Denis Vaslin of Rotterdam-based Volya Films has a busy festival schedule and an even busier year ahead, he tells Nick Cunningham
With director Ineke Smits' eagerly anticipated Aviatrix of Kazbek (Spectrum) closing the festival this year, Vaslin's co-pro Ciro Guerro's The Wind Journeys (Los Viajes del Viento, pictured above) has been playing to full houses in Bright Future. The Dutch Treats programme features Stella van Voorst van Beest's Prisoners of the Ground, dubbed by Volya “a Finnish tango in the shape of a movie,” while Independencia (Raya Martín) performs in Signals: After Victory.
The company has united a slew of funding agencies, including France Sud, Gothenburg Film Fund, HBF and HBF Plus, to contribute towards Saodat Ismailova's 40 Days of Silence, which the company is looking to shoot in the winter of 2010/11. Satan's Invisible Empire, a doc film about the quietest place in the Netherlands, receives Teledoc 2 development funding via the Netherlands Film Fund, CoBO and broadcaster BOS. Vaslin is hopeful that the same institutions will stump up the €300,000 necessary to enable the film to be made.
Later this month, the company will start shooting Allard Detiger's The New Saint, a co-pro with Belgian Serendipity Films. The film concerns the de facto saintly status conferred upon a young Russian soldier decapitated by Chechen fighters after refusing to convert to Islam. “I hope he will succeed,” Vaslin commented. “We've succeeded so far, in that the money is in place, but now the work starts for real.” Vaslin continues to seek finance for his 2009 CineMart project Kurai Kurai. A co-pro with Belgium's Cassettes for Timescapes and with €600,000 of the €1.4 million in place, Vaslin is looking to secure a German or Swiss co-producer.