MOSCOW — Organizers of the 6th CentEast Market, which wrapped in Warsaw on Sunday, said they are happy about interest from distributors and sales agents, while some participants complained about the uneven quality of project presentations.
“Although we presented fewer projects then last year [seven as opposed to 17], the interest on the part of sales agents, distributors and festival selectors, was the same,” Magdalena Banasik, head of CentEast Market, told The Hollywood Reporter. “Many meetings were held after the presentations, and, hopefully, they will lead to sales deals. For the effects of this year’s edition, we will have to wait a while.”
The three-day event, which was timed to the final days of the 26th Warsaw International Film Festival, were filled with presentations of selected projects from Poland, Russia, Romania and other countries, as well as closed screenings of selected Polish films. Among the latter, were “Erratum” by Marek Lechki, one of the two winners in WIFF’s “1-2” competition, Krzysztof Lukaszewicz’s criminal drama “Lynch,” and “50/50,” a documentary by Krzysztof Nowinski and Dominika Dlugokecka.
Sales agents and distributors attending the festival wouldn’t immediately comment on possible deals.
Meanwhile, not everyone was impressed with this year’s lineup and the way projects were presented. “The uneven style of presentation of the projects-in-waiting was a turn-off,” one participant told THR. “There was no outstanding film screened worth a national campaign.”
On Sunday, the same seven projects were presented in Moscow within the framework of the 4th international film festival “2morrow.”
