Irish producer John Keville has been selected for the European Film Promotion's (EFP) networking platform Producers on the Move 2014.
Keville was selected by the Irish Film Board to attend the networking event at the Cannes Film Festival from May 17-19. Now in its 15th year, the EFP spotlights 24 up-and-coming players from the European film industry to embark on successful co-operations with their colleagues from all over Europe. Keville acted as producer on the feature film ‘You’re Ugly Too’, starring Aidan Gillen (Game of Thrones, Mister John), George Pistereanu (Loverboy) and Lauren Kinsella (Albert Nobbs) in the lead role. Written and directed by Mark Noonan, the SP Films drama is set in the Irish Midlands and is about a young girl struggling with the marginalising effects of narcolepsy after the death of her mother. The Dublin based producers’ previous films include ‘Through the Night’, ‘Ghost Train’, ‘Pilgrimage’ and ‘Brand New-U’, his first feature length project as a producer. Keville is also in the advanced stage of development on Rebecca Daly and Glenn Montgomery’s ‘Good Favour’, a German story set in a remote Christian community experiencing a crisis of faith that finds new hope in the arrival of a mysterious young man.
Nuno Bernardo, founder of the Dublin based film, TV and digital studio beActive, has also been selected to attend the EFP’s Producers on the Move event. Bernardo wrote and produced the Irish Sci-fi movie ‘Collider’, which had its premiere in Ireland last January. The co-production between Ireland and Portugal is based on a comic book whose action unfolds in Geneva. The film was produced using the Irish section 481 tax incentives and Portuguese fund, FICA. Speaking to IFTN, Bernardo explained that: “’Collider’ is a story about survival, about that “what if moment”. The Large Hadron Collider and some of the explanations given in the story are just the background where we set up our characters and the plot. Nonetheless, whenever possible we tried to bring in as many real elements as possible.”
The big challenge for me, as a writer, was to create a full storyworld that goes beyond a 100 page script but creates the necessary backbone and story elements that can be spanned in games, apps, books and web series’. For ‘Collider’, I introduced the main characters through a comic book and allowed them to grow through social media and the internet. From my research I found that audiences are getting more and more sophisticated and are demanding bigger elaborate stories and well-defined characters that can cross platforms and be available wherever they are and whenever they want.”
Bernardo is currently producing the documentary ‘The Stand Ups’ and developing the family film ‘Get Happy’, which he has co-scripted with Paul O'Rourke and Pat Connolly.
The schedule for Producers on the Move includes working sessions, one-to-one meetings and various opportunities to exchange knowledge and follow up discussions on future projects. In addition, EFP will be teaming up with the European cultural channel ARTE and the pan-European co-production fund Eurimages for Producers on the Move. Eurimages will prepare a case study exclusively for EFP's programme to be discussed under the direction of Eurimages Executive Director Roberto Olla.
The programme has been financially supported by the MEDIA Programme (2007-2013) of the European Union and the participating EFP member organisations who each made a careful selection of their national participants according to specific criteria.
Other producers selected to attend the networking event includes Tristan Goligher (‘Weekend’), Harro van Staverden (‘Secrets of War’), Petter Lindblad (‘Beyond Beyond’) and Eva Jakobsen (‘Antboy’).
For more information on the EFP’s Producers on the Move event click here.
