The BFI has made a further 14 awards through its UK Global Screen Fund, boosting global opportunities for the UK’s independent screen sector. Financed through the UK government’s Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), the awards allocate over £2.2 million through the fund’s International Co-production strand, supporting UK producers to work as partners on international co-productions and help create new global projects.

This latest round of awards sees the UK co-producing with 18 territories and will be the first time the fund has supported projects with Czech Republic, Georgia, Iceland, Italy, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Poland, Romania,  Saudi-Arabia, Ukraine and USA. The funding will also support partnerships closer to  home with Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Ireland and Luxembourg.

Agnieszka Holland’s “Charlatan,” the Czech Republic’s official entry in the International Feature Film category of the 93rd Academy Awards, has been acquired for distribution in the U.K. and Ireland by AX1 from international sales agency Films Boutique. Variety spoke to the Oscar nominated filmmaker – who was recently elected president of the European Film Academy – about the project, challenges facing independent cinema, and the fall of President Donald Trump.

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Staying relevant at all costs has somehow overtaken truth itself. Celebrity over science, money over prestige, the whole theater of the absurd is playing out on a one-size-fits-all, 24-hour news cycle.  Vertical Entertainment’s “How To Fake A War” brings the tried and true conundrums into a 2020 world already losing grasp of what truly matters anymore. In the film, an entertainer’s ambitions supersede global concerns as he prepares for another step into the limelight. 

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Thank you to our friends at COCO for inviting Sam Taylor to attend on November 9-11: we look forward to connecting with our fellow producers from the East and pledge our support to the filmmakers from Ukraine.

"Servants," which unspooled in Berlin’s new Encounters section, tells the story of 17-year-old best friends Michal and Juraj, who leave their home village of Spis in communist Slovakia to join a Catholic seminary in Bratislava. FAME (Ireland) produced the film with Ostrochovsky’s Bratislava-based Punkchart Films. Laurent Danielou’s Loco Films is selling "Servants" internationally; the pic has already sold to France’s ARP, and is a candidate for the European Film Awards.

Mike Downey and Agnieszka Holland Berlinale Press Conference 2020 Highlights for Fame Ireland’s Charlatan. The Press Conference Highlights of "Charlatan" with the director Agnieszka Holland and actors Ivan Trojan, Josef Trojan and Juraj Lo.

Fame Ireland on the Red Carpet at the Berlinale 2020. The Red Carpet Highlights of "Charlatan" with director Agnieszka Holland and actors Ivan Trojan, Josef Trojan and Juraj Loj. (Red Carpet Highlights | Charlatan | Berlinale Special 2020)

Abacus Media Rights has acquired the Sky Original feature documentary “The Ghost of Richard Harris,” about the Hollywood star and notorious hell-raiser, for worldwide distribution. The release of the film, directed by Adrian Sibley, coincides with the 20th anniversary of the Irish actor’s death.

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The film was produced in Irish-Czech-Polish-Slovak co-production, by Mike Downey (Chairman of European Film Academy) and Sam Taylor - both from Film & Music Entertainment Ltd (Ireland), Sarka Cimbalova - Marlene Film Production (Czech Republic) and Kevan Van Thompson.

Oscar-nominated Polish director Agnieszka Holland (Charlatan, In Darkness) is re-teaming with her Charlatan team, including Marek Epstein and producer Sarka Cimbalova, on Kafka, a biopic on legendary Jewish-Czech writer Franz Kafka.

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“You have to understand, we’re not here to be happy,” a so-called spiritual adviser counsels one of his wards in a Catholic seminary — a rare moment of truth in the shadowy morass of governmental and theological manipulation that consumes Ivan Ostrochovský’s impressively icy Iron Curtain noir “Servants.” Though happiness has never seemed the objective of priesthood so much as a kind of affectless peace, both are in short supply in a film that jitters and shivers with anti-authoritarian sentiment beneath its serene monochrome aesthetic. Form and feeling are at odds throughout this steadily transfixing tale of young seminarians standing up to the Communist Party’s infiltration of their school in the former Czechoslovakia.

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Agnieszka Holland has signed on to direct a biopic of 20th century novelist Franz Kafka. Titled “Kafka,” the film will cover the writer’s life in a series of standalone vignettes, from his birth in 19th century Prague through to his death in Berlin just a few years after the close of World War I.

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Slovak filmmaker Ivan Ostrochovský started his feature-length film career as one of the three co-directors of Velvet Terrorists [+], and then went on to make his solo debut with Koza [+]. While the former was a documentary with fictional elements and the latter a fiction film with real-life protagonists playing themselves, the director's latest and most successful outing, Servants [+], is pure fiction, albeit based on historical events. The film world-premiered in the 70^th Berlinale's Encounters section.

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The life of the Prague-based surrealist writer who died at age 40 will be shown as a mosaic of events. A new biopic about Czech-German-Jewish surrealist author Franz Kafka is in the works. Polish director Agnieszka Holland will present the concept behind the film, so far simply titled “Kafka,” at the co-production market at the Berlinale film festival.

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Arriving between Pawel Pawlikowski’s Cold War and Limonov — the award-garlanded second and eagerly anticipated third segments of the boxy-monochrome trilogy begun with Oscar winner Ida — Ivan Ostrochovsky’s steely drama Servants somewhat bravely adopts a very similar approach in terms of style and editing.

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A TAUNTON film producer has been awarded an honour in the Queen's birthday list, published today. Mike Downey, Chairman of the Board of the European Film Academy (EFA), has been appointed as an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in recognition of his services to cinema.

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Polish director – and at this point basically living legend – Agnieszka Holland sure works quickly. Almost scarily so, as barely a year after showing Mr. Jones [+] in the main competition of the Berlinale, she is already back, baby, with a new drama, Charlatan [+] – almost restoring the somewhat limping Berlinale Special Gala section to full health. It’s an imperfect, yet complex, take on the true story of 1930s Czech healer Jan Mikolášek (Ivan Trojan, whose very own son Josef Trojan takes over as his much younger self), a strong believer in the medicinal power of plants and known as the – wait for it – “oracle of urine”. If that proud title alone doesn’t make this film sound appealing, frankly what could?

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