The second LET’S CEE Talent Academy welcomed 30 up-and-coming international actors, scriptwriters, producers and directors, one cinematographer and one production manager from Central and Eastern Europe, the Caucasus and Turkey. Embracing the concept used by other established talent academies, the networking platform offered short, intensive workshops, master classes and lectures, bringing talents together with professionals from the film industry.

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During the seven days of the festival, the participants were given a master class on “The Art of Filmmaking” by Hungarian writer-director Márta Mészáros, this year’s recipient of the Star of Urania Lifetime Achievement Award, as well as one on acting by Croatian thesp Leon Lučev, who came to Vienna with two feature films competing for the main prize – Janez Burger’s festival winner Ivan [+lire aussi :
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interview : Janez Burger
interview : Maruša Majer
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interview : Alen Drljević
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interview : Hanna Slak
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Other master classes offered the talents an opportunity to hear about “How to Create, Produce and Distribute Virtual Reality and 360-degree Video Content” from Polish expert Marcin Łunkiewicz (see the interview), to find out about “The Golden Rules for the Golden Globes” from Austrian journalist and member of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association Barbara Gasser, and to learn about designing a festival strategy for films from producer, founder and director of the Raindance Film Festival and the British Independent Film Awards Elliot Grove, who also held a “99-minute Film School”. Additionally, they were able to attend the industry days and pitch their film ideas to professionals at the “Live! Ammunition! Pitching!” session, also presented by Grove. The all-Austrian jury, consisting of location manager Ana Maria Pirvan, and producers Jacob Pochlatko and Ursula Wolschlager, selected the project by director-screenwriter Natig Rasul from Azerbaijan (Narimanfilm). His idea for a short film called Check-In, about an indecisive man and dreamer who has a special ability he is unaware of – to exist in two different places at the same time – received a €50 cash prize, the latest version of the $250 screenwriting software by Final Draft and a collection of Raindance screenplays.

Divided into five groups, the talents were given the task of adapting the subject “Dangerously good…” for the big screen at the beginning of the festival. The winner of this project, which was presented during the awards ceremony on 20 April, was the three-minute Agalmatophilia by Rea Lest (the lead actress in the festival’s opening film, November [+lire aussi :
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interview : Rea Lest
fiche film] by Rainer Sarnet, Estonia), Anton Skrypets (Ukraine), Naima Noelle Schmidt (Austria) and Nastja Kotnik Minik (line producer of Janez Burger’s Ivan, Slovenia). The inspiration for the story about a young woman’s paraphilia involving a lascivious attraction to statues, stemmed from the heavy presence of monuments dating from the years of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy in Vienna, many of them depicting muscular naked bodies. The Agalmatophilia film team received €1,000 in prize money, donated by the LET’S CEE Film Festival.

The LET’S CEE Talent Academy was launched by festival directors Magdalena Żelasko and Wolfgang P Schwelle.