Baltic Event Co-Production Market
Apathy
Sergei and Natalia are political asylum-seekers who fled Russia for Sweden with their two daughters, Katja and Alina, hoping for a new life. Those hopes are crushed when their application is rejected. Their daughter Katja, traumatised by this episode, collapses and falls into a coma: a condition known as Resignation Syndrome or Apathy. Their parents will try everything to create the atmosphere of safety, stability and hope that their daughters need to feel in order to wake up.
Apathy or Hopelessness. Two possible titles for one film. An allegory for the society of today, at a time where people’s futures are determined by rules and laws which are, sadly, incompatible with values like solidarity and compassion. My protagonists are just that: victims of a political situation.
Katja and Alina are forced to grow up in just such an environment, where feelings of fear and insecurity have replaced the joy and serenity one associates with childhood.
Over the last few years, more than 600 children have been diagnosed with the syndrome in Sweden alone. It is heartbreaking to see these children ‘sleeping’; lying apathetic, like modern day Sleeping Beauties, waiting for a Prince charming to wake them up. This prince has a name: Hope. And hope is precisely what Katja’s and Alina’s parents, Nathalie and Sergei, are called upon to provide for their stricken Daughters.
Is happiness, in the end, something that is ours to create, no matter how grim tomorrow might seem?
Alexandros Avranas is a Greek filmmaker. His film Miss Violence made him known to the international public after winning the Silver Lion for Director and the Volpi Cup for Best Actor for Themis Panou at the Venice Film Festival in 2013. Born in 1977, Alexandros Avranas studied Fine Arts in Athens. Graduating in 2004, he took his first steps in directing in 2008 with the film Without, a drama about a couple and their desires. After Miss Violence, in 2017, he shot Love Me Not, which was presented in competition at the San Sebastian Festival. Apathy is his upcoming film.
Stavros Pamballis has been working as a professional screenwriter since 2009. He has written four produced features, including the multi-award winning Shirley Adams, co-written with director Oliver Hermanus; an official selection at festivals including Locarno, Toronto, London, and Dubai. Siege on Liperti Street, his debut as a writer-director had its national premiere at the 2019 Thessaloniki International Film Festival where it won 5 awards including the FIPRESCI (International Federation of Film Critics) Award and the Audience award.
Sylvie Pialat, wife of filmmaker Maurice Pialat, has been the co-screenwriter on several of her husband’s films, significantly Under the Sun of Satan (1987 Cannes Palme d’Or winner). When Maurice Pialat died in 2003, after 21 years of living and making movies together, Sylvie Pialat turned towards film production creating Les films du Worso.
Adeline Fontan Tessaur. Elle Driver is an international production, sales and acquisitions company based in Paris committed to represent and grow with the world’s most creative rising talents, from well-established to first-film and arthouse directors. Across a broad spectrum of budgets and content, our slate emphasises a diversity of films each with a unique universe and sensibility. Our ambition is to promote worldwide an activist, different – sometimes risky – cinema, through an original, demanding and alternative lineup.
In fifteen years of existence, Les films du Worso has already produced more than 40 feature films, fiction and documentaries for television, and 30 short films. The catalogue scores fourteen selections at the Cannes Film Festival, twenty eight nominations at the César Awards, a nomination to the Oscars for Best International Feature Film with TIMBUKTU in 2015 and a Silver Bear at the Berlinale in 2020 with DELETE HISTORY.
Elle Driver is an international production, sales and acquisitions company based in Paris committed to represent and grow with the world’s most creative rising talents, from well-established to first-film and arthouse directors. Across a broad spectrum of budgets and content, our slate emphasises a diversity of films each with a unique universe and sensibility. Our ambition is to promote worldwide an activist, different – sometimes risky – cinema, through an original, demanding and alternative lineup.