Designed to create a challenging and creative framework for new European talent working on their first or second documentary films, five new projects were pitched January 23 to the professional audience of FIPADOC International Documentary Festival, Biarritz.
Director Olivér Márk Tóth and producer László Józsa showcased the Hungarian production GHETTO CHICKEN, the story of 17-year-old high school student Marci who suddenly becomes a huge rap music internet sensation. A boy from the country, he explodes as an artist in just a few months, reaching millions of YouTube views. We meet Marci at school, having trouble paying attention in class because of his ADHD, and teased by teachers for rapping about smoking weed. As Marci’s career kicks off, he soon discovers that fame is not what he thought it would be. He often vomits before concerts due to stress, drink and drugs. As the stakes continue to rise, how does he keep his feet on the ground when success sends him flying?
“In summer 2022, I heard a song. It was ‘Ghetto Chicken’, and I was shocked,” comments director Tóth. “A 17-year-old schoolboy with a face of an angel, but the voice of a 50-year-old chain-smoker, and the lyrics were just really smart. And during that summer I was thinking that I really wanted to follow someone’s path, someone’s journey to the top. And when I heard the song, I instantly knew that, okay, he’s the one I was looking for.”
The project description posits that most music documentaries are about established musicians talking about their big year, often decades after their breakthrough. Ghetto Chicken aims to capture the protagonist on his journey. Director Oliver Tóth spent 15 years on the Hungarian music scene as a drummer and band manager, but never made a career. His interest is in what happens during that period when the real breakthrough happens with an artist.
Producer László Józsa (SpeakEasy Project) stresses that this is a project close to his heart. “I have a daughter diagnosed with ADHD, and had drug issues in my life personally, so when Olivér approached me with this project, I had to consider breaking a promise I made myself a couple of years ago not to go into production without proper financing for the film. This was tough because Marci’s story was happening, so I had to take it or leave it.”
“I don’t regret taking this story,” he continues. “Part of the reason we are here today is to change the situation. We are looking for partners, co-producers and broadcasters, or any kind of good advice. We appreciate we are making a feature length documentary. We are able to deliver a TV version, but we are also considering making a shorter mini-series format that fits our main target audience more than a feature-length film.” Ghetto Chicken is due for delivery in Spring 2025, with an estimated budget of €163,000.
The Spanish production IF YOU WISH TO MAKE AN APPLE PIE focuses on Muslim artist Dorine. After living in secret with her Hindu partner for 8 years, Dorine is forced to return to her family home ruled by her father, a fervent practitioner of Islam.
Director Nagore Eceiza tells us: “I was shooting my previous film in India, and one day when we were on set I focused my attention on the hands of the make-up artist. I don’t know why I felt that those hands belonged to a painter, but I asked the question, and she said, ‘yes, I’m a painter.’ She invited me to her studio and I found a real artist hidden in these walls, and I became the only witness to her hidden inter-religious love story, the only person who could tell this story. Unfortunately, the love story ended during those years.”
Eceiza continues: “This is the life of a Muslim woman educated not to talk [but] to obey; who has to come back to her family where the home is commanded by a strict father; a place where the fact of being herself is a transgression. So, she has to convince the family that she’s an artist and she has to deal with her inspiration, whilst also dealing with the taboos around her.”
The film is illustrated by artworks that Dorine creates for an exhibition in Mumbai. In the privacy of her room, we discover her daily life and how she shows herself to the outside world. The project description asks why the film is important. Because it deals with the weight of traditions and religions on individual freedoms, and is about art as a way out and a form of expression.
Both the director and producer Isakun Arandia (Izar Films) emphasise the importance of the themes the documentary addresses. Arandia tells us how, “the projects that motivate me and get me involved are those that talk about social issues and human rights, and if they’re led by a woman, well, much better still.”
Arandia continues: “The project has had a lengthy and fruitful development process where it’s been picked up by different labs and co-production forums, and we’ve managed to raise around 65% of the budget. So at this point in time, what we are looking for are new allies who are going to join us on this fascinating journey.”
Nagore Eceiza already has the end in sight. “The film ends with her solo exhibition in Mumbai in an art gallery. This event happened in June 2023, and I was there of course to shoot it, and the end shocked me. It surpassed my expectations. And I can tell you that the end will not leave anyone indifferent.” If you Wish to Make an Apple Pie is due for delivery in 2025, with an estimated budget of €319,050.
Italian director Pablo Cirês presented the French/Italian doc project ARCOBALENO together with producer Mathilde Raczymow (Les Films du Bilboquet) and co-producer Giulia Amati (Blink Blink Production).
For 50 years Iolanda (the director’s grandmother) has been the queen of the Arcobaleno, a dancehall south of Rome. But the dancehall is getting old, and its end seems near. Only Elisa, the daughter of musician Ermino (the director’s uncle) harbours dreams of taking it over.
Director Cirès describes how, since the age of 16, he has never stopped filming his grandmother and uncle’s double lives as they are transformed into cabaret character actors by night at the dancehall, and by day are caught up in the worries of everyday life. In Arcobaleno, Cirès intends to privilege static and sequence shots to create a melancholy, a sweet nostalgia, to support the feeling of the end of an era. “With this film I want to share with you the place where my desire for cinema was born. It’s a film about a disappearing popular culture and the next generation striving to move forward when there’s a weight of this heritage.” His cousin, Elisa, imagines using the dancehall for inflatable games, a ball pool and an educational farm.
Producer Mathilde Raczymow picks up on these themes, “Pablo’s work is very promising. It’s a highly personal project with an extraordinary degree of accessibility. Today Italy has one of Europe’s lowest birth rates. So, in this sense, the fate of the characters of Arcobaleno (Italian for rainbow) becomes a metaphor of an aging society questioning its own future.”
Still in development, with a delivery date of mid-2025 and an estimated budget of €466,000, the project has so far been supported by French development funds, but more is needed. Raczymow explains, “I’m really glad to co-produce with Giulia Amati at my side and to take advantage of her perspective. We are now looking for partners to join the next production stage.”
Giulia Amati adds: “We share the same vision of documentary making and we both give a lot of space to the writing process and development stage. And this is particularly true for our first movie.”
LOST PARADISE is a poetic mosaic about the vacuum left after the Beirut port explosion of 2020. While dealing with life after the catastrophe, victims are faced with the dilemma: to stay, or to escape the country?
A Syrian family is plotting to pay smugglers to escape, a dancer and a painter are coping through their art, and a Lebansese family is questioning their faith after the loss of their brother. Living under the same roof as their protagonists, Austrian directors Jakob Carl Sauer and Nicola Von Leffern amplify the voices of those forgotten by fate.
“We chose purposely to not work with interviews in the film,” says Nicola Von Leffern. “This is cinema verité. We were like a fly on the wall because the intimacy was our main objective.”
“As a producer, I fell in love with their poetic and wonderful way of portraying the story,” adds producer Peter Drössler (Golden Girls Filmproduktion). “Lost Paradise is a very, very authentic story about the city, but it’s also a film full of love for life. We are already in post-production and are now starting to reach out to search for a festival for the world premiere. We’re also searching for a world sales partner for the journey of the film.”
With an estimated budget of €220,000, the project is in post-production and due for delivery later in 2024.
Kosovan Director Aurelia Berila presented her project ADELINA to the Biarritz audience. Set in 1990s former-Yugoslavia against a backdrop of dire political unrest, the documentary chronicles the journey of Adelina Ismaili, the Albanian pop icon whose subversive performances captivated a nation, including the director herself.
“I can retrace a lot of the influence she had in how I comport myself today,” Berila tells us. “Years later, when I went on to study critical and feminist theory, the image of Adelina remained with me as someone who really exhibited a strong will to live despite the circumstances. In a way, she lived and she breathed what I was learning about theoretically. So last year I started a research project diving into her creative activity in the nineties, and particularly the impact she had on my generation, the people that grew up with this image and the impact she had on the now blooming queer and trans culture.”
The story of the ‘Albanian Madonna’ is set against the oppressive political forces that dictated the reality of Kosovo-Albanians during the Milosevic regime. “This tension between her very transgressive ways and the wide acceptance and love that she received by the people at the time is what I’m very interested in,” says Berila. “It is clear that she found a way to be free, to have a self-contained freedom within a very oppressive environment, especially for women. So, the story will be narrated by Adelina through our conversations that I’ve been recording as she reminisces on her golden era.”
The Tabahana Films production is at development stage, with a mooted delivery date of 2025 and an estimated budget of €100,000. “Visually. It’s going to be kind of a passionate portrait of an idol as a reflection of the struggle of the Albanian people {and] for survival day by day against the constant threat of violence. It’s also about how to do that with a certain joy. How to find a normal livelihood in all the chaos.”
