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San Sebastian Production ‘Between Two Dawns’ Draws Together Multi-National Team

Turkish-French-Romanian co-production “Between Two Dawns,” helmed by Turkish writer-director Selman Nacar and produced by Burak Çevik of Kuyu Film and Diloy Gülün of Karma Films, is taking part in WIP Europa – a section devoted to projects in post-production – at the San Sebastian Film Festival.

At WIP Europe, the filmmakers showed a picture-locked version of the film, a drama that takes place when a worker is severely injured in a sheet factory run by the family of Kadir. To protect the family business, Kadir is forced to conspire in a cover-up that alters the lives of the people involved and unveils long-held secrets.

“The film takes place over the course of 24 hours,” says Nacar. “I always wanted to make a film that takes place over a short amount of time. Then I want to show how human beings can change psychologically and emotionally in that short time. The scenes are all filmed in one shot.”

The production is backed by a multi-national producing team, which grew organically. “I’ve known Burak since college and we worked together on two feature films in the past,” says Nacar. “We needed another producer and we met Diloy, who joined the team. Then I wanted to work with a Romanian DOP, Tudor Panduru [“Graduation,” “My Happy Family”], so Oana Giurgiu of Hai Hui Entertainment came on board, and we applied for CNC funding – that’s how Guillaume de Seille of Arizona Productions joined. A big happy family.”

The film has a production budget of Euros 220,000 ($255,000), and has picked up support from several sources, including a CNC post-production grant, Meetings on the Bridge’s Anadolu Efes Award, the Turkish Ministry of Culture’s post-production grant, and Chainsaw Europe Sound Award.

“As an international co-production we needed to do some of the sound and post-production work in Romania and France, but COVID didn’t allow us to travel,” says Nacar. “That’s why the film is unfinished. Here we need some last bits of support.”

One of the frustrating elements for Nacar and producers Çevik and Gülün is that they had to pitch at WIP Europa over Zoom because of pandemic travel rules. “Zoom is not for me,” says Çevik. “I think it’s important to communicate with people physically.” “It’s all about the energy,” says Gülün. “Here we have a 2D screen and try to communicate that energy.”

Intended for films with mostly European production, WIP Europa is an evolution of Glocal in Progress, which is now open to all European films at the post-production stage. The films selected for WIP Europa compete for the WIP Europa Industry Award and for the WIP Europa Award going to the winning film of the Industry Award.

Gülün says, “Because of the postponements in the film world, this will be a starting point for us again in terms of sales. We have some festival invites and we are talking to distributors.” To which Nacar adds, “Other than that, we just need COVID to finish!”

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