International Film Festival Rotterdam

 
The 28th CineMart, co-production market of the International Film Festival Rotterdam concluded today, Wednesday February 2 in Rotterdam, with the announcement of the two awards for best CineMart Projects 2011 as chosen by the Jury consisting of Rémi Burah (General Secretary of ARTE France Cinéma), Peter Gustaffson (Swedish Television and Board Member of Eurimages) and Susanne Marian (Essential Filmproduktion, Germany). Touch Me Not by Adina Pintilie (Romania/France) wins the Arte France Cinéma Award and Kid by Fien Troch (Belgium/Netherlands) takes the Eurimages Award. The Jury gave a Special Mention to A Spell to Ward of the Darkness by Ben Russell & Ben Rivers (Germany/France).
 
ARTE France Cinéma gives its Award, consisting of 10,000 Euro to the producer of the Best CineMart Project in support of the financial development of the winning project. The Eurimages Award, consisting of 30,000 Euro, goes to the filmmaker or producer of the Best CineMart Project with a European partner.
With these Awards, ARTE France Cinéma, Eurimages and CineMart contribute to the development and production of independent filmmaking.
 
The winners are:
 
Arte France Cinéma Award
The Arte France Cinéma Award (10,000 Euro) for the Best CineMart 2011 Project is given to Touch Me Not by Adina Pintilie (Romania/France), a co-production of Manekino Film (Romania), Atopic (France) and 4 Proof Film (Romania).
 
Touch Me Not is an investigation into our chronic longing for touch, for contact, on its multiple levels. A woman and two men in search of intimacy. Their solitudes meet - by chance or maybe they were supposed to - in a forlorn attempt at contact.
 
Touch Me Not, which will be Pintilie's first feature, was developed through Amsterdam Binger Filmlab and Script & Pitch. Adina will proceed to develop the project in the Binger's Directors Lab in 2011, which has already been awarded the Pre-Media Support Training Grant.
 
Eurimages Award
The Eurimages Award (30,000 Euro) for the Best CineMart 2011 Project with a European partner is given to Kid by Fien Troch, a production of Prime Time (Belgium)
 
Kid is a happy seven year-old boy who feels safe at home and loved by his mother, even though being a single mom isn't easy for her. When his mother dies, Kid has to face the fears and anxieties of this world. Little by little he starts alienating from the people around him and harbours the hope of finding his mother again.
 
Fien Troch's second feature Unspoken (2008) was presented at CineMart 2007 and screened in Rotterdam in 2009. Unspoken's leading lady Emmanuelle Devos received the Best Actress Award at the Torino Film Festival.
 
In addition to the Awards, the Jury gave a Special Mention to A Spell to Ward off the Darkness by Ben Russell & Ben Rivers (Germany/France), a co-production by Vitakuben (Germany) and Rouge International (France).
 
A non-fiction film shot in Norway by filmmakers Ben Rivers (UK) and Ben Russell (USA), A Spell to Ward of the Darkness depicts a single character at three disparate moments in his life - as a hermit in the Arctic Circle, as a commune participant in the Lofoten Islands, and as the drummer for a black metal band. Taken as a whole, A Spell to Ward of the Darkness is a direct inquiry into what it means to lead a spiritual existence in an increasingly secular world.
 
Ben Rivers has won various awards and commissions, including a Tiger Award for Short Film at the 2008 International Film Festival Rotterdam for Ah, Liberty!, the London Artist's Film and Video Award in 2007 and the 2010 Paul Hamlyn Award.
 
Ben Russell is best known for his Trypps film series of ‘psychedelic ethnographies' and for his 2009 16mm feature film, Let Each One Go Where He May. Ben Russell is a 2008 Guggenheim Fellow, a 2010 FIPRESCI (IFFR) award recipient, and currently teaches at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
 
On their decision to grant a special mention to A Spell to Ward of the Darkness, the jury said of the project:"It's a social experiment that will unfold, exploring different ways of being a human being in this world." They added that the film epitomized a trend demonstrated by a number of projects this year: "In the meetings we encountered a lot of filmmakers who tried to push the boundaries between cinema and reality and by doing so try to create a new type of authenticity."
 
 
CineMart was the first platform of its kind to offer filmmakers the opportunity to launch their ideas to the international film industry and to find the right connections to get their projects financed. Launching 33 new projects this year in need of additional financing, CineMart also heralds an important start of the 'film year'. 
Every year, the CineMart invites a select number of directors/producers to present their film projects to co-producers, funds, sales agents, distributors, TV stations and other potential financiers.