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ALENTOURS FORUM 2022

Aurélie Réveillaud and Charlotte Monnier • Alentours Forum

"Producers from all walks of life, hailing from our five partner countries"

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- Working on behalf of the Strasbourg Eurométropole and the Grand Est Region, the project heads discussed the upcoming edition of the Alentours Forum – Rhinish Co-Production Meeting

Aurélie Réveillaud and Charlotte Monnier • Alentours Forum
Aurélie Réveillaud (left) and Charlotte Monnier

The next Alentours Forum will unspool in Strasbourg between 28 and 30 June 2022. One week before the deadline for its call for projects (see the news), Aurélie Réveillaud (in charge of international relations within the Strasbourg Eurométropole’s film and audiovisual department) and Charlotte Monnier (project co-ordinator for CinEuro – Grand Est Region), who are steering the event on behalf of the Strasbourg Eurométropole and the Grand Est Region, respectively (co-organisers alongside Medien- und Filmgesellschaft Baden-Württemberg), lifted the veil on the event’s philosophy and strengths.

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Cineuropa: What are the Alentours Forum’s strengths, and have you changed the event’s concept at all?
Aurélie Réveillaud:
The event, which we initiated in 2002, has changed a lot and really transformed. There are two sides to it: on the one hand, we have pitches and one-to-one meetings, and on the other, round tables. A few years ago, we prioritised the former. What the Alentours Forum does is to allow French-speaking and German-speaking professionals, a large proportion of whom are producers and financiers, to meet around a catalogue of 25 projects. These projects are pitched with a view to developing an international strategy and finding co-producers during the Forum, with French speakers seeking German speakers and vice versa. We have five partner countries: France, Germany, Switzerland, Luxembourg and Belgium. The only change we’ve introduced this time round is to reduce the number of projects to 25, as opposed to the 34 of previous years. But motivated and relevant producers without a project can also come along, in order to benefit from the meetings offered by the Forum. Because a producer who doesn’t have a project but who’s looking for partners is just as important, in our eyes: he or she might, for example, be in the early stages of developing certain projects and looking for co-producers from other countries. And the main aim of our event is to consolidate a network of producers. Moreover, we help registered producers to identify and try to organise the B-to-B meetings which are the most advantageous for them. We organise somewhere in the region of 300 individual meetings. As for the case studies and round tables, the subjects of these tie in with current events in Europe and beyond, because the distinguishing feature of our event is the fact that we work on ambitious international strategies for producers, but always from within a wider transborder territory: in addition to producers from the Grand Est region and from Bade-Wurtemberg, we’ve had producers from all walks of life taking part for several years now, hailing from our five partner countries, from Berlin to Bordeaux by way of Paris.

What criteria do you use to select projects? And which genres do you prefer?
AR:
We choose projects with strong international strategies and high co-production potential vis-à-vis our partner countries. Works we’ve previously selected in our Forum include Gutland [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Govinda Van Maele
film profile
]
by Govinda Von Maele, Chris the Swiss [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Anja Kofmel
film profile
]
by Anja Kofmel, the animated film Fritzi – A Revolutionary Tale [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile
]
by Matthias Bruhn and Ralf Kukula, and Lena Karbe’s documentary Black Mambas [+see also:
film review
film profile
]
, which world premiered yesterday at CPH:DOX. Obviously, we strongly encourage bilateral co-productions whether they’re French-German, French-Belgian or French-Swiss, for example, but the idea is to work with more partners, where possible, to favour tripartite or even four-party co-productions. Clearly, we decide on a case-by-case basis, depending on the preferences and motivations of the individual producer and the feasibility of the project. But the mainstay of a producer’s funding and motivation might, for example, be French-German, as was the case with Sibel [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Çağla Zencirci and Guillaum…
film profile
]
by Çağla Zencirci and Guillaume Giovanetti, a project which subsequently entered into a co-production with Luxembourg and Turkey in order to film on location.

In terms of genre, we’re open to cinema or TV fiction, documentaries, and animations to a certain extent, too. We’ve even received a few transmedia UFOs on this occasion. We’re careful to ensure a good balance when it comes to genres, but also when it comes to countries of origin. We’re also open to series, as we’ve been following the evolution of this particular market. In fact, the producers behind the French-German series Bad Banks, Eden and Alger Confidential and behind the French-German-Belgian work Parlement [+see also:
interview: Benjamin Elalouf
series profile
]
have previously shared their experiences at our Case Studies events.

Are there any differences in project approaches between countries?
AR:
Working with different cultures of writing and production isn’t always easy, which explains the need to work on this issue. In terms of writing, especially when it comes to historic projects, different countries don’t always have the same visions for their projects. And we don’t work on scriptwriting in the same way or according to the same timeline, either; relationships between actors and producers are also different. Co-producers needs to find areas of agreement and build trust, which means they need to get to know one another, which is always more successful in person. And that’s without forgetting the matter of language, which often conceals differences in culture and in how we do things. Because a co-production takes a long time, so you have to really want to do it, a factor which is far more important than whether you have the capacity to set up a co-production. Then you need to know how to adapt: how do you go about writing together? How do you develop the project? How long should it take? etc. But when it works, you realise that it’s often the beginning of a wonderful adventure with co-producers who have already worked together, such as Les Films du Tambour and Riva Filmproduktion, for example.

Charlotte Monnier: The Alentours Forum also stems from a broader, ambitious, pro-active policy which fits with our extraordinary geographic location at the heart of Europe: the Grand Est Region and the Strasbourg Eurométropole provide production support funds and the Alentours Forum is also part of a European project called CinEuro, aimed at actively encouraging transborder co-productions in the film and audiovisual field. It’s a project which was initiated in 2020 as part of the INTERREG Grande Région and Upper Rhine programmes and which brings all the main institutions supporting the sector together: the Grand Est Region, the Strasbourg Eurométropole, Medien- und Filmgesellschaft du Bade-Wurtemberg (MFG), screen.brussels, Wallimage, the Film Fund Luxembourg and many others. In addition to pitches and B to B meetings, these partners develop the Alentours Forum line-up, consisting of workshops and round tables on topical themes for all these transborder countries, whether green shooting, equality and inclusion issues or funding updates, to name a few. The pitches, B to B meetings and Case Studies, meanwhile, are organised in close partnership with the network of Creative Europe desks. Lastly, it’s important that we create a friendly atmosphere during these two days in Strasbourg, which we’re mainly aiming to do by organising one evening event hosted by Arte (who are also a partner of the Forum) and another at the Museum of Modern Art in Strasbourg.

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(Translated from French)

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