A ‘Sense of Hope’ Fuels American Indie Filmmakers Trying to Crack the European Market
variety.comChristopher Vourlias The first time he made the trip to Europe to take part in U.S. in Progress, an event dedicated to independent American filmmaking launched by Poland’s American Film Festival in 2011, L.A.-based director Pete Ohs admits he was “very green.” “It was my first narrative feature…[and I was] very much getting into this world of independent filmmaking,” Ohs tells Variety.
U.S. in Progress, which this year takes place Nov. 9 – 11 in Wrocław, Poland, presents a selection of roughly half a dozen American indie titles in the final stages of production to European sales agents, distributors and festival programmers.
The event is often a crash course in the European market for directors like Ohs, who participated in 2016 with “Everything Beautiful Is Far Away.” For many it’s the first time that they’re exposed to film industry professionals on the continent, offering insight into an ecosystem of financing, production and distribution that’s a world apart from how independent movies are made and sold in the U.S.
Perhaps more importantly, says Ohs, they have the chance to sit down with the sorts of industry players and decision-makers they’d rarely encounter at American indie showcases like South by Southwest, Sundance or Tribeca, where most filmmakers are at a remove from industry gatekeepers. “At those festivals, the conversations you have can be inspiring, but you’re interacting with other dreamers…[who are] trying to get their movie made,” says Ohs. “The conversations at U.S.
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