We were invited as a late entry into the prestigious 37 Degrees South Film Market in Melbourne! Screening Russian Snark as an official Market Screening was a great honor and we got a lot of great feedback as a result. Very exciting – Held over several days in tandem with the Melbourne Film Festival, this was a wonderful opportunity to screen our film to overseas sales agents and distributers and to explore new relationships.  Thanks everyone for making this possible!

Russian Snark was selected to be one of 7 films screening at the Break Through Screenings, which run in conjunction with the Melbourne International Film Festival to potential sales agents and distributers who come from all over the world specifically to acquire projects and contacts for  projects coming out of Australia and New Zealand. It was a unique opportunity for our film to be showcased to these potential new international partners, and I felt that I got a great overview of the current state of play in the market.  It was however interesting that there were still quite traditional methods being explored despite the day and date and preponderance in practice today.   It was clear that these were challenging times; with new systems in development abut not confirmed as being the final outcome of the currently state of play.

I felt I developed a number of better relationships with my time spent with the local NZ market, the other NZ producers and the NZFC bas we had the opportunity to spend time together, as well as a number of Australian producers who might be potential partners in the future as well as the Canadian co=production practitioners who were interested in re kindling what had been a common transpacific relationship with historic coproduction partnerships with NZ and Canada.  Additionally, I will be following up with all the international contacts to continue the relationships and to ensure that when we meet next we will have something to further our connection with.

The success of the market specifically for me was in the first instance getting the opportunity to go and forget some international links for the first time, and I am very grateful to the NZFC for making this possible.   Additionally in more concrete terms the leads I am now following for Russian Snark and the other projects would not have been passible with this attending this market and getting a chance to cut though and meet face to face is invaluable.