Fantastic Fest Launches The Fantastic Market!

What, you may be asking yourself, is a co-production market? Well, unlike a sales market which exists for producers to sell the films they've already made, a co-production market is where people can go to pitch the ideas they have for films in order to build the rest of the team that they need to makes the thing in the first place. You need a co-producer? An investor? A sales agent? That's what a co-production market exists to help you find. Not everything that turns up in a co-pro market will make it to the big screen but a lot of projects do and these events have become a key factor in a great many films getting made.

Up until recently most project markets have focused on arthouse projects but a growing number are now casting their eye to the genre field with the freshly announced Fantastic Market - running in parallel to Fantastic Fest - joining the similarly themed markets connected to Pifan and Fantasia.

We're are so incredibly proud to announce our new international co-production market for genre films called Fantastic Market|Mercado Fantastico. Our plan with Mercado Fantastico is to connect international film projects - with an emphasis on the kinds of singular genre films for which Fantastic Fest is known - with potential production partners, sales agents and distributors. The first market will be held parallel to Fantastic Fest (September 19-26), highlighting new genre narrative projects from across the world, with a particular eye toward filmmakers from Latin America, Spain, Portugal and the United States.
 
Our lead FF programmer Rodney Perkins and the Fantastic Fest director Kristen Bell are spearheading the effort, and we're teaming up with CANANA and El Rey to make this a reality. Here's a little more info:
 
CANANA, the Mexican production and distribution outlet helmed by Gael Garcia Bernal, Diego Luna, Pablo Cruz and Julian Levin will co-produce Fantastic Market|Mercado Fantastico alongside filmmaker Robert Rodriguez's El Rey network.  Cristina Garza, Vice President of MUNDIAL, CANANA's sales joint venture with IM Global, will source projects from the region.
 
"The Latin movie-going audience is the only demographic increasing in the US.  Because of our proximity to Mexico and Latin America, we see a large number of emerging projects from these countries at Fantastic Fest," said Fantastic Fest co-founder and creative director Tim League. "Fantastic Market is the next step in the evolution of the festival to help us further our mission to support emerging genre filmmakers from across the globe."
 
"In the last few years we have seen a huge spike in the number and quality of genre films coming from Latin America," said Pablo Cruz, CANANA Partner. "We hope bringing these projects to the U.S. marketplace will expand financing possibilities and international exposure for these emerging directors and producers."
 
El Rey founder Robert Rodriguez said that "establishing the Fantastic Market is a great opportunity to not only give the Ibero-American community a stage for their work in genre films but it's also an outlet for the US Hispanic community to showcase their projects in an area where they are underserved. I'm excited to see what is produced."
 
We're accepting submissions from June 1 through July 15 of this year. You can read our guidelines on the Fantastic Fest website.  All projects will be reviewed by a panel consisting of Fantastic Fest organizers, market partners and members of industry - and those selected will be announced mid-August.
 
If your project is selected, representatives will be invited to make pitches at the Film Market in Austin, and a jury made of Fantastic Fest founder Tim League, director Robert Rodriguez and other industry professionals will select and award the top three projects at the market. You can also find workshops, networking and other opportunities at the market. Read more at the website!