An integral part of the 19^th Arras Film Festival (2-11 November – see the news), the seventh edition of the Arras Days will unveil seven projects at the writing stage that will be pitched on Saturday 10 November in front of a jury of three industry professionals (Freddy Olsson from the Göteborg Film Festival, Edvinas Pukšta from the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival and Belgian producer Dries Phlypo, of A Private View), and which will be vying for two development support grants (courtesy of the CNC and the City of Arras). Also devised as a co-production and funding platform, the Arras Days will allow those producers, distributors and sales agents who are interested in these projects to discover them first-hand.

Standing out among the projects duking it out is Never Alone by Finland’s Klaus Härö, who was nominated for the 2016 Golden Globe for Best Foreign-language Film with The Fencer [+leggi anche:
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intervista: Ivo Felt
scheda film], which was also his country’s candidate for the Oscar, as were three other films by the same director (Letters to Father Jacob [+leggi anche:
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Turkey’s Cagla Zencirci and France’s Guillaume Giovanetti will be in attendance with The Princess Spring. They have three features to their credit so far: Sibel [+leggi anche:
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intervista: Çağla Zencirci e Guillaume…
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Austria’s Wolfgang Fischer and his co-screenwriter Ika Künzel will be pitching The Highway of Tears. The duo has just broken through in fine fashion with Styx [+leggi anche:
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intervista: Wolfgang Fischer
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Having risen to prominence with his feature debut, One Step Behind the Seraphim [+leggi anche:
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intervista: Daniel Sandu
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Polish filmmaker Bodo Kox will be pitching The Little Big Prince, his new project, following the head-turners The Man with the Magic Box [+leggi anche:
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intervista: Bodo Kox
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Estonian producer Ivo Felt (of Allfilm) will be pitching Antipolis, which is set to be the feature-length fiction debut by his fellow countryman Kaspar Jancis (who made a name for himself with the animated film Captain Morten and the Spider Queen [+leggi anche:
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scheda film], which he co-directed with Henry Nicholson and Riho Unt).

Lastly, George Sikharulidze will come to Arras to present his debut feature-length project, Panopticon. The young Georgian filmmaker made a splash with his shorts The Fish that Drowned (Clermont-Ferrand in 2014), Red Apples (premiered at Toronto in 2016) and A New Year (unveiled at Toronto last month), and also edited Submarine by Lebanese helmer Mounia Akl (which took part in Cannes’ Cinéfondation competition in 2016). 

Interestingly, for the first time, the Arras Days will offer a carte blanche to Flanders image, including the screening of the work-in-progress versions of two feature debuts currently in post-production and helmed by two young Belgian female directors. They are Cleo [+leggi anche:
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scheda film] by Eva Cools (produced by Lunanime) and The Best of Dorien B. by Anke Blondé (staged by A Private View), and they will be shown on Sunday 11 November.