KIEV CoProduction Meetings: International Experts from Eccho Rights (Sparks Eccho Group), ARTE France and Independent Filmmakers Union Will Talk about Co-production

Content production industry development in the local market may be deterred by a lot of factors: decline in the advertising market, lack of governmental support and piracy rampant in the network. All these obstacles can be overcome. There is no need to look for the direction of further development by the method of trial and error, since one can just walk the well-known path, like the entire global industry of content producing. These paths are marked by a variety of indicators; it is also possible to use the guide services.

KIEV CoProduction Meetings 2015 in the course of panel discussion Television Co-production in Europe will gather international experts who are qualified "guides" with years of experience in different regions of the world to discuss co-production opportunities with European partners, the prospects of TV series, documentaries and online projects.

The discussion will be moderated by Nicola Söderlund - the managing partner at Swedish company Eccho Rights (a part of Sparks Eccho Group) that deals with international sales both ready-made programs of TV series and formats. Nicola Söderlund has worked in TV business for almost 30 years, started at Strix Television, founded Think Big Television, MD at Nordisk Film & TV (Banijay), President at Sparks Network and lately Eccho Rights. Long-term experience of the expert includes the work with the variety of TV genres: talk shows, entertainment programs, TV series, documentary projects and etc. Nicola Söderlund took part in the launch of Swedish channel TV4 Plus, where he was a Commissioning editor. Nicola has focused on building distribution network called Sparks Network, which brought together distribution and production companies from around the world. Sparks Network has achieved great success in the implementation of European and American entertainment formats in the countries of the Asia-Pacific region. It’s worth mentioning, that Eccho Rights contributed to the international success of Crack Them Up format produced by Ukrainian Studio KVARTAL 95. Format rights for local adaptations of the show were sold to Lithuania, France, Belgium, Germany, Denmark, Spain, USA, Australia, China and Vietnam. 

Mark Edwards, Commissioning editor of ARTE France channel will also be the participant of KIEV CoProduction Meetings panel discussion. Mark is an independent producer with 20 years of experience in the documentary world. He began his career in New York on a 10-part PBS/BBC series about the history of American Cinema. Starting in 1998, Mark is specializing in international co-productions and has produced documentaries about history, film, politics and culture for most of the major broadcasters in Europe and North America. Mark’s experience as a producer counts a variety of projects from Eastern Europe, including documentaries of well-known Ukrainian filmmaker Sergei Bukovsky. He also has extensive experience working in Eastern Europe and has produced several films for Steven Spielberg's Shoah Foundation. His productions have been featured in festivals such as Cannes, Lisbon, Turin, Jerusalem and Nyon. ARTE France department headed by Mark takes part in co-production of about 90 films and acquires about 10 films every year. Co-production optimizes company’s own production scheme according to international standards. Reimbursement of production costs due to the profit from international sales of content rights, which is nearly impossible in case projects’ production aimed at the local market.

Swedish producer Johan Seth, Chairman of Swedish Independent Filmmakers Union OFF, will share his experience in international co-production, development and production of cross-media projects with forum participants. Johan boasts more than ten years of experience in the documentary. As a film producer Johan became a winner of major international festivals - Tempo Documentary Festival (2008), Berlinale (2009), Nordisk Panorama (2011), and others. Currently Johan Seth is working on a short film Sámi Bojá (2015) and documentaries - Stay Real, (2017) and Svetlana Alexijevitj - A Journey Into the Russian Soul (2019).

KIEV CoProduction Meetings is a co-production platform designed for pitching and promotion of TV projects of different formats that look for co-production, as well as facilitate the co-production market in our region by allowing the local producers to cooperate with international TV projects. 

KIEV CoProduction Meetings Pitching winner will be chosen by Nicola Söderlund. As a prize, author of the best project will get a free accreditation to Filmteractive 2015 - international business platform for presentation and promotion of interactive and cross-platform projects, which will be held on September 23-24 in Lodz, Poland.

NOTICE! KIEV CoProduction Meetings projects’ submission is prolonged until August 7, 2015.

Open new opportunities for your TV projects. Register and join KIEV CoProduction Meetings.