Three films with backing from MDM at Cannes film festival
The Cannes film festival which will celebrate its 71st edition May 8-19 has revealed this year's official selection. Among the titles to be screened in competition as well as the Un Certain Regard sidebar the festival has invited two productions with backing from MDM. A further production receives its world premiere in this year's competition of the Semaine de la Critique.
Kazakh filmmaker Sergey Dvortsevoy brings his new feature "Ayka" to the Croisette. Already with his first feature film "Tulpan" Dvortsevoy was represented ten years ago in the section "Un Certain Regard" and won the "Best Film Award" and two more prizes. "Ayka" is the story of a young woman, an illegal immigrant worker in Moscow, who recently gave birth to her child, discovering her maternal instinct and trying to find her baby again, after having neglected it in the first place. The international coproduction (RUS / GER / PL / KAZ / CHN) is produced with participation of Pallas Film based in Halle (Saale).
"Donbass" by Sergei Loznitsa will open the Un Certain Regard programme of the Official Selection. With his fourth feature-length fiction film the Ukrainian born director returns to Cannes where three of his previous feature films "My Joy", "In the Fog" and "A Gentle Creature" were Golden Palm contenders in 2010, 2012 and 2017, respectively. In his new film Loznitsa portrays life in one of the most troubled regions in contemporary Europe, the Donbass in Eastern Ukraine, where land is falling apart and a world is collapsing. "Donbass" is produced by Leipzig based Ma.ja.de. Fiction in coproduction with partners from France, Ukraine, the Netherlands and Romania.
The animated documentary "Chris the Swiss" by Anja Kofmel will be presented in competition of the 57th Semaine de la Critique (May 9-17) and is thereby one of the contenders of this year’s Camera d’Or for best full length debut. The Swiss filmmaker investigates the story of her cousin Chris, a young Swiss journalist, who was found dead in mysterious circumstances in Croatia in 1992, in the midst of the Yugoslav Wars. The documentary is a Swiss-Croatian-German-Finnish coproduction with participation of Ma.ja.de. Productions based in Leipzig.