News - Berlinale Co-Production Market

Five cash prizes and one in-kind prize were awarded to selected feature film projects at the Berlinale Co-Production Market (February 15 to 19).

The Eurimages Co-production Development Award, endowed with 20,000 Euros, went to the producers of Cinédokké & Okofilm Productions from Switzerland for their project Ibicaba - Visions of Paradise (director: Andrea Štaka). The award is presented by the European film fund Eurimages to promote the development of the project. Jury members this year were funding representative Eleni Chandrinou (National Representative of Greece to Eurimages), distributor Øistein Refseth (Mer Film, Norway) and producer Labina Mitevska (Sisters and Brother Mitevski, North Macedonia).

An additional prize with the same endowment was donated by Eurimages to support a particularly promising Ukrainian project: the Eurimages Special Co-production Development Award. It went to the Ukrainian company Tabor, represented by producer Daria Zakharova, for the project The Earth Is Flat - I Flew Around and Saw It by Maksym Nakonechnyi.

The first-ever Gen Z Audience Award, endowed with 5.000 euros, goes to the project 30 Days of Summer by producer Aleksandra Kostina (Bosonfilm) from Ukraine. The jury was made up of five film students from German and French film universities: Billy Betulius, Charbel Habib, Constanza Schmidt, Juliette Bultel and Yusuf Celik. Sponsored by the Franco-German Youth Office, the prize is awarded to a feature film project that particularly appeals to young cinema-goers aged between 20 and 28.

The VFF Talent Highlight Award with the prize money of 10,000 euros, annually presented by the VFF – Copyright Agency of Film and TV Producers, promotes one promising project from the Talent Project Market organised by the Berlinale Co-Production Market in cooperation with Berlinale Talents. This year, the award goes to March 14th (director: Alberto Gross Molo), pitched at the Berlinale Co-Production Market by the producer Laura Egidos Plaja (Contraria Media, Spain). Nominee awards of 1,000 euros each went to the producer Alice Bloch (Marianne Productions) from France and the producer Julia Alves (Quarta-feira Filmes) from Brazil.

The ARTEKino International Award 2025 goes to Dreamgirl by Kaan Müjdeci, produced by Tato Film & Asteros Film (Turkey). This award worth 6,000 euros is presented by ARTE to honour an artistically outstanding project from the Berlinale Co-Production Market.

For the third time, an in-kind prize, the World Cinema Fund Audience Strategies Award, will go to a Co-Production Market project from a WCF-supported country: the producers of Abbout Productions and director Wissam Tanjos from Lebanon will receive extensive consultations on optimising the audience and communication strategies of their film project The Sun Sees Everything.

For the 22nd Berlinale Co-Production Market (February 15-19), 35 film projects from 27 countries have been selected to find partners, in order to secure their financing and get produced as international co-productions in the next few years. 19 of the 35 projects are directed by women.

The official project selection consists of 19 fiction feature projects with budgets between 600,000 and five million Euros being chosen from among 351 submissions. Among the award-winning directors whose new works are sure to spark interest are Ayşe Polat, Tatiana Huezo, Carolina Markowicz, Wissam Charaf, Kamila Andini, Zarrar Kahn, Kirsten Tan, Radu Muntean, Kaan Müjdeci, Ainhoa Rodríguez, Andrea Staka, Miia Tervo and Maksym Nakonechnyi.

Two film projects are looking for partners at both CineMart Rotterdam and the Berlinale Co-Production Market as part of the Rotterdam-Berlinale Express. In the World Cinema Market section, the WCF-funded project I'm Coming For You by Cyrielle Raingou will be presented.

In the Talent Project Market, which is organised in cooperation with Berlinale Talents, ten producers from all over the world who are still in the first decade of their careers will present their latest projects, having been selected from 203 submissions.

This time, the five companies in the Company Matching programme include some companies spanning more than one country: they are hailing from Germany, Indonesia, Poland, USA and Japan as well as Senegal, Nigeria, Kenya and Ghana; participants can request individual meetings with these companies in order to discuss structural ideas, or work on the basis of project slates.

The selected projects and companies can be seen here.

The Co-Pro Series and Books at Berlinale selections 2025 will be announced shortly.

At theBooks at Berlinale Pitch, Networking and Matchmaking Event on 17 February, the Berlinale Co-Production Market, in cooperation with Frankfurter Buchmesse, presented ten exceptional examples of literary material that lend themselves to adaptation. At the pitch event, which has been spotlighting new publications and bestsellers every year since 2006, film producers can get in contact with the film rights holders – renowned, internationally active publishers and booksellers. The presentation of the books by publishers and literary agencies is hosted by Syd Atlas.

The selected books will be presented to 150 guests on the stage of the Berlinale Co-Production Market at Octogon at Leipziger Platz, moderated by author Syd Atlas.

In total, publishers and literary agencies submitted almost 120 works for this year's edition of Books at Berlinale. The authors of the ten selected books come from Belgium, Germany, Denmark, France, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, the Philippines and Switzerland.This year, genre books are particularly well represented in the selection.

The “Books at Berlinale” selection 2025 can be found here.

On 18 and 19 February, the Berlinale Co-Production Market will again be dedicated to Co-Pro Series: producers, editors, distributors and other series financiers will take part in the industry's highly renowned pitch event. Co-Pro Series is curated and organised by the Berlinale Co-Production Market and is also part of the Berlinale Series Market programme (Feb 16-19).

Awarded creators and directors like Fernando Meirelles, Charlotte Sieling, Jennifer Fox, Julian Pörksen, David Wagner or Tereza Nvotová are attached to some of the outstanding projects. Ten top-quality series projects from European countries, Brazil, the US, Canada, and New Zealand are looking for suitable co-producers, distribution and broadcasting partners, and financiers among the international industry. After the pitches, the producers of the projects met interested potential partners at a get-together and in individual meetings.

The "Co-Pro Series" selection can be found here, along with all selected projects of the Berlinale Co-Production Market

We had the pleasure of preparing a new episode of the Industry Insights Podcast, together with our colleagues from the EFM.

n this episode, the Berlinale Co-Production Market invites two experienced producers to share their innovative strategies as part of a film industry in flux and how they address the changes of their own roles. Didar Domehri, producer and founder of Maneki Film and Maneki Stories, and Roman Paul, producer and co-founder of Razor Film Produktion, join forces to discuss the need for both, flexibility and collaboration while maintaining one’s own outstanding focus as an independent producer

Find the podcast here

Timeline and links for our 2025 edition (Feb 15-19, 2025):

Closed: July-September 4: submissions open for the Talent Project Market in cooperation with Berlinale Talents. 10 projects will be selected for the Talent Project Market 2025. Find more information here

Closed: August 14 to September 18: Call for the Official Selection: Experienced producers from all over the world could submit their new feature-length fiction projects with a budget range from 1 to 20 million Euros, with at least 30% of financing (or the local production funding) already in place, for which they are seeking international co-production and financing partners. Ca. 20 of them will be selected and presented at the Berlinale Co-Production Market 2025. More info and link to the online submission for feature projects for the Official Selection.

Closed: August 14 to October 1: Co-Pro Series: Drama series projects in development and financing stages can be submitted for Co-Pro Series. A selection of 10 projects will be presented at the Co-Pro Series Pitch and Networking event. Further information and link to the online submission for drama series projects for Co-Pro Series.

Closed: Sep/Oct to November 12: Books at Berlinale: literary agents and publishers can submit novels for Books at Berlinale, to be held in cooperation with Frankfurter Buchmesse during the Berlinale Co-Production Market. Find out more here

Closed: producers, financiers, sales agents, distributors, representatives of funds, TV channels and VOD platforms looking for projects, can apply to participate at the Berlinale Co-Production Market without a project.

Open: producers interested in attending Books at Berlinale can still apply to attend by February 7.

We had the pleasure of preparing a new episode of the Industry Insights Podcast, together with our colleagues from the EFM.

This episode focuses on current producing strategies in the drama series landscape after the TV-series boom of the last decade. Hosted by Johanna Koljonen, guest speakers Ankica Jurić Tilić and Marike Muselaers share their experiences in financing drama series, their take on the current market landscape as well as financing strategies for producers in different parts of Europe, and explain how co-productions may play an increasing role today.

Find the podcast here.

We had the pleasure to help prepare our colleagues' podcast, EFM Industry Insights.

For episode Number 6, we checked in with producer Ewa Puszczynska, who is not only a regular at the Berlinale Co-Production Market, but also known for Academy Award-winning Ida by Pawel Pawlikowski, as well as Berlinale films like Kill it and Leave this Town by Mariusz Wilczynski (Encounters 2020) or as a co-producer of the Academy Award-nominated Quo Vadis, Aida?

Moderator Johanna Koljonen spoke with Ewa about her own, very personal approach to life as a producer and to the art of film. Find it here.