‘Becoming an Astronaut’ Wins Marketing Pitch at Zurich Film Festival

variety.com:

Ed Meza @edmezavar “Becoming an Astronaut,” an ambitious documentary that will focus on four new astronauts who will be announced by the European Space Agency (ESA) this November, has won the Focal Audience & Market Strategies pitching event at the Zurich Film Festival.

Organized by Focal, the Lausanne-based foundation for film and audiovisual media training, Audience & Market Strategies is a three-part training program that helps producers promote their projects at an early stage.

This year’s event showcased eight Swiss projects in various states of development. The program culminated with the pitching event, in which the producers presented their projects to sales company representatives, industry experts and an international jury comprising Stephen Kelliher of Bankside Films, Netflix’s Lars Wiebe, Olivier Tournaud of Cinephil, Sven Wälti, head of film at Swiss pubcaster SRG SSR, and Deadline’s Diana Lodderhose.

Produced by Franziska Sonder of Ensemble Film and set to be directed by Roman Hodel, who made a splash with his 2020 short documentary “The Game,” “Becoming an Astronaut” will follow the astronauts, chosen by ESA after an exhaustive selection processes that included more than 22,500 applicants, over a four-year period in an ongoing competition to see who will be first to travel to space.