22 film projects from 15 countries will be presented at the seventh edition of When East Meets West, the Italian co-production forum taking place on January 22-24, 2017 in the context of the Trieste Film Festival. This year WEMW will bring together more than 350 industry professionals from over 30 countries, particularly from the 2017 spotlight territories: France and the Baltic Countries (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania).
The 22 projects in development – 10 documentaries and 12 fiction features – were selected out of almost 300 submissions from 48 different countries. “This year more than ever we had a very hard time to finalize the selection as the overall quality of the applications received was outstanding. We are very happy with the 22 selected projects, both for their variety of stories and the talented directors and producers behind them. But now it comes down to us, WEMW, connecting each selected team with the right partners”, remarks Alessandro Gropplero, head of WEMW.
Along with the EAVE European Producers Workshop 2017 scholarship, the Flow Postproduction Award and TRL Espresso, all selected projects will compete for two new prizes: the CNC Development Award, a 5.000 EUR grant for the best project, and the EWA European Women’s Audiovisual Network Award, a cash prize for the best female director.
Together with the showcase of projects in development, When East Meets West 2017 will include several other initiatives: the work in progress section for documentaries Last Stop Trieste, the workshop for long feature fiction films in editing phase First Cut Lab, the showcase of completed films previously presented in the forum Born in Trieste and a rich programme dedicated to the co-production opportunities with the 2017 spotlight territories. It is still possible to request an early bird registration to participate in the coproduction forum and all detailed info about the programme and confirmed guests are on www.wemw.it
WEMW is organized by the FVG Audiovisual Fund together with the Trieste Film Festival, in collaboration with EAVE, Maia Workshops, Creative Europe Desk Italy, EURIMAGES, and the support of Creative Europe/MEDIA Programme, MiBACT – Direzione Generale per il Cinema, CEI – Central European Initiative and the Autonomous Region of Friuli Venezia Giulia. The 2017 focus is in cooperation and with the support of CNC – Centre national du cinéma et de l’image animée, Estonian Film Institute, Lithuanian Film Centre and National Film Centre of Latvia.