The Venice Gap-Financing Market is celebrating its 10-year anniversary this year with record-breaking attendance and impressive new figures on the projects that the core component of Venice’s industry side has helped bring to the big screen.
All told, over the span of a decade, “We have had 370 films (including immersive) from 70 countries and 80% of them have been completed within six months after the festival,” says Pascal Diot who heads the Venice Production Bridge, as the Lido’s market is known. All projects unveiled at theVenice Gap Financing Market musthave at least 70% of their funding in place.
Steve McQueen’s documentary “Occupied City,” Wim Wenders’ “The Secrets of Places,” a 3D feature doc about Swiss architect Peter Zumthor, and Alain Parroni’s “An Endless Sunday,” which is premiering both at Venice and Toronto this year, are among standout titles that have closed their financing on the Lido.
This year’s Venice Production Bridge projects include a new film co-directed by Oscar-nominated director Jim Sheridan (“In the Name of the Father”) with David Merriman titled “Re-creation,”about the unsolved murder of French producer Sophie Toscan du Plantier in Ireland in 1996, and Palestinian auteur Annemarie Jacir’s “All Before You,” a reconstruction of the beginnings and failings of the 1936 farmer-led revolt against British colonial rule in Palestine. Jacir is known for “Salt of This Sea,” which went to Cannes, Berlin player ”When I Saw You” and Locarno premiere ”Wajib.”
Diot pointed out that, as is customary, the bulk of the industry presence in Venice this year is from Europe but there is a steady increase in execs coming from the Middle East.
U.S. indies on the Lido comprise FilmNation, Neon, A-24, Film Movement and Searchlight, while streamers at the market include Netflix, Mubi and Paramount+.
The VPB’s Book Adaptation Rights Market is also getting off to a strong start, with plenty of meetings already planned between international producers, streamers and European publishers. Movies spawned by this section of the Venice market include David Fincher’s Netflix original film “The Killer,” based on the eponymous graphic novel by Alexis Nolent, known as Matz. Fincher’s “The Killer” is launching from Venice on Sunday.
