MUMBAI: Three films backed by the UK Film Council’s New Cinema Fund have been selected for official screening at this year’s Berlin International Film Festival from 5-15 February.
Sally Potter’s Rage will have its world premiere in competition, Dominic Murphy’s White Lightnin’ which will screen in the Panorama section following its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival last month, and Alexis Dos Santos’s Unmade Beds, which also screened at Sundance, will open the Generation 14plus section.
The New Cinema Fund has invested £200,000 in Rage, £600,000 in White Lightnin’ and £430,000 in Unmade Beds.
New Cinema Fund head Lenny Crooks said, "To have Sally, Dominic and Alexis’s films selected for Berlin is indicative of the exciting and visionary work coming out of the UK. Getting this level of exposure on an international platform, particularly after having a record number of British films at Sundance last month, just underlines the strength of our talent."
The New Cinema Fund is also backing new films from established and emerging filmmakers including Henrique Goldman, Paul King and Xiaolu Guo. Goldman is directing Brazuca, whereas King will direct Bunny and the Bull.
Guo will direct She, a Chinese, from Tigerlily Films and Warp X. The film is backed by the New Cinema Fund as part of the Warp X slate and is co-financed by Fonds Sud and the Hamburg Film Fund.
Also part of the Warp X production slate is All Tomorrow’s Parties. The New Cinema Fund has awarded £1 million of Lottery funding for a new slate of Warp X films to run until 2010.
Crooks added, "There is a new wave of incredible energy and creativity surfacing in British filmmaking, whether it be the truthfulness of Andrea Arnold as seen in Red Road and Fish Tank, the beauty of a film such as Bright Star from Jane Campion, the comic brilliance of Armando Iannucci as revealed in In the Loop, or the sheer audacity of Dominic Murphy in combining visual style with under-the-skin story-telling as revealed in White Lightnin’. Add to this the depth and range of stunning new voices in British filmmaking and the prospects are very exciting."
