Shit Happens. This expression perfectly explains what happened to us.
More than one year ago, we met a Latvian producer living in Russia: Alisa Green. She was excited about the idea of The Cosmonaut. By then, she was creating her own company: Phenomena Films.
The year after, in the festival of Berlin, we reached an agreement for her to involve in coproduction. She was going to provide the film, through different investors, with €120,000 and some €30,000 more of her work and her team's that she was going to capitalize.
She was going to take 30% of the future benefits of the project in exchange.
It is obvious that it was really, really good having someone who understood the project, and who would be essential for the shooting in Latvia and Russia. We enthusiastically announced it to you.
For the next months, she did her job efficiently: she organized the shooting of winter shots in Moscow, she contacted us with Forma Pro Films, the Latvian producer who would be the key to organize the production service in Latvia and, literally, who saved the shooting (without them we could not make the film) and also organized the shooting in Moscow.
After several long excuses, just one week to the shooting, she confessed that her investor was not going to invest in our film. You all know the result: she was about to terminate three years of hard work and the will of thousands of you (and our careers as well). Thanks to the huge effort made by the community, by you, we saved The Cosmonaut at the very last moment by raising €131,000 in less than one week. Thanks to that we could finally finalize the shooting.
There are some other unfulfilled promises. Alisa Green didn't meet any of the deadlines, the dates; she failed to keep all the conditions. Nowadays, we haven't received our money yet and we decided to break our relationship with her. Yes, we have that 30% of the film again, but the rage, frustration and uneasiness will stay for long. She left us with a lot of problems, she have gambled with our work, with our (actually your) money and with the will of many people.
They say these things are pretty common in cinema. We are new and we have few resources, so this was a real blow, and we almost couldn't cope with it. That's why we only want to tell you about it and share it with you so you can be up to date with her behaviour in this project, just in case you meet her in your professional future.
As we said at the beginning: Shit Happens. Luckily, we will be able to show you the first trailer of the film soon and keep on going forward, as usual.
Kisses!