03/07/2018 - Ten authors from Italy, Germany, Austria and Switzerland have been selected to participate in two workshops conducted in English in South Tyrol with the help of international professionals

Jana Burbach, head writer at the Writers' Room

"Split Screen" will be the motto of the 7^th edition of RACCONTI - the IDM Film Fund & Commission of South Tyrol’s annual Script Lab, which aims to help develop screenplays for TV and web series (the call for applications runs until 29 July).

Ten writers from Italy and German-speaking countries (Germany, Austria and Switzerland), have been selected to participate in two one-week workshops conducted in English in October (1-6) and November (19-24), in the mountains near Scena, in South Tyrol.

The Script Lab will involve a Writers' Room dedicated to television storytelling and a "Digital Think Tank" programme focused on serial writing for new digital formats. In the Writers' Room, the selected individuals will collaborate with Robert Marciniak, Philipp Budweg and Julia Rappold from the prestigious production company Lieblingsfilm (Mountain Miracle - An Unexpected Friendship [+see also:
trailer
film profile]), based in Munich. The head writer will be German-born Jana Burbach, who has worked in the writers' room for the ZDF and ARTE series Bad Banks, as well as contributing to the co-creation of the ZDF web series Just Push Abuba. Three selected authors will work as staff writers with them in order to further develop a television drama series concept in six parts, with the provisional title Treeline. The three chosen writers will receive a salary from Lieblingsfilm and will be able to develop their ideas in a group with the help of the story consultant and British producer John Yorke (Wolf Hall) and guest expert and Italian writer, Nicola Lusuardi (Una pallottola nel cuore).

The "Digital Think Tank" programme will focus on concepts for the web and will make use of new important partners such as the production companies Black Sheep Films (France), Bahama Films (Poland) and Endemol Shine Beyond (Germany). Seven participants have been selected to work on this format, including screenwriters and – new to this edition – directors with a passion for writing. Participants will develop their own ideas for a web series, as well as concepts for the VoD market or social media platforms, without limitations on genres and settings, as long as they maintain a focus on fiction projects. Leading this team are three pioneers in the field of digital film production: the French producer Mathieu Van de Velde, who created Patricia Moore with his production company Black Sheep, one of the first series for the French platform Black Pills, the Polish writer and producer Wiktor Piątkowski from Bahama Films, former participant in RACCONTI, who created a series (Wataha) for HBO Europe, and the ZDF web series Just Push Abuba in 2018, and finally the German producer Kristian Costa-Zahn, responsible for the development and production of digital content, transmedia formats and entertainment for Endemol Shine and also the winner of an International Digital Emmy. Eventually the participants will develop concepts suitable for an international market and will crucially remain rights holders. The three partner production houses will have a limited amount of time to evaluate the various projects from a production point of view and potentially choose some concepts to develop further.

(Translated from Italian)