PITCH_IT@Berlinale is a workshop programme for emerging filmmakers from Hungary, the Czech Republic and Germany and aims to support your first steps in the film industry. The project is organized by the Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg, the Film and TV School of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague (FAMU) and the Goethe-Institut.
After Budapest, Tallinn and Prague, the last part of PITCH_IT@Berlinale took place in Berlin on February 16th. There, the 15 great participant teams from the Czech Republic, Hungary and Germany presented their brand-hot projects to the public for the first time. The teams had been preparing for the last 10 months in cooperation with the Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg, the Goethe-Institut and the FAMU Prague. At the final pitch, the politically and socially relevant feature, documentary and animation films were presented under the supervision of pitching legend Sibylle Kurz.
You can find the catalogue with a summary of all the projects here:
Our PITCH_IT@Berlinale workshop series is divided into three steps before the final pitch takes place at the Berlinale 2023. In July, the participants travelled to Budapest for the first part of the pitching programe. The second part was organised in Estonia, Tallinn during the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival PÖFF. The third event concerning the fine tuning of the participants´ projects is going to take place in Prague in January. Finally, the movies are going to be pitched in Berlin on Febuary 16th. You can read a more detailed description of the past and upcoming events below.
... with highly decorated guests, such as funding specialist Tracie Holder (USA), filmmaker Ádám Császi (HU) and social media expert Paul Rieth (GER), who did presentations on the topic of green shooting, case studies, workshops and first pitches, we started with the individual content work of each project. With the support and intensive coaching from the internationally renowned pitching trainer Sibylle Kurz (GER), the participants were able to refine their ideas and complete their first pitching exercises, which were conducted half online/half digitally. All this took place in the historic rooms of the CEU Central European University, Budapest. After Budapest, presentations and trailers were created by the project teams, which were further developed over the summer with Sibylle Kurz´s support.
In November, the participants went to the physical Station 2 of Pitch_It@Berlinale: the excursion to Estonia, Tallinn to the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival PÖFF, giving the participants their first taste of festival air. The visit of the big international film market was not only inspiring for the respective project teams, but also gave them the opportunity to create synergies and exchange ideas as a group. Among others, they had the opportunity to network, including ice bathing at -3 degrees, to take one-on-one sessions with producers and distributors, as well as to attend several round tables with German Films and a film critic from Screendaily.
The final step befor the big pitch at the Berlinale took place in Prague in January. The third part of our workshop program was all about fine-tuning. Under the supervision of the editors and filmmakers Lucie Králová and Radim Prochazka, the participants finalised their trailers in the rooms of FAMU and the Goethe Institut, they did some final pitching exercises and were coached for the talks after the pitches. Finally, the participants faced a real audience from the industry and festivals during a test pitch, which served as a rehersal for the upcoming actual one.
On the afternoon of February 16th, the films are going to be presented to the public for the first time at the Berlinale. Date: February 16th 2023, Thursday, 2:00PM-5:00PM Location: Neue Schönhauser Str. 20, 10178 Berlin
Sibylle Kurz and the other mentors during the pitching workshop in Prague.
The Participants
We would like to introduce the participants of our PITCH_It@Berlinale workshop series. This year, 17 young filmmakers (writers, directors and producers) from Germany, Hungary and the Czech Republic with a total of 10 projects – some indiviual ones and some coproductions – were sellected. You can find each participant´s introduction and a short description of their project below.
LAND OF FIRE
Feature-length documentary
Written and directed by Nikola Klinger
Produced by Kristina Škodová
Direkt2Pitch
The DIRECT2PITCH program supports 10 young filmmakers (writers, directors and producers) from Germany and the Czech Republic with a total of 5 projects – one indiviual project and four coproductions – during their first steps in the film industry. The participants had the chance to join the workshops offered during our PITCH_IT@Berlinale program. You can find each participant´s introduction and a short description of their project below.
MARTHA
Feature-length comedy
Written by Jakub Jirásek and Josef Kokta
Directed by Jakub Jirásek
The Mentors in Budapest
The first stage of our workshop series PITCH_IT@Berlinale will take place 18–22 July 2022 with a Producer and Pitching Workshop in Budapest. We are also organising a discussion on each of the topics “Green Shooting” and “Diversity in Film”. Here, we introduce the mentors.
The art of pitching is the professional oral presentation of a project idea or story. A task that even brilliant filmmakers and producers often fail at. A successful pitch of a film project can decide whether a project is realized or not.
PITCH_IT@Berlinale offers intensive workshops in the fields of production, directing, distribution and film-marketing. All Mentors are highly experienced and decorated members of the current film industry and will guide your project throughout this programme. Furthermore, the pitching training by communication trainer Sibylle Kurz is intended to help the participants to prepare their projects in line with the actual film market requirements and offer skills for networking in the international film industry.
At the end of the trainings, the participants can present their film projects to employees of international film festivals (e.g. Sundance, IDFA, Dok.Fest München etc.) and film funding agencies alongside Berlinale 2023.
We look forward to applications from filmmakers in the fields of animation, documentary, feature film and experimental film.
The language of the training and the workshop is English.
The conditions of participation and details can be found in the call for entries. The application deadline is April 19th, 2022.
A jury made up of internationally renowned film experts from Hungary, the Czech Republic and Germany decides on the participation of the applicants.
The Jury
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Ildikó Enyedi
The Hungarian film director was a member of the International Jury for the main competition of the Berlinale 2021. Her film Testről és lélekről (On Body and Soul) won the Golden Bear at the Berlinale 2017 and was nominated not only for an Oscar but also for several European Film Awards. Enyedi's debut film My 20th Century (1989) was awarded the Caméra d'Or at Cannes. Enyedi has already been a jury member at festivals in Venice, Moscow or San Sebastián. Her internationally cast film The Story of My Wife had its premiere in Cannes in 2021.
Producer, director and mentor at Prague’s FAMU. He released 20 feature films, half fictional and got many Czech and international awards. Focusing on films by debut-making directors (e.g. Schmitke, Best Debut at Cottbus IFF 2015) as well as the filmmaker of the Czechoslovak New Wave, Karel Vachek, whose last film Communism and the Net premiered at IFFR 2020. His recent productions include the wildlife film Wild Prague, a sequel of the successful Wilder than Wilderness, which got 100.000 audience in Czech cinemas and the Czech-Portuguese co-production of Lawrence of Moravia, a puppet anidok about the famous discoverer of the Arab world.
was born in Mainz. She studied Political Science, Indology and Economics at the University of Freiburg im Breisgau, at the University of Sussex, UK and at the University of Heidelberg. Her doctorate was in South Asian political science. She wrote her dissertation on the women's quota in local parliaments introduced in India in 1991. From 2001–2004, she headed the branch of the South Asia Institute of Heidelberg University in New Delhi, India. She then took over as director of the Goethe-Institut in Bangalore, after which she worked as an overall strategy officer at the Goethe Head Office in Munich and finally as director of the Goethe-Institut Bucharest. Since September 2019, she has been the director of the Goethe-Institut in Budapest.
