Berlin’s Co-Production Market Stays Strong Despite COVID Challenges

Netflix, again, made all the headlines. The streaming giant closed out Berlin's European Film Market — an all-online affair this year that wrapped on Friday — with a jaw-dropping $55 million deal for worldwide rights to The Pale Blue Eye, a Gothic horror-thriller set in 1830 that will re-team star Christian Bale with his Hostiles director Scott Cooper.

Elsa Keslassy International CorrespondentThe Berlin Film Festival’s European Film Market had a successful 2021 online edition with the participation of 12,000 attendees from 131 countries. The industry event, which took place March 1-5, gathered 504 exhibitors — 215 of which were newcomers at EFM — from 60 countries.

It’s 1943. A particularly cruel winter has swept through the occupied Soviet Union.

Berlin’s Netflix Film MarketFor the last two years, a Netflix panel was the hottest ticket at the Berlinale Series Market Conference. But the U.S.

The coronavirus pandemic has obviously changed how movies are being made, with the extra costs involved in testing and implementing strict hygienic regimes, and the constant threat hanging over every shoot that a local outbreak or lockdown could shut things down.

This year, more than most, Berlin's European Film Market was an opportunity to gauge the health of the global indie industry. Judging from the business done over the past week — the 2021 EFM wraps Friday — the general assessment would be: The patient is stable and the prognosis is promising.

The first thing to understand about the social dynamics in Mexico around police is that they differ greatly from how the public in the United States relates to law enforcement officers. Stateside, both the uncritical reverence some feel toward them—namely the Blue Lives Matter crowd—and the terror they incite among BIPOC communities emanate from their violent efficaciousness and status as inflexible figures reveling in a lack of accountability.

As industry guests enjoy the Berlinale from home this year, eagle-eyed viewers will take pleasure in spotting a familiar location in the latest film from South Korean auteur and festival-regular Hong Sang-soo. If we can’t stroll around Potsdamer Platz this year, at least the characters in “Introduction“ can share a moment there.

When, last May, the Cannes Film Market bowed to the inevitable and went online-only, it was a leap in the dark.

Ed Meza @edmezavarPalestinian filmmaker Annemarie Jacir’s Gaza-set drama “The Oblivion Theory” has won the top prize at the Berlinale Co-Production Market.Presented by Paris-based Incognito Films and Berlin’s One Two Films, the film is based on José Eduardo Agualusa’s novel “A General Theory of Oblivion,” although the book’s story has been moved from Angola to Palestine during the First Intifada, the sustained protests by Palestinians against Israel occupation that lasted from 1987 to 1993.The

Anna Marie de la Fuente By forging key partnerships with filmmakers, financiers and distributors through the years, The Exchange, founded by veteran sales executive and CEO Brian O’Shea, has grown to become a leading worldwide sales and finance company.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau ChiefTriumph and pain were bedfellows last year for the Korean film industry. But Berlin’s European Film Market and the imminent Hong Kong FilMart see Korean companies putting on a brave face.Korean cinemas were in defensive mode early on in the coronavirus pandemic, as a population familiar with epidemics chose to stay away from crowded places.

The latest from T.J.Martin and Daniel Lindsay, directors of “Undefeated” and “LA 92,” “TINA” looks like another documentary that came off of a factory line, complete with the usual panning shots of contact sheets, dramatic zooms into rolling tapes, cross-cutting between audio interviews and their published print versions, melodramatic score cues doing their best to emulate Philip Glass.

There is an unavoidable distance in life between ourselves and those who came before. Parents, grandparents; no matter how open and honest they are with their children or younger relatives, there is a sense that their pasts remain partial enigmas.

Christopher Vourlias One year ago, as thousands of global film and TV industry reps descended on Berlin for the European Film Market, executives from Nigerian production and distribution powerhouse FilmOne Entertainment had good reason to feel optimistic. The company had recently unveiled a $1 million film fund with China’s Huahua Media and South Africa’s Empire Entertainment, an unprecedented pact for the Nigerian movie industry.

Keeping caution. Katharine McPhee was worried about experiencing an eating disorder relapse while pregnant with her and David Foster’s baby boy.

Matt Donnelly Senior Film WriterLena Dunham just wrapped her first feature film as a writer-director in over a decade.“Sharp Stick,” an indie financed by FilmNation that will screen for potential buyers on Tuesday out of the Berlin International Film Festival, was shot successfully in secret and in compliance with COVID-19 protocols in Los Angeles over the past months.While plot details are under wraps, the film stars Kristine Froseth (“The Assistant,” “Looking for Alaska”), Taylour Paige

Spain brings an extraordinary gamut of movie titles to Berlin. Some highlights:“All the Moons,” (Igor Legarreta)A France-Spain co-production, “All the Moons” tracks two vampires in the northern Spain during the last Carlist war.

Jamie Lang A year after featuring as the European Film Market’s focus country, Chile returns with a delegate of more than 20 producers who will participate in a virtual stand, backed by ProChile and the Ministry of Culture.Bastard.