Great news from Cannes where Neasa Hardiman’s Sea Fever has won the inaugural Avanpost Digital Cube Post-Production Award at the Frontières Platform, the dedicated section of industry programming & networking events for the genre film industry at the Marché du Film.
The win comes with a $150,000 of in kind post-production services from the Romanian company Digital Cube
Sea Fever, which was also written by Hardiman (Happy Valley), sees a marine biology student find herself isolated from her superstitious trawler crew as they struggle to overcome a deadly parasite in their water supply. Toni Collette, who previously starred in Gerard Barrett’s Glassland, will play the Captain, with Hermione Corfied (Star Wars: The Last Jedi) as the student.
Brendan McCarthy and John McDonnell of Dublin-based Fantastic Films produce, with Belgium’s Frakas Productions and Sweden’s Bright Pictures. Epic Pictures Group will executive produce and co-finance, with financial support also coming from the Irish Film Board, the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland, Wallimage, and Film i Väst, as well as from the Creative Europe MEDIA programme.
The script for Sea Fever was shortlisted for the AMPAS Nicholl Fellowship in Screenwriting 2015. It was selected at the Frontieres Film Festival as one of 12 showcase projects, as well as at the Les Arcs Film Festival as one of 9 showcase projects, and won a prize at the London Film Awards.
Sea Fever starts shooting in August.
Frontières is an international co-production market and networking platform specifically focused on genre film financing and co-production between Europe and North America. It is organized by the Fantasia International Film Festival, in partnership with the Marché du Film – Festival de Cannes. In addition to its annual co-production market at Fantasia (July 19-22 2018), Frontières programming also includes a Finance & Packaging Forum (February 22-24, Amsterdam) and the Frontières Platform (May 12-13, Marché du Film – Festival de Cannes).