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ZAGREB 2017 Zagreb Industry

The Zagreb Film Festival wraps another fruitful industry section

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- The ZFF's industry sidebar presented a wide variety of events, master classes and panels, including a pitching forum for student films from the region

The Zagreb Film Festival wraps another fruitful industry section
A photo from the Industry Youth! pitching forum

The industry section of the Zagreb Film Festival is growing and attracting more and more attention every year. This year's edition consisted of several events: in addition to My First Script, the festival hosted four master classes led by Stéphane GuéninSpencer HuntJames Watkins and Peter Kerekes, plus two workshops for children, My First Video Game and the Bib for Kids Vlog Workshop.

This year's big novelty was Industry Youth!, a five-day programme designed for six pairs of film students (consisting of one director and one producer in each team) selected from six film schools in six former Yugoslav countries. Their short-film projects were developed through two workshops – one focusing on co-productions, by Guénin, and one centring on pitching, by Watkins.

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The grand finale was the pitching forum, where two projects, Planet by Nikica Zdunić and Tajana Bakota, from ADU Zagreb, and Šafarikova 19 by Lana Pavkov and Miloš Vučković, from FDU Belgrade, were pronounced the winners and awarded with post-production services. They were provided by the participants of another event, the "We'll Fix It in Post" workshop, who served as the jury for the Industry Youth! pitching forum.

Indeed, the "We'll Fix It in Post" group master class was a chance for post-production companies to present their work, and explain what can and should be done with a film in post-production. The general conclusion from all the participants was that it is easier and cheaper to have post-production planned ahead, rather than depending on it to fix the mistakes made in the filming process. The participants presented their companies and their specific lines of work, including Branko Linta from Color BureauIvan Zelić from Studio Nazor, Tomislav Vujnović from Vizije (all from Croatia), Bojan Hadžihalilović from Fabrika (Bosnia and Herzegovina), Bojan Mastilović from Iridium Film and Fran Sokolić from Teleking (both from Slovenia).

Aside from his involvement in the Industry Youth! programme, Guénin also held a master class on co-production possibilities with France. Watkins presented his TV series McMafia in a master class entitled "McMafia – From Script to Screen". Hunt's master class, "AR/VR: In Search of Stories of the Future", attempted to answer the question of how augmented reality and virtual reality will influence the art of storytelling and filmmaking, while Kerekes talked about the hybrid docu-fiction genre.

Finally, one whole day was dedicated to the event "How Can WE Do It?", organised by Croatia's Creative Europe MEDIA Desk. The event focused on distribution through several panels with representatives of production and distribution companies, such as Canoe Films (UK), Latido Films (Spain), Chouchkov Brothers (Bulgaria), Interfilm (Croatia), NFP Marketing and Distribution (Germany), Wildcard Distribution (Ireland) and Vico Films (Ireland), who reflected on films such as The Young Offenders [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
From the Balcony [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Ole Giæver
film profile
]
Toni Erdmann [+see also:
film review
trailer
Q&A: Maren Ade
film profile
]
The Constitution [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Rajko Grlić
film profile
]
, Prevenge [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile
]
and The West.

Examples of good practice in the context of MEDIA’s open calls and guidelines referring to the promotion of European audiovisual works were presented by Vincent Lucassen (Under the Milky Way), Philipp Hoffmann (Kino on Demand) and Kiril Gjozev (Cut-A-Way).

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