Locarno’s Alliance 4 Development Embraces ‘Variety of Genres, Themes and Visions’ as Rokhaya Marieme Balde, Ann Oren Tease New Projects

variety.com:

Marta Balaga Alliance 4 Development – a co-development initiative for film projects from Austria, France, Germany, Italy and Switzerland hosted by Locarno Pro – is ready to embrace a “variety of genres, themes and visions,” says project manager Francesca Palleschi.

Among 11 titles selected for its 8th edition, emerging filmmakers will be featured alongside their more established colleagues. “We are proud to support these projects along the path of their development, including several debuts and more than half helmed by female directors,” she adds.

That said, Alliance 4 Development, part of Locarno Pro, headed by Markus Duffner (pictured) features most of the bigger projects being brought to market at Locarno, some bigger-budgeted by European standards.

Ann Oren will bring her unique point of view to “Object a,” about a couple that, she states, “falls out of sync,” and starts following a mysterious woman with “unusually wild armpit hair.” “They enter a surreal dialogue with nature, which turns into an absurd and sensual commentary on contemporary life, in which we are driven by products and productivity while constantly trying to control nature,” she told Variety. “Calm” will see Vienna-based FreibeuterFilm, also behind “Great Freedom” by Sebastian Meise, join forces with Sara Fattahi to deliver an “enigmatic, atmospherically outstanding parable about displacement,” while in “Prince Aden,” Gianluca and Massimiliano De Serio will take on Italian fascism and colonialism, as seen through the eyes of a shepherd who became the titular “prince.” Pier Lorenzo Pisano is set to make his feature debut with “Urania,” described as an “auteur sci-fi teen movie with few special effects and a high-quality writing,” and Lorenz Merz will.