Report

Two Thumbs up for first BoostNL

03 October 2016

Report

Two Thumbs up for first BoostNL

03 October 2016

The first BoostNL support programme of IFFR's CineMart and the Holland Film Meeting was a success for both the organizers and the participants. The streamlined, long-running expert programme provides producers and directors with consultancy and support at all stages: script development, financial packaging, marketing and overall strategic positioning of the projects. The first sessions were held at HFM last week and the programme will conclude at the next IFFR in January 2017.

"it is great to see what we can pull off by joining efforts and energy", comments Marit van de Elshout. "We always try to connect the dots between funding from the HBF, market exposure at CineMart and distribution on a festival level, but to now add this extra layer and finding out it works, is great. It was nice to experience the synergy by combining the strengths of two events such as CineMart and HFM, it really brings an extra boost."

The new partnership was also visible at the HFM award night where two BoostNL projects received a prize. Mormaço by director by Marina Meliande won the Filmmore HFM Work-in-Progress Prize which values €5.000,00 in facility services. The WarnierPosta Prize (valued at €5,000 in audio post-production facilities in one of the WarnierPosta studios) went to Tehran, City of Love. This film is directed by Ali Jaberansari and produced by this year’s Tiger Award winner Babak Jalali.

Leonardo Mecchi, producer of Mormaço: "Boost NL was so important given where we are with this project, and the prize is a recognition of our work that says ‘yes, you are doing right, please keep it going.” Director Melinda added: "For us, it is a confirmation of the quality of the project. We are in the middle of the editing so we had a lot of advice from the meetings that we can take now to the next version, and I am sure we will have a much better film at the end of this process."

HFM head Vanja Kaludjercic sums up the BoostNL event: "The fact that we were all in one space the whole time enabled us to focus on each of these projects and the programme we devised for them, with experts taking the time and effort to really sit down with each of the project participants to whom they were assigned. We could see all of that take place in a stress-free environment, and we received very good feedback on the Work-in-Progress and expert sessions, whether script or financial or marketing. So, after the initial roll-out of BoostNL we received a very positive reaction. Now we will evaluate and decide how to move forward in terms of goals and structure towards CineMart in 2017.”

Van den Elshout adds: "We look forward to now figuring out with all the projects what their ideal programme could be during CineMart in January. We are excited to possibly show some material of projects going into production now and maybe adding a few fresh projects for a next round."

HFM

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