WINNERS OF KVIFF EASTERN PROMISES 2025

KVIFF Eastern Promises, the festival's Industry section and film market, has the rewarding mission of bridging the gap between talented filmmakers and their potential co-production partners, festivals and audiences. 

In addition to the established Works in Development – Feature Launch & Focus Queer, and a third edition of KVIFF Talents, this year's Eastern Promises introduced a new Pop Up Series Incubator small-screen pitching session. A key programme innovation, the KVIFF Central Stage is a brand-new showcase focused on established directors and Central European co-productions, organised and curated in cooperation with selected national film institutes from the region.

“Every country in Central Europe has something unique to showcase, but even experienced filmmakers often struggle to close financing. The support structures here are still relatively fragile. Our hope is that by curating projects in close collaboration with national film institutes, we can offer producers and investors a selection they can trust, and ultimately help unlock co-financing with greater confidence. At the same time, we want to spark more awareness and collaboration between producers in the region. There’s a lot of potential for working together, and this format helps make those connections visible,” Hugo Rosák, the Head of the KVIFF Film Industry Office, commented.  

A total of 40 film and series projects were showcased this year, and the winners are:

Eurimages Co-production Development Awards

Eurimages Co-production Development Award Jury:

Josef Kullengård, Head of Industry, Göteborg Film Festival

Ilse Ronteltap, Head of International Department, Netherlands Film Fund

Zuzana Mistríková, producer

Eurimages Co-production Development Award

The jury has decided to award the 20,000 EUR cash prize for further development, sponsored by the Eurimages fund, to Battalion Records (Romania), directed and written by Ștefan Bîtu-Tudoran and produced by Diana Caravia. 

Jury statement: “We are pleased to award the Co-production Development Award to a bold debut that confronts the decay of culture. Because sometimes, to make people listen, you must turn things upside down – and this absurdist heist comedy does so with rebellious energy.”

Eurimages Special Co-production Development Award

An additional prize was donated by Eurimages to support a particularly promising Ukrainian project. The jury has decided to award a special 20,000 EUR cash prize for further development to In Vacuo (Ukraine), directed and written by Yelizaveta Smith and produced by Eugene Rachkovsky. 

Jury statement: “We are proud to award this Ukrainian feature debut set in Odessa. The film explores the universal impact of loss and how absence shapes both identities and communities, highlighting the importance of remembering before it's too late.”

Works in Development – Feature Launch & Focus Queer

MIDPOINT & KVIFF Development Award

Jury: 

Martin Horyna, story consultant and festival curator

Danijel Hočevar, producer at Vertigo, producer, mentor at MIDPOINT Feature Launch

Egle Vertelyte, screenwriter and director

This year, KVIFF showcased nine projects that have gone through development and mentoring within the MIDPOINT – Feature Launch programme and five projects from the MIDPOINT – Focus Queer programme, designed to foster diversity in storytelling and provide crucial support to filmmakers in the realm of queer narratives.

The jury has decided to award the 10,000 EUR cash prize for further development, jointly sponsored by MIDPOINT, Barrandov Studio and KVIFF, to History of Illness (Croatia), directed and written by David Gašo and produced by Marta Eva Mećava.

Jury statement: “A film narrative is typically driven by characters, yet it can also take the form of a spatial and temporal fluid—shaped by its own color, form, and tone. We have chosen to highlight a charming film project in which human unease plunges into an absurd labyrinth where anxiety peers out from the corners of humor.”

Connecting Cottbus Award 

Connecting Cottbus representatives Marjorie Bendeck and Katharina Stumm have decided to give the award to the film RadioAmateur (Poland), directed and written by Tomasz Habowski and produced by Marta Szarzyńska . The project will be granted the opportunity to pitch at Connecting Cottbus, the East-West co-production market, during the Film Festival Cottbus. 

Statement: “We were really taken with this haunting and unsentimental story of a dinosaur and his broken tools of communication, and we were happy to find out there may still be someone at the other end of the line for him.”

Rotterdam Lab Award 

Rotterdam Lab representative Facundo Lema has chosen Ondřej Lukeš, producer of the film Restless (Czech Republic) as the winner. The winner will participate in the Rotterdam Lab professional training programme for producers, which takes place during the International Film Festival Rotterdam. 

Statement: “Considering the right and accurate timing, their career and the potential of their projects in development, as well as the potential for internationalisation of their work, but also the conception of production, ambitions and growth, we invite Ondřej Lukeš to attend Rotterdam Lab 2026.” 

Marché du Film Producers Network Award 

Cannes Marché du Film Producers Network representative Yago Mateo has chosen 

Michelle Brøndum, producer of Soyboy (United Kingdom) and Genovéva Petrovits, producer of Democracy: Work In Progress (Hungary, Czech Republic, Germany) as the winners. 

The winners will participate in the Marché du Film and Producers Network during the next Cannes Film Festival.

More information on the awarded Eastern Promises 2025 projects can be found in the Book of Projects on this link.

KVIFF Industry Days are supported by the PPF Foundation and CME. Deadline is the media partner of Industry Days.