A record number of 226 Polish and international film professionals – producers, distributors, sales agents and festival programmers – have registered for the tenth CentEast Market at the Warsaw Film Festival, which opens today (17 October) with the China-Europe Film Promotion Project. 

Ten new Eastern European films will first be introduced at Warsaw’s Kinoteka 7, and will then screen with more Russian works in progress on 20 October in Moscow, during TVINDIE’s Project for Tomorrow (formerly the Red Square Screenings); finally, they will be shown again in April 2015 during the Beijing Film Market by China’s Film Factory. Seven new Chinese film projects will be launched in Warsaw.

“Our faith in Eastern European cinema was reinforced by the recent artistic and commercial success of Polish director Pawel Pawlikowski’s Ida [+lire aussi :
critique
bande-annonce
interview : Pawel Pawlikowski
interview : Pawel Pawlikowski
fiche film], last year’s Warsaw Grand Prix winner,” said CentEast Market director Anna Korcz. Having grossed €3 million in the US, the film is Poland’s official submission for the Oscar nomination in five categories.

This year’s package includes Romanian director Iulia Rugina’s Another Love Building, a follow-up to her Love Building [+lire aussi :
critique
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interview : Iulia Rugina
fiche film] (2013), which set a local admissions record for an independent Romanian film. Two Polish productions are also on the list: Marcin Wrona’s Demon and writer-director Natalia Koryncka-Gruz’s Warsaw by Night, her directorial feature debut. 

Older than the market, the first Warsaw Screenings of new Polish features were organised 14 years ago – the 2014 selection comprises ten titles, opening with Grzegorz Jankowski’s first feature, Polish Shit. Jan Komasa’s two films set in 1944, the feature Warsaw ’44 [+lire aussi :
bande-annonce
interview : Zofia Wichlacz
fiche film] and the documentary Warsaw Uprising, as well as Waldemar Krzystek’s festival closer, Photographer, will also be on show. 

For the first time, the CentEast Market will welcome a Guest Country: Ukraine, which is also strongly represented in other parts of the festival programme. Twenty Ukrainian producers, directors and distributors have arrived in Warsaw to participate in meetings with Polish and international colleagues.

The market runs until 19 October.