OBSERVING by Janez Burger is shooting

In Production March 2022

CHUCK CHUCK BABY by Janis Pugh, producer: EAVE graduate Anne Beresford is shooting. Filming has started in north Wales on UK writer-director debut feature set in a chicken factory. The film takes place in the present day, and is set to existing songs from the 1960s and 70s. Helen, a woman stuck in a rut, working in the local chicken factory and living with her former mother-in-law, ex-husband, his new girlfriend and their baby, whose life is injected with fresh excitement when the object of her teenage adoration returns to town. Anne Beresford and Andrew Gillman are producing through their label Artemisia Films, alongside Adam Partridge of Delta Pictures and Peggy Cafferty of Play House Studios. It is funded by the BFI, with Lizzie Francke executive producing, and Ffilm Cymru Wales, both awarding National Lottery funding, and BBC Film. It was developed by Ffilm Cymru Wales, the BFI and Artemisia Films.

LE PLUS VIVANT POSSIBLE by Delphine Girard, producer: EAVE graduate Henri-Jacques is in production. The young Belgian will be reunited with three characters she knows well from her short film UNE SOEUR, where we crossed the destinies of three characters brought together by an attack: a man, a woman, and another woman. LE PLUS VIVANT POSSIBLE finds them again and wonders about their future. During a party that goes wrong, Dary assaults Aly, Aly calls the police, Anna takes the call. In the aftermath of that night, they must face the echoes of this violence that changed all three of them. Aly tries to get on with her life and minimise the effects of the attack on her life. Dary tries to tell himself a version of events he can live with. Anna decides she wants to remain part of the story. What would justice and repair mean? The film is produced by Versus Production (Belgium) and co-produced by Haut et Court (France), Colonelle Films (Canada) and The Reunion (Belgium).

IO CAPITANO by Matteo Garrone, co-producer: TTB graduate Valerie Bournonville is shooting. A modern-day Odyssey traversing the perils of the desert, the dangers of the sea and the ambiguities of human beings: this is how Matteo Garrone’s hotly anticipated film Io capitano has been described by its production team in a press release announcing the commencement of filming these past few days in Dakar, Senegal. The film shoot will also unfold in Morocco and Italy over a total period of 13 weeks.This Italian-Belgian co-production is a Homeric tale recounting the adventurous journey of two youngsters, Seydou and Moussa, who leave Dakar for Europe. The screenplay was penned by the director himself, who found inspiration for his film in the real-life stories told by Kouassi Pli Adama Mamadou, Arnaud Zohin, Amara Fofana, Brhane Tareke and Siaka Doumbia, all young people who actually made the journey embarked upon in the film. IO CAPITANO is produced by Archimede together with RAI Cinema, in co-production with Tarantula and in collaboration with Pathé. Support comes from Wallimage.

CLARA by Sabin Dorohoi, producer: EAVE graduate Daniel Burlac is shooting. Following a development stage that took almost a decade, Romanian director Sabin Dorohoi has started the shoot for his first feature, Clara, in the German city of Ulm. The project is being staged by the director and Daniel Burlac through Western Transylvania Studios (Romania). The companies co-producing are Eyrie Entertainment (Germany) and Chainsaw Europe Studio (Romania). The screenplay centres on Clara, a former teacher who leaves her family in a poor Romanian village to work as a live-in nanny for a German family. Her son Ionut misses her deeply, and a decision that he makes will force Clara to reconsider her path in life. After the shoot in Germany, the production will move to Romania, in cities and villages in the Banat region. Production is expected to wrap after 23 shooting days. The project was supported by the Romanian National Film Center and ZDF/ARTE. According to the director the film is deeply personal, as he was one of the many children left behind by Romanians searching for better work opportunities abroad or in other cities. “In every Romanian family, there is at least a relative, a brother, a mother, a sister, a father, who left the country to work abroad. This is a gigantic social phenomenon, and I felt the need to pour my soul into a film about this very timely Romanian issue,” the director explains.

OBSERVING by Janez Burger, producer: EAVE graduate Miha Cernec, EAVE graduate and Slovenian National Coordinator Jozko Rutar is in production. Being inspired by a real event, the film follows 27-year-old Lara, a paramedic intern who helps bring 30-year-old Kristijan into the hospital, after he was brutally beaten on a Facebook Live stream that was seen by 20,000 people, with no one calling the police. Although Kristijan is in a coma, Lara starts to receive video clips from his Facebook account, showing unidentified persons watching him get beaten. She reports this to detective Borut who starts an investigation. All of the observers who appear in the video clips will become Lara's nightmare in her real life. She soon realises that she is also an accomplice in this horrible event. The film is produced by Miha Cernec and Jozko Rutar for Ljubljana-based Staragara, and co-produced by Croatia's Propeler Film, Italy's Transmedia, and Kaval Film from North Macedonia. The film’s executive producer is EAVE graduate Nina Robnik. OBSERVING, which will be filmed over an estimated 35 days in and around Ljubljana, Trieste and Gorizia, has received the financial support of the Slovenian Film Centre, the Croatian Audiovisual Centre, RTV Slovenija, Viba Film Studio, the North Macedonia Film Agency, Creative Europe – MEDIA, the Friuli Venezia Giulia Film Commission and the Italian Ministry of Culture.

LES DERNIERS HOMMES by David Oelhoffen, co-producer: EAVE graduate Henri-Jacques Bronckart is shooting. Based on Alain Gandy’s book Les Chiens Jaunes, the story takes us back to March 1945. The Japanese army launch a sudden, brutally violent assault on the French garrisons in the Far East. Thousands of civilians and soldiers are killed. Stalked by the Japanese enemy, a column of legionnaires who are already weakened by alcohol and disease decide to traverse the jungle in an attempt to reach China and allied bases. LES DERNIERS HOMMES is produced by Jacques Perrin on behalf of Galatée Films, in co-production with Belgium’s Versus Productions and Allons voir. Pre-purchased by Canal+ and Ciné+, the feature film enjoys support from French Guyana, where the film will be shot in its entirety until mid-April.

5 & ½ LOVE STORIES IN AN APPARTMENT IN VILNIUS, LITHUANIA by Tomas Vengris, co-producer: EAVE FFF graduate Roberts Vinovskis is in production. The film revolves around five guests who experience a romantic crisis in an Airbnb in Vilnius, unaware of the stories that have transpired within the same walls and under the same bedsheets. Between each episode and the next, the quiet cleaning lady, Jolanta, arrives to wipe away the evidence of their joys and tragedies, while her own love story unfolds. We will spend the entirety of the film within these walls, following “a collection of stories revealing the elusive but real beauty in ordinary life”. The film is being produced by Uljana Kim for Lithuania’s Studio Uljana Kim, and co-produced by Ireland’s Tiger Darling Productions and Roberts Vinovskis for Latvia’s Studio Locomotive. The project has received additional backing from the Lithuanian Film Centre, Eurimages, Screen Ireland and the National Film Centre of Latvia.

Page published 31 March 2022. Updated 1 April 2022.