News - Berlinale Co-Production Market

Four cash prizes were awarded to selected feature film projects at the Berlinale Co-Production Market (February 14 to 17).

The Eurimages Co-production Development Award, endowed with 20,000 Euros, went to afterschool production from Lithuania for their project Liberations (director: Laurynas Bareisa, producer: Klementina Remeikaite). The award is presented by the European film fund Eurimages to promote the development of the project. Jury members this year were funding representative Pablo Pérez de Lema (ICAA, Spain), world sales representative Ioanna Stais (Heretic, Greece) and producer Jonas Dornbach (Komplizen Film, Germany).

The Gen Z Audience Award, presented for the second time and endowed with 5.000 euros, goes to the project Cura Sana (director: Lucía G. Romero) by producers Laura Fernández Brites and Sendy Palomino Vivar (Filmax, Spain). The jury was made up of five film students from German and French film universities: Daniel Beschareti, Isidora Lazić, Nicolas Chapt, Pauline Szczesny, and Sophia Beatrice. Sponsored by the Franco-German Youth Office, the prize is awarded to a feature film project that particularly appeals to young cinema-goers aged between 20 and 28.

The ARTEKino International Award 2026 goes to Lotus Feet by Amanda Nell Eu, produced by Ghost Grrrl Pictures from Malaysia. This award worth 6,000 euros is presented by ARTE to honour an artistically outstanding project from the Berlinale Co-Production Market.

The VFF Talent Highlight Award with the prize money of 10,000 euros, annually presented by the VFF – Copyright Agency of Film and TV Producers, promotes one promising project from the Talent Project Market, the longstanding cooperation between Berlinale Talents and Berlinale Co-Production Market. This year, the award goes to The Most Romantic Man in the World (director: Simon Jaquemet), pitched at the Berlinale Co-Production Market by the producer Olga Lamontanara (8horses, Switzerland). Nominee awards of 1,000 euros each went to the producer Yulia Evina Bhara (KawanKawan Media) from Indonesia and the producer Gary Cranner (Mantra Film) from Norway.

For the 23rd Berlinale Co-Production Market (February 14-17), 35 film projects from 27 countries have been selected to find partners, in order to secure their financing and get produced as international co-productions in the next few years. 16 of the 35 projects are directed by women.

The official project selection consists of 19 fiction feature projects with budgets between 600,000 and five million Euros being chosen from among 390 submissions. Among the award-winning directors whose new works are sure to spark interest are Alonso Ruizpalacios, Aida Begic, Eduardo Casanova, Klaudia Reynicke, Dénes Nagy, Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige, Rodrigo Moreno, Signe Baumane, Deepak Rauniyar, Amanda Nell Eu, Fernando Guzzoni, Hao Wu and Leonie Krippendorff.

Two film projects are looking for partners at both CineMart Rotterdam and the Berlinale Co-Production Market as part of the Rotterdam-Berlinale Express. In the World Cinema Market section, the WCF-funded project Blue Card by Mohammed Alomda will be presented.

In the Talent Project Market, which is organised in cooperation with Berlinale Talents, ten Berlinale Talents Alumni producers from all over the world will present their latest projects.

This time, the five companies in the Company Matching programme are hailing from Germany, Brazil, Spain, Italy and Ukraine; participants can request individual meetings with these companies in order to discuss structural ideas, or work on the basis of project slates.

The selected projects and companies can be seen here.

On Tuesday, February 17, the Berlinale Co-Production Market will again be dedicated to Co-Pro Series: producers, editors, distributors and other series financiers will take part in the industry's highly renowned pitch event. Co-Pro Series is curated and organised by the Berlinale Co-Production Market and is also part of the Berlinale Series Market programme (Feb 15-18).

Awarded creators and directors like Danis Tanovic, Ilker Catak, Alonso Ruizpalacios, and renowned companies such as Plattform Produktion from Sweden, Lemming Film from the Netherlands, Contrast Film from Switzerland, Sagafilm from Iceland or Funicular from Spain are attached to some of the outstanding projects. Ten top-quality series projects from European countries as well as from Mexico are looking for suitable co-producers, distribution and broadcasting partners, and financiers among the international industry. After the pitches, the producers of the projects met interested potential partners at a get-together and in individual meetings.

The "Co-Pro Series" selection can be found here, along with all selected projects of the Berlinale Co-Production Market

At theBooks at Berlinale Pitch, Networking and Matchmaking Event on 16 February, the Berlinale Co-Production Market, in cooperation with Frankfurter Buchmesse, presents ten exceptional examples of literary material that lend themselves to adaptation. At the pitch event, which has been spotlighting new publications and bestsellers for 20 years now, film producers can get in contact with the film rights holders – renowned, internationally active publishers and literary agents.

The selected books will be presented to 150 guests on stage at the Berlinale Co-Production Market, moderated by author Syd Atlas.

The authors of the selected books are from Belgium, the Czech Republic (this year’s Frankfurter Buchmesse Guest of Honour), Denmark, Germany, Israel, Mauritius, Mexico, Taiwan and Turkey. Social and historical-political themes are strongly represented this year. Three of the selected works focus on female figures in the 20th and 21st centuries, two historical books and two coming-of-age novels as well as a satire are among the bestselling, awarded or new books to be presented here.

The “Books at Berlinale” selection 2026 can be found here.

We had the pleasure of preparing this episode of the Industry Insights Podcast, together with our colleagues from the EFM.

n this episode, the Berlinale Co-Production Market invites two experienced producers to share their innovative strategies as part of a film industry in flux and how they address the changes of their own roles. Didar Domehri, producer and founder of Maneki Film and Maneki Stories, and Roman Paul, producer and co-founder of Razor Film Produktion, join forces to discuss the need for both, flexibility and collaboration while maintaining one’s own outstanding focus as an independent producer

Find the podcast here

We had the pleasure of preparing a new episode of the Industry Insights Podcast, together with our colleagues from the EFM.

This episode focuses on current producing strategies in the drama series landscape after the TV-series boom of the last decade. Hosted by Johanna Koljonen, guest speakers Ankica Jurić Tilić and Marike Muselaers share their experiences in financing drama series, their take on the current market landscape as well as financing strategies for producers in different parts of Europe, and explain how co-productions may play an increasing role today.

Find the podcast here.

We had the pleasure to help prepare our colleagues' podcast, EFM Industry Insights.

For episode Number 6, we checked in with producer Ewa Puszczynska, who is not only a regular at the Berlinale Co-Production Market, but also known for Academy Award-winning Ida by Pawel Pawlikowski, as well as Berlinale films like Kill it and Leave this Town by Mariusz Wilczynski (Encounters 2020) or as a co-producer of the Academy Award-nominated Quo Vadis, Aida?

Moderator Johanna Koljonen spoke with Ewa about her own, very personal approach to life as a producer and to the art of film. Find it here.