Despina Mouzaki

The Crossroads Co-production Forum is one of the innovations of this year’s Thessaloniki International Film Festival. Of course, it does not
constitute an innovation in the field of international film festivals where such events have long since proved their merit and usefulness
vis-à-vis filmmakers as well as the film industry in general.
Especially in today’s conditions of fierce competitiveness, instability and upheaval in the area of film, it is my belief that a film festival
has to broaden its presence and activity to cover the earlier stages of a film’s creation and reliably shape the procedures that will bring artistic
projects in contact with the people who will make them a reality.
This is even more so the case when we refer to national cinemas of limited dynamics, such as the cinemas of the Mediterranean countries,
or those that are in a transitional phase, such as the cinemas of the Balkans and South-Eastern Europe. The response our initiative has
met with from its very first steps proves that it effectively meets existing needs on the part of the region’s filmmakers and producers, as
well as an equally lively interest on the part of film professionals internationally. And so, for three days, twenty-seven producers from
Mediterranean and Balkan countries, as well as producers from other countries who are involved in films from our region or that refer to our
region, will meet with financial backers, co-producers and film professionals from all over the world.
We did not randomly select the title Crossroads to describe these new activities. Our Festival, which already maintains an active Fund for
the support of Balkan cinema, is now creating the promotion infrastructure for international collaborations and co-productions, while also
setting the foundation –beginning this year—for the shaping of an attractive, parallel regional market. It is, on the whole, the beginning of
a new relationship between the countries of our region and the international film community which has as its epicenter Thessaloniki, a centuries-old
“crossroads” of peoples and cultures. A relationship which will lead to the close interrelation between Thessaloniki, cinema, the
economic activity surrounding cinema, official organizations –and principally the Ministry of Culture, which received and is promoting the
Festival’s new initiative, and the Ministry of Macedonia-Thrace which, grasping the spirit of this effort, has warmly embraced Crossroads and
included it in the rationale and the activity of its own pioneering «Space to Think».
This region has fascinating stories to tell. It is important that we all help its filmmakers to tell them and the audiences of the world to hear
them.
Despina Mouzaki
2