Germany’s Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg Names New Boss

Influential German funding body Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg is getting a new Managing Director. Sarah Duve-Scmid will succeed Kirsten Niehuus in the middle of next year. Duve-Scmid was previously a deputy board member and head of funding at the Leiterin der Förderabteilung bei der Filmförderanstalt (Federal Funding Agency). She was also Managing Director of Vision Kino. Niehuus is retiring in 2025, and a supervisory board picked her successor, who will work alongside Helge Jürgens, who is to remain Managing Director of Games and New Media until mid-2028. “With the Supervisory Board’s decision, the Medienboard is moving towards a continued successful future,” said Florian Graf, Head of the Berlin Senate Chancellery and Chairman of the Supervisory Board of the Medienboard. “Building on the great 20 years of work by Kirsten Niehuus, who made the Berlin-Brandenburg metropolitan region the center of German film, Sarah Duve-Schmid stands for the further development of film funding and its funding structure, for which she brings extensive experience from the FFA.”

Venice Days Unveils Official Selection

The Giornate Deli Auto — otherwise known as the Venice Days competition — has unveiled the line-up for its 21st edition. Taxi Monamour from Ciro de Caro is the only Italian film competing. It follows two women who have lost their way but stubbornly persist on living the way they want. Camilla Jugan’s Selon Joy looks as a clash between good and evil, focused on a character who turns her back on her placid life. Asia Argento and Raphaël Thiéry feature in the cast. Other titles include Dutch filmmaker Jan-Willem Van Ewijk’s Alpha., a suspenseful psycho-thriller, follows a troubled father-and-son relationship in the Swiss Alps, and Boomerang, which explores teenage love and a woman leaving her husband in Iran. Shahab Fotouhi is the director. To Kill a Mongolian Horse is the debut of Mongolian filmmaker Jiang Xiaoxuan, Manas comes from Brazil’s Marianna Brennand, Sugar Island is from Dominican filmmaker Johanné Gómez Terrero, The Antique is out of Georgia from Rusudan Glurjidze, Super Happy Foreve is the third feature film from Kohei Igarashi and Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hour Glass is from the UK’s Quay Brothers. Special events at Venice Days, which is independently run but part of the Venice Film Festival, include screenings of Marie Losier’s Peaches Goes Bananas, Monica Taboada Tapia’s Colombian doc Soul of the Desert and Mladen Kovačević’s Possibility of Paradise. Italy’s Basileia from Isabella Torre is the closing film.