GAIFF Pro, the co-production and financing event held under the wing of the Golden Apricot Yerevan International Film Festival, will introduce new projects by emerging filmmakers from the Western Asia region. The Industry Platform is proud to unveil a curated list of 17 projects - 12 in development and 5 in the work-in-progress stage - bringing together filmmakers and producers from over 15 countries. The lineup includes projects from Saudi Arabia, Cyprus, Georgia, Iran, Turkey, Lebanon, and Armenia, with co-production partner countries including France, Serbia, Germany, the United States, and Belgium.
GAIFF Pro Industry Platform was pleased to receive many strong applications from Western Asia, and the selection process was quite competitive, led by independent readers - international leading professionals with diverse expertise and background.
For 2023, the Industry Platform welcomes its Special Guests and Jury members, including Henrik Underbjerg, Regional Team Lead and advisor for IMS Documentary Film at International Media Support and producer with wins and nominations at IDFA, Emmy, Sundance, Berlinale, Hot Docs, Grierson, Sheffield and many others; producer Marianne Ostrat whose recent documentary “Smoke Sauna Sisterhood” has enjoyed international success: Sundance Directing Award, European Film Award, IDA Award and Ostrat being nominated to the Producer’s Guild of America PGA Award in 2024. Among the Guests are the French producer Dominique Welinski who develops films in Israel, India, Philippines, etc. and curates and produces the Factory program at Director’s Fortnight in Cannes; Yorgos Tsourgiannis who has worked with directors such as Emin Alper (“Burning Days,” “A Tale of Three Sisters”), Yiannis Veslemes (“Norway”), and Yorgos Lanthimos (“Dogtooth”); Majlinda Tafa who worked 11 years at the Albanian CNC, representing Albania at Eurimages, EFP, and SEE Cinema Network aand coordinated 8 editions of the Balkan Film Market; and Kamen Balkanski who in 2015 worked as the acting director of the Bulgarian National Film Centre (2015-2017 and 2021-2022) and is currently the head of the Creative Europe MEDIA desk in Bulgaria.
GAIFF Pro Industry Platform will take place between July 8-12, 2024 in Yerevan, Armenia, in parallel to the film festival. The 2024 edition is brought to life by a collaboration between Golden Apricot International Film Festival and IMS, and in partnership with AGBU, with a special focus on documentary films.
IMS operates with the fundamental belief that documentary film is a tool for change. Recognising the unique power of documentaries to raise awareness, they propose solutions and inspire action. IMS believes that documentaries have become one of the most influential ways of telling stories in a time of unprecedented disruption in the media and in the world. Building partnerships with independent filmmakers and film institutions in some of the world’s most challenged regions is the organisation’s primary methodology. They strive to influence audiences and power holders to react and contribute to meaningful and positive change.
Moreover, GAIFF Pro is proud to present Short Cuts Nest for its second edition - a market for Armenian short film projects with an objective of boosting the development of the local short film sector. Its aim is to enhance the influence of short films on the wider film industry and to foster the emergence of fresh cinema authors and artists. The teams of the selected five projects will compete for a special Equipment Prize by Kinoket during the Pitching Sessions.
Furthermore, for the third year in a row, the Industry Platform welcomes film critic Leonardo Goi who will lead a carefully-designed GAIFF Pro Critics Campus programme for the selected film critics. Goi, who is a columnist at MUBI Notebook, runs a handful of other prominent film criticism academies around Europe, including the Berlinale Talent Press, and the workshops held at the Ljubljana's Short Film Festival and Lago Film Fest. He returns to GAIFF Pro to share his industry know-how and walk participants through a full programme of events including film screenings, workshops and practical feedback sessions for aspiring film writers. The best articles emerging from the workshop will be published in the Golden Apricot Daily, which is distributed to festival attendees.
The GAIFF Pro Industry Platform emerged in 2018 as a successor to the successful Directors Across Borders Program that had an incredible ten-year run. It is a co-production event that serves as a vital platform for the development and financing of exceptional film projects that embrace creativity and possess captivating visual qualities. The Platform offers pitching sessions, highly tailored one-on-one meetings with the decision-makers, year-round master classes with award-winning professionals, and pitching and film/script development workshops. The event brings together prominent industry professionals and producers from Western Asia and around the world, all with a shared purpose of discovering the latest and most innovative works. GAIFF Pro is committed to nurturing a variety of voices and aesthetic expressions of the fiction, animation, hybrid and documentary genres.
The Industry Platform includes feature film Project Market and Work-In-Progress Market for first and second feature projects by emerging filmmakers from the Western Asia region, Short Cuts Nest, and the GAIFF Pro Critics Campus.
With great pride, we present a meticulously-curated lineup of 17 outstanding feature film projects originating from the Western Asia region: six Armenian short projects and six international Critics.
GAIFF Pro Project Market presents:
BEYOND THE LINE (FR)
Jérôme Papaphotiou
CEREMONY (IR)
Armin Rahiminezhad
ENOUGH (AM)
Angineh Isanians
FOURTEEN POINT FIVE KILOMETRES AWAY FROM ARARAT (AM)