EFM Frontières Focus Unveils High-Caliber Ranging Five-Title Lineup

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 chosen for the Berlin Film Festival’s inaugural, EFM Frontiéres Focus, a five-movie style showcase which lifts off as horror and fantasy pics drive an ever bigger a part of the worldwide sales enterprise.         

Unveiled Thursday, the part also options Vanessa Magic’s “Nadine Pick up the Phone” and “Split Rock,” from Ryan Glover, also from Canada. 

The 5 initiatives had been chosen from “close to” 100 submissions, a heartwarming response, said Frontières Executive Director Annick Mahnert. 

Announced in August, the EFM Frontières Focus units 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 vary of current style output. Folk horror, however unspooling in Bosnia, “With Blessings on Your Way,” as an illustration, delivers what appears to be like like a doubtlessly highly effective, transferring  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 reward for the course of her 20-minute “Don’t Go Where I Can’t Find You,” a grief-driven sensorial ghost story which performed SXSW in 2022.

An U.S.-Brazil manufacturing, 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 aircraft hijacking. “Oriental Snatch” might supply more, however. A concept artwork poster options an armor-plated alligator sporting a Nazi armband.

“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, asserting the new market focus.

Certainly, the administrators of all 5 titles have credentials. “With Blessings On Your Way” marks the live action feature debut of Muftic, a famend concept artist  (“Bioshock 2”) and animation director (“Kiss Me First”). A silent, black-and-white film, 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 chosen for the Telefilm Canada’s Talent To Watch Program and received 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 among the younger administrators to trace from Ireland. 

The administrators might be touchingly authentic. “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.”

If there’s one development, many of the titles are style blenders, “Split Rock,” an eco/supernatural/physique horror thriller, for instance. 

“Split Rock” is in post-production. The other 4 titles are advancing with financing. In this sense, the EFM Frontières Focus is designed to enrich 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 better have a look at the 5 EFM Frontières Focus titles:    

“Nadine Pick up the Phone,” (Vanessa Magic, Canada)

Nadine, grief-stricken, listless, 40, solutions an odd help-wanted advert to share her lucid desires. She meets a mysterious younger man whose connection to her dream world unlocks long-buried household secrets and techniques. “A film about the power of dreams and the necessity of human connection when processing grief,” blurring the boundary between fantasy and actuality, “ says writer-director Magic. A doubtlessly 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 notorious 1971 aircraft heist. Where did he come from? Where did he go? What actually occurred on that fateful day? All questions will likely be answered and a number of other more raised in this attractive, action, adventure, thriller, horror, romance! The only surefire approach to study the real story of D.B. Cooper is by watching ‘Oriental Snatch,’ the place reality is spookier than fiction. Also D.B. Cooper is directing the movie,” Brickson Cole Tews teased to Variety. Chris Tex (“Wind Princess”) directs.

“Split Rock,” (Ryan Glover, Canada)

In the Saskatchewan badlands, unearthing an uncommon boulder of extremely magnetic stone, geologist Lauren’s physique suffers terrifying transformations as her thoughts is eroded by an historic pressure 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.   

“Touch Me,” (Rioghnach Ni Ghrioghair, Ireland)

Marianne, an beautiful florist, suffers a concern of skin-to-skin contact, until a serial killer’s murders ignites her darkest needs. “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.Okay., Bosnia Herzegovina)

Deep in the Bosnian mountains, a reclusive warfare survivor named Tarik is believed to have woke up malignant supernatural forces and is forged out into the forest. Embraced by hornets, he returns remodeled, an otherworldly presence that haunts his spouse and blurs the line between actuality and buried 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.