Kan Muftić’s “With Blessings on Your Way,” Rioghnach Ni Ghrioghair’s “Touch Me” and “Oriental Snatch,” from “Hundreds of Beavers’” co-creator Ryland Brickson Cole Tews have been selected for the Berlin Film Festival’s inaugural, EFM Frontiéres Focus, a five-movie genre showcase which lifts off as horror and fantasy pics drive an ever larger part of the international sales business.
Unveiled Thursday, the section also features Vanessa Magic’s “Nadine Pick up the Phone” and “Split Rock,” from Ryan Glover, also from Canada.
The five projects were selected from “close to” 100 submissions, a heartwarming response, said Frontières Executive Director Annick Mahnert.
Announced in August, the EFM Frontières Focus sets out to highlight “the depth, range and artistry of genre cinema,” the Berlin Festival and Frontières said at the launch.
Certainly, the Focus underscores the range of current genre output. Folk horror, but unspooling in Bosnia, “With Blessings on Your Way,” for instance, delivers what looks like a potentially powerful, moving and grounded metaphor for haunting post-War collective trauma in Bosnia.
“Touch Me” marks the awaited feature debut of Ireland’s Rioghnach Ni Ghrioghair, who sparked large praise for the direction of her 20-minute “Don’t Go Where I Can’t Find You,” a grief-driven sensorial ghost story which played SXSW in 2022.
An U.S.-Brazil production, the fun-outrageous “Oriental Snatch” marks the latest from the irrepressible Ryland Brickson Cole Tews, co-creator and star of 2023’s “Hundreds of Beavers.” It will give “all the answers” to the 1971 real-life case of “D.B. Cooper”, the only documented unsolved case of plane hijacking. Oriental Snatch may offer more, however. A concept art poster features an armor-plated alligator sporting a Nazi armband.
‘Oriental Snatch’ Courtesy of Frontières
“Each title has a very different identity and offer different stories,” said Mahnert, calling “Nadine Pick Up the Phone” as a “dreamy, lighter comedy drama about trauma and a woman who meets someone in shared dreams who can help her, which I hadn’t seen before,” and “Split Rock” as “perhaps more straightforward – science fiction horror.”
“With the tools of today, someone can shoot a film with their iPhone and have AI and are able to produce special effects. There’s no limitation anymore to imagination,” Mahnert added.
Genre filmmaking is enjoying a remarkable surge in creativity and visibility, attracting leading creative voices, top talent and bigger budgets and EFM Frontières Focus will place it firmly in the spotlight,” Tanja Meissner, director of Berlinale Pro, said in August, announcing the new market focus.
Certainly, the directors of all five titles have credentials. “With Blessings On Your Way” marks the live action feature debut of Muftic, a renowned concept artist (“Bioshock 2”) and animation director (“Kiss Me First”). A silent, black-and-white movie, the LOL “Hundreds of Beavers” grossed $1.4 million worldwide.
“Split Rock” is Glover’s second feature after the Shudder-acquired “The Strings.” “Nadine Pick up the Phone” was selected for the Telefilm Canada’s Talent To Watch Program and won the Canadian Film Festival’s You-CAN-Pitch Competition. After “Don’t Go Where I Can’t Find You,” Rioghnach Ni Ghrioghair is reckoned one of the young directors to track from Ireland.
The directors can be touchingly original. “In a world saturated with technology, tactile, handmade approaches to filmmaking have become a guiding force for me, inviting the audience into the strange, emotional, and often absurd terrain of our existence,” says Magic, writer-director of “Nadine Pick Up the Phone.”
‘Nadine Pick Up the Phone’ Courtesy of Frontières
If there is one trend, many of the titles are genre blenders, “Split Rock,” an eco/supernatural/body horror thriller, for example.
“Split Rock” is in post-production. The other four titles are advancing with financing. In this sense, the EFM Frontières Focus is designed to complement Frontières Platform at Cannes’ Marché du Film and Fantasia’s Frontières Market in Montreal in July, said Mahnert.
“Cannes focuses on proof of concept or post, and Montreal on titles in really early development or very, very early production. We get so many films in post-production that there’s enough for two events,” she added.
A closer look at the five EFM Frontières Focus titles:
“Nadine Pick up the Phone,” (Vanessa Magic, Canada)
Nadine, grief-stricken, listless, 40, answers a strange help-wanted ad to share her lucid dreams. She meets a mysterious young man whose connection to her dream world unlocks long-buried family secrets. “A film about the power of dreams and the necessity of human connection when processing grief” blurring the boundary between fantasy and reality, “ says writer-director Magic. A potentially touching entry, produced by Bonnie Do’s Toronto-based House Panther Films.
“Oriental Snatch,” (Chris Tex, Ryland Brickson Cole Tews)
“The outrageous true story of the enigmatic air pirate, “D.B. Cooper” and his infamous 1971 plane heist. Where did he come from? Where did he go? What really happened on that fateful day? All questions will be answered and several more raised in this sexy, action, adventure, mystery, horror, romance! The only surefire way to learn the real story of D.B. Cooper is by watching ‘Oriental Snatch,’ where truth is spookier than fiction. Also D.B. Cooper is directing the film,” Brickson Cole Tews teased to Variety. Chris Tex (“Wind Princess”) directs.
“Split Rock,” (Ryan Glover, Canada)
In the Saskatchewan badlands, unearthing an unusual boulder of highly magnetic stone, geologist Lauren’s body suffers terrifying transformations as her mind is eroded by an ancient force of destruction. Melding ecological and possession sub-genres, shot on location with widescreen, anamorphic lenses “with the tactile 16mm cinematography and practical special effects that were crafted for the film, something unique and truly disturbing,” said Glover. Produced by Toronto’s Low-End, Observer Effect and U.S., Mexico and Canada-based Prowler Pictures.
‘Split Rock,’ Courtesy of Frontières
“Touch Me,” (Rioghnach Ni Ghrioghair, Ireland)
Marianne, an exquisite florist, suffers a fear of skin-to-skin contact, until as serial killer’s murders ignites her darkest desires. “I want to examine women’s own relationships with their bodies and with the violent male-dominated world we live in,” says Ni Ghrioghair, whose “Don’t Go Where I Can’t Find You” at SXSW in 2022. Produced by Claire Mc Cabe (“Blue Road – The Edna O’Brien Story”) at Pipedream Productions and Fantastic Films (“You Are Not My Mother”).
“With Blessings on Your Way,”(Kan Muftić, U.K., Bosnia Herzegovina)
Deep in the Bosnian mountains, thought cursed, reclusive war survivor Tarik has his tongue cut out and is bound in the forest. Embraced by hornets, he returns otherworldly as a spectral presence, haunting his wife, blurring reality and deep-seated trauma. London’s Snafu Pictures (“Bad Dinosaurs”) lead produces. The story is “born from personal experience in Bosnia Herzegovina. Many of us in the cast and crew quietly live with PTSD while pretending everything is fine,” Kan Muftić told Variety.
‘With Blessings on Your Way’ Courtesy of Frontiéres
