13/11/2020 - New projects by Turkish filmmakers Tolga Karaçelik, Ziya Demirel and Melisa Önel have been selected to receive the latest slate of funding

Filmmaker Tolga Karaçelik, whose latest project has received the support of the fund (© Altyazı Sinema Dergisi)

Established in 2011 as a joint venture between the Istanbul Film Festival - Meetings on the Bridge (MoB), the Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg, and the Hamburg Schleswig-Holstein Film Fund, the German-Turkish Co-Production Development Fund has supported 53 German-Turkish co-productions with 873,500 Euros to this day.

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For the tenth consecutive year, the fund continues to strengthen and support the cooperation between German and Turkish filmmakers. In its latest announcement, the fund’s selection committee, which is made up of representatives of all three institutions, revealed the three projects, chosen from 12 applicants, that will receive a support of €40,000. All projects have a Turkish director and a German co-producer on board.

The Shallow Tale of A Writer Who Decided to Write About A Serial Killer is the upcoming project by Tolga Karaçelik, well-known for his previous efforts Ivy [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Tolga Karaçelik
film profile] and Sundance’s winner Butterflies [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile]. The project is a co-production of Diloy Gülün, for the director’s production company Karaçelik Film, with Jan Krüger for the Berlin-based Port Au Prince Film.

Two Eyeds, the sophomore feature by writer-director Ziya Demirel, which also won the latest Meetings on the Bridge Award (see the news). His debut feature Ela and Hilmi and Ali also received the fund’s support in 2017 and is now in post-production. The film is co-produced by Anna Maria Aslanoğlu, who has collaborated with Demirel in all of his previous works, for Istanbul-based İstos Film and Linus Günther for Klinker Film.

Suddenly, the sophomore feature by Melisa Önel, whose debut, Seaburners, premiered in the Berlinale Forum. The project was also awarded at the latest Meetings on the Bridge and was among the winners of the Sarajevo Film Festival’s CineLink Industry Days (read news). It is co-produced by Alara Hamamcıoğlu (Vigo Film Yapımcılık) and Anette Unger for Hamburg’s Leitwolf Filmproduktion.

Among the upcoming films that have received the German-Turkish Co-Production Development Fund’s support are When I’m Done Dying [+see also:
film review
film profile] by Nisan Dağ, which will premiere in Main Competition at the 24^th Tallinn Black Nights International Film Festival, while debut feature films Zuhal [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] by Nazlı Elif Durlu, Snow and the Bear [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Selcen Ergun
film profile] by Selcen Ergun, Geranium by Çağıl Bocutoğlu, and the documentary Les Enfants terribles [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] by Ahmet Necdet Çupur, are in post-production.