Thessaloniki Pitching Forum

1. CAUTION, RISK OF FALLING EXHIBITS!
Directors: Jana Durajova & Lena Kusnierikova, Producers: Zuzana Mistrikova, Lubica Orechovska, Arkaitz Basterra – PubRes, Slovakia

Alexandra, in charge of the never-ending renovation of the Slovak National Gallery, believes in the urgent need for a space where art can reach people. She fights time. Her father, the architect of the reconstruction, is ill and the gallery is falling apart.

2. DECEMBER
Director: Grzegorz Paprzycki, Producer: Maciej Kubicki – Telemark, Poland

The arrival of December sweeps away the existing order and brings snow and wind to Europe. It also brings strangers. They are called refugees, migrants, or even enemies. The winter cold starts to take over the streets, as well as some people’s hearts.

3. THE FLOATING WORLD
Director: Fernando Souza, Producer: Mo Scarpelli – Rake Films, Co-producer: Jorge Thielen Armand – La Faena Films, Italy | USA | Canada

Ryuki, a transgender man, silences his inner demons with a new job: making women fall in love with him. Yet selling love prevents him from experiencing it. The film follows Ryuki as he considers self perception and self-destruction while navigating Tokyo's underbelly.

4. THE FRENCH CONNECTION
Director: Jamie Goldrick, Producer: Kevin Brannigan – PushPull, Ireland

This documentary examines the modern internet through the prism of the largest alternative public network ever to have existed, the French Minitel. It asks what lessons can be learned to make the internet better today.

5. HARVEST MOON
Director: Rama Ayasra, Producer: Mariam Salim – New productions, Co-producer: Asmahan Bkerat, Jordan

Two activists are on a mission to bring back the cultivation of wheat and its lost heritage to its original homeland, Jordan. They are guided by the experience and wisdom of a young farmer and the knowledge and spirituality of an old one.

6. HONEYDEW
Directors: Marco Bergonzi, Michael Petrolini, Producer: Simone Catania – Indyca, Co-producer: Costanza Julia Bani - Fellonica Film, Italy | Sweden

Looking for freedom, Maureen founded Honeydew (USA), a place renowned for its illegal cultivation of marijuana. The decriminalization of cannabis, however, has become a paradoxical threat to that same freedom.

7. LAND OF SAR
Director: Petra Seliskar, Producer: Victor Ede – Cinéphage, Co-producers: Petra Seliskar - Petra Pan Films, Sara Ferro - PPFP Doel, Slovenia | France | North Macedonia

Zarif is seventeen. As he grows into a man, he’s not sure he wants to be a shepherd anymore. But how can he find a way out? If Zarif leaves the cherished Sär mountains, where he spent his entire childhood, who knows what could be lost for him and his family?

8. MUMS
Director: Ariadna Seuba Serra, Producer: Maria López – Intactes Films, Spain

On their roller-coaster ride trying to become pregnant using assisted reproduction, Anna (40) and Ari (32) -a two-women couple- let us into the intimacy of their home where we go on an amusing, bitter-sweet adventure.

9. PEOPLE IN MY HOUSE
Director: Tatjana Bozic, Producer: Magdalena Petrovic – LEWA productions, Co-producer: Frank Müller – DOPPELPLUSULTRA FILMPRODUKTION, Jacob Gesink - Spacedust production, Wout Conijn - Conijn Film, Croatia | Germany | Netherlands

A single mother from Eastern Europe, living in the West, struggles to find a cure for her uprooted nature. She ventures through her displaced friends, family and migrant communities, trying to find that elusive feeling of belonging.

10. QUIXOTE'S CAMERA - 10 Letters from Beyond Light
Director: Cordelia Dvorák, Producer: Cordelia Dvorák - Paloma Films, Co-producers: Daniel Hočevar – Vertigo, Leonidas Liambeys – Long Run Productions, Germany | Slovenia | Greece

Evgen’s gaze is exiled behind a glass eye and his dreams into a camera. He takes photographs by ear, not depicting what he (does not) see, but rather what he hears, smells, and remembers. Suddenly his touch becomes our eye, and his hearing our seeing.

11. RUNNING FOR ANNA
Director - Producer: Tomaso Aramini, Italy

During the 1970s in Italy, a young hippie leads the fight for prisoners’ rights, and is present on every one of the most important uprisings that took place in Italian prisons.

12. SUPER PARADISE
Director: Steve Krikris, Producer: Paul Typaldos – Filmiki Productions, Co-producer: Dafni Kalafati, Greece

A film about our unquenchable thirst for freedom and self expression; about a desire that reached its heights in the 1970s, on the island of Mykonos: a paradise lost that was never recovered.

13. SUNKEN
Director: Dimitris Gkotsis, Producer: Mina Dreki – Marni Films, Greece

Abandoned ships and their toxic cargo have sunk into oblivion 20 km away from Athens, next to Elefsina: a city considered sacred in ancient times. Sunken "dives" into the wounds of a city that remains hidden beneath the surface, on the threshold of the European Capital of Culture 2023. Are we all equally affected in this environmental crisis?