Following a long period of uncertainty, the new board of the Greek Film Centre (GFC) was appointed a couple weeks ago, and the institute has now made its first announcement concerning funding since the re-appointment of Electra Venaki as director general a few months ago. The GFC has confirmed the approval of over €257,000 for the support of 28 different projects and over €740,000 that will be earmarked for the final stage of support for eight more productions.

Furthermore, five projects will be jointly supported by the GFC and France’s Centre National du Cinéma (CNC) under the convention for Greek-French cinematic co-productions (Aide à la Coproduction d’Œuvres Cinématographiques Franco-Grecques). The Greek-French fund has a total budget of €450,000: the CNC finances €300,000, and the remaining €150,000 are provided by the Greek side.

A total of 17 feature-length projects – 15 fictions and two documentaries – were submitted, and the committee has picked four fictions and one documentary to be financed. Out of this selection, four projects have a Greek majority producer and one a French majority producer. Even though it was not confirmed officially, this is expected to be the last round of joint Greek-French funding under the current convention, and more is likely to be revealed about the fund’s prosperity in the near future.

In detail, the projects that will be supported are as follows. Titanic Ocean is the debut feature by well-known Greek filmmaker Konstantina Kotzamani, whose shorts have been screened at various festivals and whose latest medium-length, Electric Swan, premiered at Venice (French producer: Manny Films; Greek producer: Homemade Films). Another filmmaker who is well known for his short films, Christos Massalas (Copa-Loca), is being supported for his debut feature, Broadway [+lire aussi :
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fiche film], which was previously selected for the Cannes Cinéfondation Atelier (French producer: Blue Monday Productions; Greek Producer: Neda Film). The third debutant is Orfeas Peretzis, whose project Riviera has already participated in MIDPOINT’s Feature Launch and the latest edition of Thessaloniki’s Agora Crossroads, among other platforms (French producer: KG Productions; Greek producer: StudioBauhaus).

The only French director who is being supported by the fund is Myriam Gharbi, for her semi-autobiographical feature debut Pirates (French producer: MPM Films; Greek producer: Blonde SA). Finally, the sole documentary in the selection is the third feature-length doc by Angelos Rallis (Shingal, Where Are You? [+lire aussi :
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