Transilvania Pitch Stop will offer a 20.000 EUR prize from Eurimages for most promising film project.

The registrations for the 4th edition of Transilvania Pitch Stop (TPS), which will take place in Cluj-Napoca between 5 and 10 June, during TIFF, continue until April 27.

The program, introduced by Transilvania International Film Festival, supports the first steps towards funding the most promising film projects, facilitating their international visibility. Feature films submitted by debutant directors (1st or 2nd work in their career) are considered as eligible entries.

The good news don’t stop here: Transilvania International Film Festival (June 2-11, 2017) was included by Eurimages, the Council of Europe fund for co-productions, in the prestigious list of 10 festivals that grant the Eurimages Co-production Development Award amounting to €20,000.

Transilvania Pitch Stop goes international and will include two components: an international co-productions platform, on the 9th and 10th of June, 2017, that aims to discover and support the most promising film projects signed by first and second time filmmakers from Romania, Republic of Moldova, Hungary, Bulgaria, Serbia, Ukraine, Russia, Greece, Turkey and Georgia, and a development workshop dedicated exclusively to Romanian and Moldavian directors. During the workshop that will take place between 5 and 8 June, 5 projects will be selected and will benefit from guidance on script development, training, finding the best “sale” techniques for the project and pitching the projects in front of prospective partners.

From these 5 projects, the organizers will decide which will compete together with the foreign projects for the TPS prizes. A jury of international professionals along with a representative from Eurimages will decide the winner of the 20.000 EUR award.

We wanted to find out more about Transilvania Pitch Stop, its selection criteria and what the organizers are looking for in the registered projects. Dorina Oarga, TPS selector & TIFF Industry Manager answered our questions:

What are you looking for in this year’s registered projects at Transilvania Pitch Stop?

This year, Transilvania Pitch Stop crosses the boarder with the purpose of discovering a powerful selection of projects from Romania and the neighboring countries like: Hungary, Serbia, Bulgaria, Georgia, Turkey, Russia, Republic of Moldova and Ukraine, and encouraging a cross-border cooperation both in this area and at European level.

The focus will be on quality artistic projects with a high potential to be developed.

What are the selection criteria?

TPS has two components:

– development workshop for first and second time filmmakers from Romania and Republic of Moldova. The focus will be on artistic quality, project’s originality and realization potential.

– co-production platform also for first and second time feature film filmmakers from the above-mentioned countries. The artistic quality will also be main criteria. The project must have at least 15% of the budget already provided.

To be eligible, the projects must be created from the beginning as a co-production between the participating countries or at least between two members of Eurimages Fund.

TPS program is addressed to the projects that are currently in development, so the shooting must not start until the end of the festival.

We wish you good luck in registering the project at Transilvania Pitch Stop and we will see you soon at TIFF, in June!

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Eurimages Co-production Development Award is awarded at festivals of Berlin, Rotterdam, Copenhagen, (CPH:DOX), Sarajevo, Rome, Amsterdam (Cinekid), Tallinn, San Sebastian and Cartoon Movie (Bordeaux).

Founded by the Europe Council in 1988, Eurimages supported until now 1844 European co-productions, with a total amount of 545 million euros.

The regulations of Transilvania Pitch Stop can be checked here.

The deadline for submissions is April 27^th, 2017.

For registration it is necessary to create an account on eventival.eu platform.

Romina Banu

Photographer and editor; she co-founded Dissolved Magazine together with Melissa. For Films in Frame she gathers film and TV series recommendations for lazy weekends and she writes about interesting projects from the film industry. Other than that, she likes traveling, chilling with her cats and sleeping.