Das Kind wins Europe's Best Independent Film at ECU Film Festival

The ECU European Independent Film Festival's closing ceremony on Sunday night was a big success. Over 70 films were competing for prizes from Best Short to the Festival's most prestigious award: Europe's Best Independent Film. In its 5th year, the ECU has become an important Indie Film Festival in the heart of Paris, showcasing a wide diversity of European and International films. Festival President Scott Hillier, who founded the Festival in 2006 has brought partners from around the world such as Final Draft, Scriptshark and G-Technology, who have supported and awarded prizes to filmmakers in winning categories.

Das Kind, a documentary feature directed by Yonathan Levy was very well received by festival attendees and greatly appraised by the 16 member judging panel, awarding the film this year s top prize.

Interview with Yonathan Levy

Iain: How did you find the financing to create your documentary?

Yonathan: The budget was easy to find. I found a producer who had never been involved with cinema and he financed the film. If we had done a normal production we would still be looking for grants and financing because it was not an easy film to do. It was my first film, and the production company s first production and these are all things that would dissuade TV channels to buy the rights to a movie with a pre-sale. The total budget in the end was 100,000 euros.

Trailer for Das Kind

Iain: Do you think you will have a good distribution? Are you looking for this?

Yonathan: Yes, we are looking for TV distribution mainly in Europe, and most certainly in France and French speaking nations including Belgium, Quebec, Switzerland, Germany, Romania, USA and Israel.

Iain: What is your next project?

Yonathan: First, it will be to finish a documentary that I started before we shot this film, which I hadn't been able to complete, and that was self financed. After this I have several fiction projects to do but I need to research them first and it's going to take some time.

Iain: How long did it take to research Das Kind?

Yonathan: It is a bit complicated because this project took over 2 years to complete and you could say that we had written something in the beginning but we changed it bit by bit and wrote it as we shot at, as the conception changed.