ÉCU wishes everyone a Happy New Year and we hope that everyone is energized, re-vitalized and ready to attack everything that 2012 is going to throw at us!

Our FINAL, FINAL submission date is January 15th so, if there is anyone still out there with a great story and not already sent it to us now is the time. Our submission judges, over 60 of them hailing from all over the world, didn’t have a very long Christmas break and are screening films like crazy people as we work towards compiling a great Official Selection for ÉCU 2012.

In this month’s newsletter you’ll find our new, and we think fun, series titled “ÉCU Office”. So far there have been two episodes released: “Ed Who?” and “First Day”. We hope that you enjoy our craziness. Oh, and just to let you know these clips ARE based on actual events. ☺ You’ll also will meet Faramarz Beheshti, the director of “Salam Rugby” which won Best Non-European Documentary at ÉCU 2011. We are honoured to welcome into the ECU Alumni.

As always, ÉCU is traveling our award-winning films around the World and in January we are in Asia: first visiting International Children’s Film Festival of Bangladesh (January 21st-27th) continuing with Jaipur International Film Festival in India (January 27th-31st). By the way did you know that Jaipur is the world’s fastest growing film festival? We love the fact that we get a chance to show some of the World’s best indie films not just at our main event in Paris, but all over the planet 12 months a year. Thanks to our excellent partners who share our desire to show these great stories to as many people as we can!

Thanks for reading and we hope to see you again next month – but if you can’t wait til then you can always keep up to date with all that’s going on here at the European Independent Film Festival by following us on Twitter and checking in at our Tumblr blog.