SEMPRE ES INVERNO by David Trueba is in production
Development & Production News March 2025
In development / pre-production
Film Fund Luxembourg
The Film Fund Luxembourg announced the results of its first funding session of 2025. The film agency backs the development and production of 17 projects, which include six live-action features, three animated features, one documentary feature, two documentary series, three shorts and two XR projects. Among them:
- 200 KOPAVOGUR by Grimur Hakonarson, producer: EAVE graduate Gilles Chanial
- ARMS by Raha Razavi Ghashghai, producer: EAVE graduate Gilles Chanial
- BOXING STORIES by Alain Tshinza, producer: EAVE graduate Alexandra Hoesdorff
- DEAD DAD GIRL by Stephen Korytko, producer: EAVE graduate and National Coordinator Luxembourg Bernard Michaux
- HEADLESS by Govinda Van Maele, producer: EAVE graduate Gilles Chanial
- MINIATUR WUNDERLAND by Félix Koch, producer: EAVE graduate Alexandra Hoesdorff
- THE GREAT ESCAPE by Joren Vandenbrouck, producer: EAVE graduate Marion Guth
- WAT MER IERWEN by Ken Rischard, producer: EAVE+ graduate Alexander Dumreicher-Ivanceanu
Vienna Film Fund
The Vienna Film Fund has announced its funding for new film and television productions. Among them:
- BTBI by Juri Rechinsky, producer: EAVE graduate Arash T. Riahi
- EFRATIA by Amos Gitai, producer: EAVE president Danny Krausz
- MIXED FEELINGS by Evelyne Faye, producer: EAVE graduate and group leader Michael Kitzberger
- SPUR DES BÖSEN: MORPHEUS by Andreas Prochaska, producer: EAVE graduate Josef Aichholzer
- SÜDWEST by Wolfgang Fischer, producer: EAVE graduate Oliver Neumann
- RIOT/GIRL by Arman T. Riahi, producers: EAVE graduates Arash T. Riahi, Patrice Nezan
Lithuanian Film Centre
The Lithuanian Film Centre announced production grants and minority co-production grants:
- I’M NOT LIKE THAT by Marius Pocevicius, producer: EAVE graduate Brigita Beniusyte
- MARCH 4TH by Alberto Gross Molo, co-producer: EAVE graduate Brigita Beniusyte
Croatian Audiovisual Centre
Croatia supports 11 Minority Co-productions. Among them:
- CALL A LARGE HOUND NEAR by Radu Jude, producer: EAVE graduate Alexandru Teodorescu
- GODS MUST BE MISTAKEN by Jakob Krese Weidner, producer: EAVE graduate Tibor Keser
- FALL OF THE PATRIARCH by Anna Shishova-Bogolyubova, producer: EAVE graduate Sinisa Juricic
- KARMIC KNOT by Signe Baumane, producer: EAVE FFF graduate Roberts Vinovskis is in pre-production. In 1971, when Latvia was occupied by the Soviet Union, a poor upbeat family of four (an engineer, a schoolteacher and their two daughters) move into a large house that they cannot afford to buy. The father's brother lends them money on the condition that the family starts an underground business of growing and selling rose cultivars to gardeners and collectors in Russia. United by the purpose to pay for the house and keep it, the family toils in their garden and greenhouse. In the process they become quite wealthy, but with the wealth come arrogance and a sense of invincibility. As the Soviet Union starts to fall apart, the family also unravels. “One overcast morning in the midst of the pandemic, I was looking outside the kitchen window of my studio when a familiar feeling hit me: the world-as-we-know-it was ending. This was familiar to me. In the 1990’s I had lived through the collapse of the Soviet Union. Standing in my kitchen I thought I should revisit what my Latvian family and I experienced as the Soviet Union crumbled, throwing Latvia into social turmoil. I believe that animation is the best medium to tell this complicated story, where each point of view or character’s inner thoughts can be represented in different visual styles”, Signe Baumane said. Dominiks Jarmakovics and Roberts Vinovskis are producing through Latvian Studio Locomotive in coproduction with Signe Baumane and Sturgis Warner through the American company The Marriage Project, and Leonardo Barrile through the Italian Samarcanda Film. The project is funded by the National Film Centre of Latvia, the State Culture Capital Foundation of Latvia and New York State Film Tax Credits. The project is also being developed through individual donations, as well as donations made through private foundations. The film will employ various techniques, including stop motion, traditional animation and CGI 3D.
In production
- SEMPRE ES INVERNO by David Trueba, co-producer: EAVE graduate Benoit Roland is in production. The film is based on his own book Blitz, published in 2015 and set in Liege, Barcelona, Madrid, Palma de Mallorca and Calanda. The plot features Miguel, a landscape architect who travels to Belgium with his girlfriend Marta to attend a conference. There, the end of his troubled relationship comes to a head, and after their separation, he decides to stay on alone for a few days to try to piece his future back together. Broken and out of place, he meets Olga (Isabelle Renauld), a woman twice his age who is volunteering at the same event. By her side, the young man begins to rebuild his life and understand what his new future entails. SEMPRE ES INVERNO is a feature film produced by the Spanish companies Ikiru Films, Atresmedia Cine, Blitz la Película AIE and La Terraza Films in co-production with the Belgium company Wrong Men, with the participation of Netflix and Atresmedia, and funding from the ICAA and support from the ICEC.
- DUST by Anke Blondé, co-producers: EAVE graduate and group leader Joanna Szymanska, EAVE graduate Krystyna Kantor and EAVE+ graduate Giorgos Karnavas is shooting. The film unfolds over the course of a day, during which two tech visionaries are faced with the collapse of their empire and the loss of their families’ and friends’ savings. They find themselves asking: “If you only had 24 hours before going to jail, what would you do with your time?". We then flash back to the end of the 20th century and the threat of the y2k millennium bug. Luc and Geert are scaling summits when everything is suddenly taken away from them on account of an article due to appear in the morning press which threatens to reveal the truth about their network of shell companies and the unchecked innovation and political corruption at the heart of their business model. As prison sentences begin to feel inevitable, they each choose their own path to redemption and strive to earn the forgiveness of their families and of the community, which invested colossal sums based on their promises and which now risks losing everything. They’re both faced with a choice: run away or accept the consequences of their actions. The film is being produced by Dries Phlypo on behalf of A Private View (Belgium) in co-production with James Watson and Mikko Makela on behalf of Bêtes Sauvages (UK), EAVE graduates Joanna Szymanska and Krystyna Kantor for ShipsBoy (Poland) and EAVE+ Giorgos Karnavas for Heretic (Greece). The movie enjoys support from the Vlaams Audiovisueel Fonds (VAF), Screen Flanders, Tax Shelter/Casa Kafka, the Polish Film Institute, the Greek Film Centre, the Ekome Cash Rebate, the BFI Global Screen Fund and Eurimages.
- L’AGE D’OR by Bérenger Thouin, producers: EAVE graduates Enrica Capra and Carine Ruszniewski is in production. Set in 1944, the movie uses original archive footage as a backdrop against which the flesh and blood actors play their parts. In France, Countess Jeanne de Barante has fallen into the hands of a group of soldiers and is being led towards the place of her execution. Over the course of this journey towards death, Jeanne thinks back on her story and the capricious fate, which drove her to this end. From her childhood spent in her parents’ butcher’s in the French provinces in the early 20th century to the years she lived in Paris, alone and in poverty; from her encounter with the intrepid, elusive and passionate Celeste to the spiralling vortex of the Great War; from her reunion with the young count, Guillaume de Barante, who was party to the mistake she made in her youth, to their business in Brazil when coffee became all the rage in the roaring Twenties… Right up until her return to France, when Jeanne finally fulfilled her dream of going home to the village of her birth in the shoes of a countess… The movie is being produced by Carine Ruszniewski on behalf of Gogogo Film and by Enrica Capra for Graffiti Film, with support from Eurimages, the Italian Ministry for Culture’s Film Department, the Piedmont Region – Piedmont Film TV Fund, the CNC, Canal+, Ciné+ OCS, the Occitanie Region, the Nouvelle-Aquitaine Region, the Department of Lot-et-Garonne, the Department of Charente, and Cinéventure.
In post-production
- THE FOURTH KING by Zvonimir Juric, producer: EAVE graduate and group leader Ankica Juric-Tilic is in post-production. The film deals with the 1990s war and its consequences for individuals, and is set during one weekend in the winter on an island. An extended family gathers to discuss the sale of the property they inherited, but they are about to make some other important decisions. THE FOURTH KING is a co-production between Croatian production company Kinorama and Serbian company Atalanta. It was supported by the Croatian Audiovisual Centre, Film Centre Serbia, Creative Europe – MEDIA and Croatian Radio-Television. The film was shot on location in Zagreb, as well as on the islands of Pašman and Krk in the Adriatic Sea.
- Y by Maria Popistasu and Alexandru Baciu, producer: EAVE graduate Anamaria Antoci is in post-production. Olga, her father and her two sisters are living an easy life thanks to the fortune of her grandmother, Ileana, once a lawyer. Ileana’s sudden death troubles the balance of the family and especially Olga, to whom Ileana confessed on the death bed that the files for international adoptions that she worked on after 1990 are inconsistent, and much is not known about the whereabouts of some children. In order to uncover proofs to clean Ileana’s name as well as her own consciousness, Olga has to unbury the past and make peace with it. Romania’s Tangaj Production is producing the film in co-production with Greece’s View Master Films, with public support from the Romanian Film Centre (CNC), the Greek Film Centre, and the Romanian Television (TVR), being also supported by Cinema City, Banca Comercială Romana, Mega Image, Unicredit, Raiffeisen Bank and Centrul Medical Unirea - Regina Maria, among others.
- THE LAST SLAP (L’ULTIMO SCHIAFFO) by Matteo Oleotto, producer: EAVE graduate and Slovenian National Coordinator Jozko Rutar is in post-production. This Christmas comedy drama “is an exceptional example of film co-operation between Slovenia, Friuli-Venezia Giulia and Italy. The film, shot on locations in the Slovenian cultural space, goes beyond the physical borders between the two countries in its story,” Jozko Rutar said. Siblings Jure and Petra live in a mountain village in Friuli Venezia Giulia. They dream to transform their old lakeside house into a modern bar with the reward from finding a lost dog, but things don’t go as planned, and Christmas turns into chaos. THE LAST SLAP is produced by Michele Neri through Italian Staragara I.T. Productions and Jozko Rutar through Slovenian SPOK Films in co-production with Rai Cinema and RTV Slovenija. The project is supported by the Slovenian Film Centre, FS Viba, the Italian Ministry for Culture, the Friuli Venezia Giulia Audiovisual Fund and the Friuli Venezia Giulia Film Commission. The six-weeks shooting started on 20 January 2025 and took place in Italian Tarvisio and Gorizia, as well as in Slovenian Kranjska Gora and Nova Gorica.
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Page published 31 March 2025. Updated 30 April 2025.
