Mostra de València consolidates its International Co-Production Forum with the second edition of the event

Five creative documentaries and five fiction projects from countries in the Mediterranean basin have been selected

València Film Afers, the International Co-Production Forum of La Mostra de València, announces the projects selected to participate in its second edition, which will take place on 25 and 26 October at the Centro de Estudios Superiores Barreira Arte + Diseño, the only venue outside Italy of the prestigious Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia in Rome.

Five creative documentaries and five fiction projects from countries in the Mediterranean basin such as France, Spain, Morocco, Lebanon, Croatia, Portugal and Turkey have been chosen so that their producers and directors can visit Valencia and take part in different pitching sessions and one-to-one meetings with internationally renowned professionals, with the aim of establishing links that will enable them to complete their financing and viability. The selected proposals address genres such as comedy, autofiction, drama and social issues.

‘Flying Elephants’, directed by Mona Khaouli and produced by Easy Riders Films (France) and Madame Le Tapis (Lebanon), is a documentary about the story of an elusive Lebanese musician whose lifestyle is, in itself, a small revolution. ‘Grand Petit Frère/Little Big Brother‘ is the first feature film by Moroccan Karima Guennouni, produced by Janaprod, a road movie in which a young woman sets out in search of her father with her autistic brother. ‘Right Were I Left You’, directed by the Turkish Ümran Safter and produced by Ekim Medya, tells the heartbreaking journey of a woman who transports the body of her brother, who died by suicide, to her home town to bury him. And ‘Beirut, journal d’un effondrement’, by the French-Lebanese filmmaker Katia Jarjoura and produced by Les Films de l’Après-Midi (France), shows how the explosion in the port of Beirut in 2020 disrupts the lives of a Lebanese family.

Completing the shortlist is ‘Jusqu’à l’aube/Until Dawn’, produced by Ouarzazate Films, the new project by Mohamed Zineddaine, award-winning director of ‘La Guérisseuse’ and based on a novel by Mohamed Zefzaf, the so-called “Moroccan Dostoyevsky”.

‘Penitentes’, directed by Diogo Pereira and produced by Bam Bam Cinema (Portugal) and Invasión Cine (Colombia), a documentary that portrays the collaboration between mountaineering and science through João García’s expeditions to the highest mountains in the world to find crystallised ice. And ‘Viktorija’, directed by Luka Galešić and produced by Cobra Chicks (Croatia), an acid comedy that narrates the liberation of a mature, bitter and virgin woman who is reborn to life after placing her sick mother in a nursing home.

Two projects linked to Valencia have also been selected: ‘Calle de Los Ángeles’, an autofiction documentary that deals with the gentrification of the Cabanyal neighbourhood, directed and produced by Silvia Rey Canudo; and ‘Donant la nota’, a comedy in Valencian produced by Gaia Audiovisuals, which is the first feature film by Abdelatif Hwidar, winner of the Goya in 2008 for his short ‘Salvador (Historia de un milagro cotidiano)’. Also with a Spanish stamp is ‘¿Es usted secuestrable?’, the first feature film by Mallorcan Charli Bujosa, produced by Mansalva Films, in which the director evokes in a very peculiar way a memory of her aunt, who was present during the hijacking of a flight between Barcelona and Palma in 1977.