18/05/2008

Sitting at the Baltic stand in the Riviera hall, at the Marché du Film, Lithuania’s 2006 Producer on the Move Ieva Norvilienė is ecstatic and a bit anxious. Her film The Collectress, shot on HDV for €15,000, has been selected for official competition at Karlovy Vary in August. She now urgently needs extra funding to make a 35mm print.

The Collectress is a graduate film of Kristina Buožytė, who studied at the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre. It tells the story of a young woman who notices she is unable to feel any human emotions. One day, preparing some video material for work, she realizes that she can get her emotions back when watching herself on the video monitor. She makes an experiment that ends badly for her. Norvilienė is in Cannes looking for the right sales company for the project.

The Collectress is the typical feature project for Norvilienè: an original and interesting idea by a promising, young Lithuanian filmmaker. In 2005 she set up the company Tremora with filmmaker Ignas Miškinis (Diringas) and now has his second feature film in development: Low Lights, a co-production with Germany’s Dagstar Film. The script was developed through EAVE last year and filming will hopefully start in August/September.

Tremora’s other project, Anarchy in Žirmūnai, the directorial debut of film critic Saulius Drunga, was developed at the SOURCES 2 workshop in 2006 and won the Media New Talent Award in Cannes 2007. Filming of the €800,000 project will start in July. Hungarian producer Iván Angelusz (Katapult Film), whom Norvilienė met at the Producers on the Move 2006 event, will co-produce the film.