Each year, the Berlinale Co-Production Market presents some 35 selected promising feature projects, and arranges about 1000 one-on-one meetings for their producers with interested potential co-producers, sales agents, distributors, and financiers.

 

“Basically everybody working in international co-productions attends the Berlinale and the EFM”, explains Sonja Heinen, head of the Berlinale Co-Production Market, “so it was virtually a ‘natural decision’ to bundle this potential, to bring everyone together in one place, in order to facilitate their networking and encourage the most promising meetings. This is how the Berlinale Co-Production Market was created in 2004.”

 

In order to find partners, experienced producers from throughout the world submit around 500 projects each autumn. The selection then made by the Berlinale covers a variety of projects with different genres, and budgets between 1 and 10 million Euro.

 

After checking the Berlinale Co-Production Market’s Project Catalogue, interested potential partners can book meetings with the producers of their favoured projects. These one-on-one meetings are planned in half-hour slots, exactly according to each attendee’s availability.

 

The Berlinale Co-Production Market also offers a comprehensive programme whose precise timetable allows the participants to handpick the sessions of their interest from a range of topics and formats. Through the years, many new and specialised programme formats, such as “Breakfast & Books”, the festival’s own market for literary adaptations, have been developed and implemented. At the same time, the programme is not “overdosed”, and the market has managed to maintain its exclusive, concentrated and comfortable atmosphere.

 

Sonja Heinen explains the idea behind the substantial service: “Nobody has time for useless meetings during the Berlinale, so our participants can pick exactly those projects and programmes that are in their focus of interest, and we prepare a tailormade schedule for each of them. Some busy buyers come over from the European Film Market just across the street, let’s say, for an hour, have only the two meetings they have explicitly asked for, and they can use the rest of the day for other meetings and screenings.”

 

The Berlinale Co-Production Market’s “matchmaking work” is rewarded with an exceptionally high success rate: so far, 40 per cent of all projects have been financed and made, a total of over 80 films since 2004. Many of them are arthouse films with a crossover potential - such as for example Eran Riklis’ Lemon Tree which was presented at the Berlinale Panorama 2008 and has since been released in more than 20 countries worldwide. Previous projects also include Samuel Maoz’ Golden Lion winner Lebanon, Sergei Bodrov’s 2008 Academy Award nominee Mongol, the Danish success Flame and Citron, and the current Cypriot-German box office hit Small Crime.