Thessaloniki International Film Festival

CROSSROADS OPENING

The launch of the 9th Crossroads Co-Production Forum, which is part of the Thessaloniki International Film Festival Agora Industry section, took place on Wednesday, November 6, at the Electra Palace hotel, in the context of the 54th TIFF. Festival Director Dimitri Eipides attended the event. 

In his opening speech, Mr. Eipides said: “I welcome you all, and I must say I share your anxiety! The most wonderful thing is that older projects return as full feature-length films to the Festival, which indicates that the Crossroads Forum and all its contributors are doing a fine job. The Thessaloniki Film Festival is dedicated to independent and avant-garde, as opposed to commercial, cinema. We seek out new trends, new and creative voices, and then present them to the public. And the audience always welcomes and actively supports those voices. I would like to congratulate you all for your amazing work. I wish you all the best and I hope we meet again in the future.”

Taking the floor, Head of Crossroads Marie-Pierre Macia thanked Mr. Eipides and the participants and then presented the members of the Crossroads team. She then called participants to introduce themselves, thereby commencing the program of the 9th Crossroads Co-Production Forum, which will conclude on November 9.

Ms Macia also noted: “This year’s edition of the Crossroads Co-production Forum inaugurates our collaboration with the film project development platform Connecting Cottbus. Since our Forum and Connecting Cottbus share dates and the same goals, we decided to share information as well on our selected projects. In a mutual exchange of information, we present our projects in our respective websites, giving to our guests access to both.”
The TIFF Agora awards will be presented on Friday, November 8, at 6 p.m. at the Electra Palace hotel. 

This year’s Crossroads Co-Prodution Forum, which is an integral and important part of the TIFF Agora section, features 16 film projects. The criteria used in the selection of the projects were: the quality of the script and the creative team behind them and an assessment of each project’s potential to come to fruition. The projects are either productions or co-productions from a Central European and a Southeast European or Mediterranean country or entail script elements connected to the aforementioned regions. The projects selected this year come from the following countries: Egypt, France, Germany, Georgia, Greece, Italy, Spain, Israel, Croatia, Lebanon, Serbia, Tunisia and Turkey.
 
The producers and directors participating have the opportunity to present and discuss their projects in formal and informal meetings with other producers, distributors, sales agents and distinguished production specialists. 

Crossroads is supported by the MEDIA European program and also collaborates with:

- The Greek post-production company 2|35 Inc, which will present the co-production award (visual and audio) to the winning project.
- The CNC (Centre National du Cinema et de l’ image animee), which will provide 7,000 euro for the development of the project.
- The Producer’s Network of the Cannes Film Festival, which will grant an accreditation to the winning producer to participate in the upcoming Producer’s Network 2014.
- The Sofia Meetings section of the Sofia Film Festival, which will select one project to be presented in next year’s edition, in March 2014.
- The Mediterranean Film Institute Script 2 Film Workshops, which award a scholarship for script development to one project.
- The French consulting firm Initiative Film, which will provide its expertise to one project.

- Cineuropa, a European website dedicated to presenting film industry news. 

Crossroads is part of the Agora Industry, which brings together an international network of professionals and provides the space and conditions for meetings, discussions and agreements in an informal, warm and professional environment.

The Agora section is one of the 54th Thessaloniki Film Festival events financed by the European Union – European Regional Development Fund, in the framework of the Central Macedonia Regional Development Program 2007-2013.