"The River" Wins "Pitch&Meet 2017"

Pitch&Meet. Warsaw Co-Production Meetings 2017 took place in a frame of the Warsaw Film Festival between 20th and 21st October 2017. The prize for the best project went to The River: Aslan and his Brothers by Emir Baigazin.

Pitch & Meet. Warsaw Co-Production Meetings 2017

Pitch & Meet. Warsaw Co-Production Meetings took place in a frame of the Warsaw Film Festival between 20th and 21st October 2017 and was an international industry event, addressed both to the Polish and international filmmakers. It allowed to present the film projects to the Polish and international film professionals as well as gave an opportunity to exchange the ideas and network in the frame of “one on one” meetings.

The River

From the film projects presented at the pitching session Polish and international jury members selected one winning project that was granted with a prize of 100 000 Euro for the further production.

The winner of Pitch&Meet. Warsaw Co-Production Meetings 2017 is Kazakh-Polish project The River: Aslan and his Brothers by Emir Baigazin ‘For creating a richly imagined, visually striking and disturbing portrait of young people’s internal struggle. We liked that the pitch presentation used varied means to give the jury a fully-formed idea of what the finished film may be like.’

Members of the jury:

• Amanda Livanou – film producer, alumni of the Sundance Producers Lab in Utah, USA;
• Lenka Tyrpakova – programmer of The Karlovy Vary International Film Festival;
• Andreas Struck – scriptwriter, curator of Panorama at Berlinale;
• Michał Oleszczyk – translator and film critic, Artistic Director of Gdynia Film Festival (2013-2016).

For this year’s edition of Pitch&Meet project the following films were qualified:

• The Hole in the Fence dir. Joaquin del Paso, Mexico-Denmark-Poland
• The Bus to Amerika dir. Derya Durmaz, Turkey-Poland-France
• Cranley Gardens dir. Rafael Kapeliński, UK-Poland
• People I’m Not dir. Francesco Rizzi, Switzerland-Poland
• Seraphyma dir. Marysia Nikitiuk, Ukraine
• Zero%Proof dir. Simon Ellis, UK- Poland
• The River: Aslan and his Brothers dir. Emir Baigazin, Kazakhstan – Poland
• Stepne dir. Maryna Vroda, Germany – Ukraine

Film projects invited to the presentation but out of the competition:

• Najmro dir. Mateusz Rakowicz
• Pilot 9/11 dir. Norman Leto

Event Organised by the Polish Film Institute 

Pitch & Meet. Warsaw Co-Production Meetings 2017 was invented and organised by the Polish Film Institute with the support of Warsaw Film Festival.