Belgium isn’t just the focus at this year’s Cartoon Forum in September, it’s also putting itself on the map with a number of pitches for the upcoming Cinekid Festival. The Amsterdam-based children’s media festival has selected 25 projects from around the world to be presented at its co-pro market on October 21 to 23. Five of the projects hail from Belgium—more than any other region.

Cartoon Forum meanwhile, is more specifically highlighting the region of Wallonia-Brussels and will have seven projects presented from there—nine from all of Belgium.

Cinekid’s junior co-production market event is part of  its industry-focused component.  The event is set to showcase a mix of live-action and animated content, with 13 children’s films and six television projects that are in-development, as well as four TV series and two films in pre-development.

More than 300 international professionals from the children’s media industry will be looking at the projects, with an eye for setting up international partnerships and getting the pitches into production. The industry event kicks off with a public pitch of all the projects, followed by a day and a half of one-on-one meetings between project representatives, potential collaborators and financiers, according to the festival.

During the market, Cinekid will give out three prizes to the selected projects, including the Cinekid Eurimages co-production development award. A US$22,300 (EU$20,000) cash prize, will be given to the winner to cover development expenses of the project. To be eligible, projects must be aiming for cinema release, and must be designed as a European co-production between at least two member states of the Eurimages Fund for reasons other than purely financial.

The other two awards will be given out for the first time this year. First, the best TV project award, which comes with a prize of US$11,189 (EUR$10,000), will go to the best episodic project. The other new award is the Filmmore post-production award, which will be given to the best live-action project at the co-pro market. This US$5,594 (EUR$5,000) prize is designed to grow collaboration with the Dutch visual effects and post production studio Filmmore, and comes with an invitation to start a collaboration with the company. Two juries made up of industry professionals score and choose the winners.

The awards ceremony will take place on Wednesday 23 October.

The full list of selected projects are below:

Film

Beluga Blues                                         10th Ave Productions (Canada)

Jump Out                                               Playtime Films, Tico Film (Italy, Belgium)

Kids Cup                                                 Medieoperatorene (Norway)

Lea and the Tree of Dreams               Belle Epoque Films GmbH (Germany)

Mini-Zlatan and Uncle Darling        Snowcloud Films AB (Sweden)

Nihonjin                                                 PinGuim Content (Brazil)

Snot and Splash                                   It’s Alive Films (Finland)

The Summer Dad Went Gay             Fabelfjord AS (Norway)

The Beanie                                            Senca Studio (Slovenia)

The Only Child                                    Mandarin Film Productions, Lunanime Belgium (China, Belgium)

Three Friends                                     Drama Yapim Film Medya (Turkey)

Totem                                                   Volya Films (The Netherlands)

Winning                                               New Stories AB (Sweden)

TV

Art Mysteries                 Cerutti Film (Netherlands)

Tumbuna Stories          Ulmi Film, Studio Epictus (Papua New Guinea, Switzerland)

Mrs. Robot                      Hamlet (Belgium)

Ormhildur the Brave    Compass Films (Iceland)

Overboard!                     nutprodukce (Czech Republic)

Pol the Pirate Mouse     Submarine (Netherlands)

Works in Progress 

Coppelia                                    Submarine (Netherlands)

Ella Bella Bingo                       Kool Produktion AS (Norway)

Mister Paper                            Mockingbird Productions (Belgium)

Ready, Steady….Draw!         Doghouse Films (Luxembourg)

Royals Next Door                    Pikkukala (Finland)

Sir Mouse  (pictured, above) Fabrique Fantastique (Belgium)