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No One’s Child, written by Vuk Rsumovic won the New Cinema Network prize (€ 10.000) at the International Rome Film Festival. The project is the true story of a boy discovered living in the wild and ensuing attempts to re-introduce him to society. The jury praised it for showing “the absurdity of prejudice through innocent eyes” through an impacting and original story. Vuk is currently developing No One’s Child at Bingers’ Writers Lab. It will be directed by Stefan Arsenijevic (Love and Other Crimes, 2008) and produced by Miroslav Mogorovic’s Belgrade-based Art & Popcorn.

The 2009 Kodak Development NPP Prize of € 5.000 (at the Netherlands Film Festival) was awarded to Jan-Willem van Ewijk for his project Land. The jury recognised a project “rippling with ambition, freshness and urgent social relevance told through the drama both of a compelling personal story and an epic journey.” Project producer is Augustusfilm’s Bero Beyer (Writers Lab 2007). Jan Willem developed his project at Binger Filmlab in 2008 and then the Sundance Screenwriters Lab in 2009.

Director Johan Grimonprez (Writers Lab 2003, Directors Lab 2005) won a major award at the Middle East International Film Festival in Abu Dhabi. With his unconventional film Double Take he won the Black Pearl Award for Best New Documentary Director. Part documentary, part conceptual art piece Double Take is a fascinating found-footage fabrication, an essay that envisions Alfred Hitchcock as an unwilling victim of the political and cultural shifts of the Cold War era, a time when television began to replace cinema, Nixon debated Khrushchev, and everybody was worried about the Bomb. Attached to the Black Pearl Award is an amount of $ 50.000 prize money.

Heddy Honigmann’s (Writers Lab 2008) feature documentary El Olvido has been awarded The Mayor’s Prize at the Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival in Japan. In El Olvido Honigmann travels to Peru, where she portrays some of the poorest but hardest working citizens of Lima and its startling contrasts of wealth and poverty. Following El Olvido’s premiere in September 2008 at the San Sebastian International Film Festival, the documentary received a dozen of important international awards, including the FIPRESCI prize at the Leipzig International Festival for Documentary and Animated Films (DOK Leipzig), the prize for Best Director at the DOCNZ International Documentary Film Festival in New Zealand, the Special Jury Award at the Lima Film Festival 2009 and in the Netherlands the Crystal Film award for more than 10.000 tickets sold. El Olvido is produced by Carmen Cobos of Cobos Films in co-production with IKON and ZDF and in cooperation with ARTE.

Valeria Ruiz Salas (Writers Lab 2008) won the Special Mention of the Jury for Projects in Development at the Morelia Lab of the Morelia International Film Festival in Mexico. Valeria pitched her project Buscando a Paloma – that she developed at Binger in the 2008 Writers Lab - alongside 32 others from across Latin America. Valeria is writing and directing the project.

Italian Production house Cristaldi Pictures received € 55.000 funding from Media Development Support for Salvo, the debut feature film by Antonio Piazza and Fabio Grassadonia (Writers Lab 2008). Antonio and Fabio, who’ve just completed the postproduction of their short film Rita (an exploration of the main character Rita in Salvo), are thrilled and certain this support will bring them closer to the production of Salvo, which will be produced by above-mentioned Cristaldi Pictures in association with Acaba Produzioni.

Cinema Junior, the initiative of the Dutch Film Fund, Media Fund and Public Broadcasters that stimulates the development and production of artistic youth films selected four Binger Filmmakers that receive an € 8.000 grant for development. Writer Lineke van den Boezem (Writers Lab 2006) is selected for Cinema Junior with her project Sirocco! (director Ties Schenk, producer Lemming Film), director Sacha Polak (Directors Lab 2009) with Naar Beerta (writer Bastiaan Kroeger, producer Lemming Film), writer Nynke de Jong (Writers Lab 1997) with Piekhaar (director Remy van Heugten, producer Waterland Film & TV) and writer/director Kate Brown (Writers Lab 1999) with Rosa en de Zeemeermin (producent by IJswater Films). The in total eight projects receive a grant for development, after which four will receive funding for script development and eventually two for production.

Paz Fábrega’s Agua Fría de Mar, has received two postproduction grants; one from the Hubert Bals Fund and another from the Ile-de-France Regional postproduction fund. Paz (Writers Lab 2006), who just has shown an in-progress version of Agua Fria de Mar at the Cinema En Construccion section of the San Sebastian Film Festival, is working on the sound mixing of the film in Spain. The film is produced by Temporal Films in co-production with Les Films du Requin (France), Tic Tac Producciones (Spain), Pimenta Films (Mexico) and Isabella Films (The Netherlands).