15/03/2006

Nine European film projects have just received a support of over € 3.6m at the 99th Eurimages Board of Management meeting, held in Strasbourg between the 5th and the 7th of March.

At the top of the list there is Paolo & Vittorio Taviani's new feature La messeria delle allodole, which was allocated €650,000. The film, an Italian-Spanish-Bulgarian-French coproduction between Ager Tre Srl, Sagrera TV, Nimar Studios and Flach Film, focus on the massacre of the Armenian people at the beginning of the last century. But the Taviani brothers aren't the only Italian filmmakers to be backed by Eurimages, that decided also to support the second feature by Salvatore Mereu (after 2003 ensemble piece Three-step Dance), Sonetaula. Spanish veteran director Carlos Saura received a support of €600,000 for his new film, Lorenzo Da Ponte, a drama based on the life of the18th century Italian lyricist, who collaborated with Mozart on his "Don Giovanni" opera. The film is a coproduction between Austria (Satel Film) and Spain (Iberoamerica Films). Other two Spanish production companies are among the Eurimages awarded. Alta Producción teamed up with Portugal's Fado Filmes, Ireland's Zanzibar Films, UK's Ipso Facto Films and Brazil's Videofilmes to produce Luís Galvão Teles's Dot.com (€322,000), while Madrid-based Tornasol Films will be part of the production of Bones, by Macedonian director Milcho Manchevski (€620,000), together with Macedonia's Senka Film Dooel, Germany's Blue Eyes Fiction, Italy's Classic and Bulgaria's Camera.

Other titles supported by Eurimages include Nana Djordjadze's The Rainbowmaker (Georgia, Netherlands, Italy, Finland,Rusia), Martin Duffy's Summer Of The Flying Saucer (Ireland, Sweden), Dariusz Gajewski's Herrn Kukas Empfehlungen (Austria, Poland) and Micha Wald's feature debut after his awarded short film Alice, Voleurs de chevaux [+see also:
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