Belgian Rhapsody had its market premiere in Berlin. Distributor Paradis Films (Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Soeur Sourire) acquired the rights to release the film in France, while Fine Films (Under the Skin, Dallas Buyers Club) acquired Japanese distribution rights. Seed will distribute the film in South Korea and Mor Film will handle its Turkish release.

Wat mannen willen is about six men who have one thing in common: they’re all looking for the perfect love - a quest that is far from easy these days, since men (and women too) don’t seem to know what women want any more.

Cub is about 12-year-old Sam, who heads off to camp with his fellow cub scouts. He soon stumbles upon a masked, feral-looking child, who turns out to be the assistant to the Poacher, an evil psychopath who is intent on slaughtering the scouts one by one.

Amigo’s is the story of five former inmates who decide to open a restaurant. In Beau Séjour, a dead girl sets out to solve her own murder, and The Eleventh of the Eleventh is the struggle of a family coming to terms with the discovery of an atrocious truth during the preparations for the annual Carnival.

The Fund also supported the production of Tabula Rasa, a psychological drama about a woman with amnesia who is the key to solving a missing person’s case.

Every year, a maximum of 12 projects are selected for the TorinoFilmLab Script&Pitch workshop. The Lab’s workshop offers participants the opportunity to develop their screenplay under the supervision of internationally renowned experts. They subsequently get the chance to pitch the project to producers and sales agents during the final TorinoFilmLab Meeting Event.

Troch, a fiercely personal filmmaker noted for such titles as Someone Else’s Happiness, Unspoken and Kid, breaks with tradition by sharing the writing credit on Home with her husband, acclaimed film editor Nico Leunen, whose cutting credits include Oscar nominee The Broken Circle Breakdown and Ryan Gosling’s 2014 Cannes entry, Lost River. The film, whose screenplay last autumn won the Arte International Award at the TorinoFilmLab, tells the story of a 16-year-old boy trying to find his place in the world against a background of intergenerational conflict. Producer is Antonino Lombardo of Prime Time.

Marry Me, Kadir Balci’s second feature after Turquaze, tells the story of Sibel and Jurgen who get engaged following a brief affair. The couple looks forward to what ought to be the most beautiful day of their lives, but reckon without the pressure, expectations and doubts of their families.

Tonic Immobility, Nathalie Teirlinck’s first feature, is a psychological drama about Alice, an escort who evades meaningful social contact. When she is forced to take care of her son after the death of her ex-husband, she finds herself confronted with the emotional emptiness in her life.

After successful outings at Hot Docs, Karlovy Vary and Visions du Réel, Teodora Ana Mihai was in Helsinki to present Waiting for August. Produced by Clin d’Oeil Films, the film follows a 15-year-old Romanian girl as she takes care of her six brothers and sisters while their mother is away earning a living in Italy.

Baghdad Messi tells the story of10-year-old Hamoudi, who is obsessed with football andworships Lionel Messi, as do all his friends. But on the eve of the long-awaited Champions League final between FC Barcelona and Manchester United, Hamoudi’s television set breaks down. Afraid of being shunned by his mates, the boy urges his father to make the dangerous trip to Baghdad to have the TV repaired.

The Hollywood Reporter described The Diary of a Teenage Girl as ‘the film Sundance prays for every year: one that indelibly puts on the map a talented director the festival can then forever claim as one of its own.’ Sony Pictures Classics signed a distribution deal for North and South America, Asia and Australia. Lumière Group will release the film in the Benelux this summer.

Presented as part of FIPA’s Series Competition, Marsman was up against 10 international heavyweights, including crime series The Team, Thicker Than Water from Sweden and Wolf Hall, currently screening to great acclaim on British TV. FIPA opened with the BBC’s top-rated drama series The Missing, another co-production with Flanders.

The film tells the story of 19-year-old Bahoz, who regularly goes into the mountains to hunt but catches very little. Today, however, will change his life for ever.

The Treatment screened as part of the World Cinema Now section in Palm Springs, creating such a buzz that an extra venue had to be added for the second scheduled screening of the film. Following its successful festival launch, Artsploitation Films acquired North American rights. A distributor specialising in genre films, Artsploitation plans on releasing the film this year.

Isabelle Tollenaere presented her latest documentary Battles, Sarah Vanagt presented In Waking Hours, and also Thierry Knauff's Vita Brevis premiered at the festival. Black Sequenza, Kosmos were also part of the programme, while student shorts The Visitor, The Second of August and Hotel Red Shoes were shown in the Signals: 24/7 section. Finally, Between 10 and 12 was part of the line-up in the Limelight section.

Eleven international series are competing in FIPA’s Fiction Competition this year, including Flemish series Marsman, which won a Prix Italia at the end of 2014. A tragicomedy, it follows 40-year-old Nico Marsman who struggles to find a way to get his life back on track.

Since its premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival last autumn, Waste Land has been seen at a number of festivals including Busan, Austin, Stockholm and now Les Arcs; but this is the film’s first prize. The Cineuropa Prize is an initiative of Cineuropa, the online portal showcasing European cinema worldwide.

The Jury Prize comes with a sum of 25,000 AED (about $7,000) and is number three in the film’s awards tally. Bad Hunter previously won a Jury Award at the Montreal World Film Festival, where it premiered last summer; and picked up a Silver at Spike Valladolid. In January, the film is confirmed to screen at Australia’s Oscar-qualifying Flickerfest.

In the film, Sam, an imaginative 12-year-old boy, goes off to camp with his Cub Scout pack. He quickly discovers that something is not quite right in the woods when he stumbles across a masked feral child. As Sam gets more and more isolated from the other scouts, he becomes convinced a terrible fate awaits them: the feral child is the assistant of the Poacher, an evil psychopath who has laced the forest with ingenious traps and is intent on slaughtering any trespasser… one at a time.

When five-year-old Oliver disappears on a family holiday in France, it sets off a manhunt that will last for years. The Missing explores the mind of a father, Tony, who is desperate to find his lost son. Exploring the emotional cost of a child's abduction, this gripping relationship thriller is told simultaneously over two time frames in two countries.

Waste Land, Black and Belgian Rhapsody will be presented during the Les Arcs Summit, a yearly programme that reunites independent distributors and industry professionals focusing on the exhibition of European films in France and made up of a number of films scheduled for a 2015 release.

Belgica tells the story of Jo and Frank, two brothers who have their differences over the years but, when their paths cross once more, decide to start a bar called Belgica. The place becomes a hotspot in Belgium’s nightlife scene in no time, but both brothers threaten to get swept away by their success.

Since it was introduced in 2005, the Fund’s competition has established itself as Belgium’s prime awards programme when it comes to launching new talent. Six grants are handed out: three worth €60,000 go to one animation project and two fiction shorts; the two documentary winners each get €40,000; and the Wildcard in the filmlab section comes with a prize of €25,000.

In the weeks following its premiere in Rome last October, Lucifer headed for various other festivals including the Festival du Nouveau Cinéma in Montreal, the International Film Festival in Valladolid and the Film Fest Ghent back home.

Following Someone Else’s Happiness, Unspoken and Kid, Fien Troch is currently working on Home, a new feature film about generational conflict, revealing the thin line between trust, friendship and loyalty. Troch scripted Home with Nico Leunen.

The prestigious International Emmy Awards are the international section of America’s prime television prizes. At the awards ceremony in New York, Belgian sketch show What If? was awarded first prize in the comedy section.

Out of 141 qualifying short films, members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences selected 10 live-action shorts, Kalifa’s Baghdad Messi among them. In the next couple of weeks, Short Films and Feature Animation Branch members will narrow the list down to between three and five nominees, who will be announced on January 15. The Oscar ceremony will be held on February 22 at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood.

After stops in Berlin, Karlovy Vary, Montreal and Los Angeles, Violet now heads for Turin, where it is to screen in the Torino 32 competition programme. Screening in the TFFDOC documentary competition, meanwhile, is Teodora Ana Mihai’s Waiting for August. Emilie Verhamme’s Eau Zoo receives its international premiere at the Torino Film Festival.

Cordon was shown as part of the Festival’s International Spectrum, presenting a range of fiction and documentary series from 16 countries, also including Eyeworks’s Home Grown, a tragicomic series about a dysfunctional family looking for solutions to their problems in unexpected places.

In its report, the jury praised Karakatsanis for his collection of powerful images, presented through a variety of camera sources. His “long, graceful takes that underscore the powerful silences of the film’s haunting storytelling” prompted the jury to present the DOP with a special citation.