitals in the middle of the night - a road movie in an ambulance. As well as its previous awards such as Un Certain Regard at Cannes, "Lazarescu" picked up the Bayard d'Or Best Film Award at the International Festival of French-speaking Cinema (although I'm not sure how much French is spoken in the movie) as well as a "mention spéciale" in the First Film section, although the award went to Stefan Libersky's "Bunker Paradise". Luminita Gheorghiu was also singled out as the Best Actress.

In addition to its screenings, the Namur festival is an important date in the production calendar as its hosts a co-production forum and numerous international workshops and round tables.

For the full award line-up (in French) visit the International Festival of French-Speaking Cinema.

"Death of Mr Lazarescu" picks up more awards

We haven't seen it yet, but great things are being said about Cristi Piui's "Death of Mr Lazarescu". The Romanian film just picked up both the main award and the Amnesty International Human Rights Award at the 7th Motovun Film festival in Croatia. Prior to that, it received awards at the Transylvania International Film Festival (TIFF) and Hungary's Alba Regia International Film Festival. It also garnered good reviews at the Un Certain Regard section at Cannes.

The tragi-comic story focuses on an ageing resident of a block of flats that involves his neighbours when he feels ill. An ambulance eventually arrives, but the doctors can't agree on a diagnosis. So Lazarescu is shipped from one place to another in the Bucharest night. The script was written by Piui and Razvan Radelescu. Piui was previously the scriptwriter for the Franco-Romanian "Niki and Flo".

Cinelink shortlists East European writers

The Sarajevo festival will again provide the platform for the third Cinelink, a programme that hooks interesting scripts up with the industry. Ten projects from Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Macedonia, Romania, Slovenia and Serbia and Montenegro have been chosen. The writers will undergo a series of wrokshops to get the scripts in shape for presenting them to the industry at the Sarajevo Film Festival in August.

Of the ten projects, two will ultimately be awarded a prize of €25,000. See here for details of Cinelink.