EXCLUSIVE: The Circle Training Initiative, which focuses on supporting women and gender-expansive filmmakers, has revealed the five feature-length projects chosen for its third edition of the Circle Fiction Orbit incubator, which is taking place in Montenegro this week.
Portuguese writer-director Leonor Bettencourt Loureiro is presenting Por Este Arroios Acima, a story that probes how a traumatic accident sets off rapid changes in a body, a city and the social fabric that ties a community together. This will be Loureiro’s second narrative feature following C’est Pas la Vie en Rose, a film that explored contemporary Lisbon and the pressures of gentrification on long-time residents. The project is being produced by Rita de Moura Santos at Grumpy Panda Productions.
From Georgia comes Irine Jordania with Nutsa.Love, set in Tbilisi and following the gradual development of a relationship between an unexpected pair. Nutsa.Love is Jordania’s second feature after Air Blue Silk, which premiered at Tallinn’s Black Nights Film Festival. She will work on the project with producer Elene Margvelashvili.
The selection also includes Dutch filmmaker Sabine Lubbe Bakker’s Premier Souffle, a film about an outsider who has spent years cut off from her community and now attempts to find where she belongs. Baldr Film is producing. Bakker’s previous feature, Becoming Mona (2020), played on the festival circuit.
Montenegrin director-producer Katarina Bulajić is bringing her debut feature project, Leech, which follows a woman who returns to her hometown and faces the consequences of a profound betrayal. Bulajić’s most recent short, A Special Day, is currently touring festivals and is scheduled to screen at Germany’s FilmFestival Cottbus next week. She is collaborating with screenwriter-producer Ana Vujadinovic at the Montenegrin company Giggling Goat Production.
Polish writer-director Marta Prus is on the roster with Soloist, a drama that delves into the elite, exacting world of ballet and the reinvention of body and identity that marks the end of one career and the start of another. Prus’s earlier work includes the award-winning documentary Over The Limit, about Russian gymnast and Olympic champion Margarita Mamun; Soloist is being produced by Telemark.
A three-person selection committee chose the line-up, concentrating on mid-career filmmakers and their teams. The committee consisted of writer-producer Suzy Gillet, film scholar Jelena Mišeljić and writer-director Ivana Mladenović. They were supported by Circle’s Head of Programme Biljana Tutorov — a writer, director and producer whose film To Hold A Mountain is currently shortlisted for the European Film Award — and Circle Co-Head of Programme Brigid O’Shea.
The programme is running as a seven-day residential development retreat in Herceg Novi, Montenegro, and continues through November 1. The retreat is led by award-winning producer and screenwriter Bianca Oana (whose credits include Touch Me Not, Collective and Anhell69). Oana said the incubator provides a rare space for filmmakers and producers to step outside the relentless tempo of the industry and exchange ideas, reflect and care for their work in a less pressured setting. She emphasised that this slower, more attentive time allows projects room to mature into completed films.
Joining Oana as mentors and producers are Myriam Sassine (Costa Brava Lebanon), Dana Bunescu (The Death of Mr Lazarescu) and Dominique Welinski, founder of Next Steps Studio, the world cinema–focused initiative that runs as part of Cannes Critics’ Week.
The programme also features a keynote conversation with Dea Kulumbegashvili and a screening of her Venice Special Jury Prize–winning film April.
Circle’s Head of Programme, Biljana Tutorov, described Circle Fiction Orbit as an important environment for filmmakers aiming to move to the next stage of their careers. She noted that the initiative’s focus on creators shapes every element of the programme — from the choice of mentors and specialists to the selection of screenings and the decision to host the retreat in Herceg Novi — and that Bianca Oana’s approach helps activate the participants’ potential and establish new collaborative dynamics that foster holistic project development.
Three projects from the incubator’s first two editions have already advanced to the festival circuit: Lex Julia by Laura Hyppönen, which will compete for Best Baltic Film in Tallinn in November; IDDA, directed by Irene Dionisio, which had its world premiere in Toronto; and Perla by Alexandra Makarová (an Austria–Slovakia production), which screened at Rotterdam.
Established in 2018, Circle was created to back women and gender-expansive filmmakers. The initiative is co-funded by Creative Europe MEDIA and is organised under the patronage of Eurimages by Wake Up Films.
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