Moving completely online due to the current pandemic, the BPF will be available to industry professionals across the globe who will get to see some of the brightest young filmmaking talents in the Baltics and Poland.
Rimantė Daugėlaitė-Cegelskienė, Head of the Baltic Pitching Forum and Lithuanian Shorts said:
“With the forum taking place online this year, we are looking at it as a possibility to present new Baltic talents and their short film projects to a wider audience. It’s a great opportunity for industry professionals to experience our open lectures and project pitching sessions and to show the international film community a new generation of filmmakers from Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia - and this year’s guest country - Poland.”
The BPF consists of an online script consultation and a 3-day training and pitching event. In September, script expert Wim Vanacker (Belgium) will consult selected participants on their scripts. Then in October, during the Baltic Pitching Forum, participants will be tutored by pitching trainer and artistic adviser Gabriele Brunnenmeyer (Germany) and then will pitch their projects to an invited panel of industry professionals who will provide immediate feedback. The large majority of these events will also be open for registered film professionals.
The full list of panellists will be released later in September.
As in previous editions, two projects (originating from Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia) will end up with the opportunity of visiting Euro Connection, the international co-production forum connected to the Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival, or the European Short Pitch, the scriptwriting workshop in residency and a co-production forum. The winning projects will be decided by the BPF panellists. One project will receive a newly launched monetary prize, the Baltic Producers MEDIA Award, initiated by the Creative Europe MEDIA Offices in Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. This award will be available to all projects pitched and be decided by a specially invited jury of Baltic producers.
In 2020 twelve projects in the development stage were selected from four countries: seven fiction, one mockumentary, and four animation short films.
Three fiction projects were selected from Estonia: Juri Krutii’s Keyhole (prod. Nell Cunningham), Ragne Mandri’s Rabbit Hole (prod. Laura García Baeza), and Jaanika Arum’s Skin of a Mandarin (prod. Tiina Savi).
Latvia will be represented by Raitis Ābele’s and Harijs Grundmanis’ animation project Tool [Sprungulis] (prod. Raitis Ābele), Lauris Ābele’s fiction project Elk [Alnis] (prod. Sintija Heine) and mockumentary project The Man Who Scooped The Sea by director and producer Zurab Dzhidzhilava.
Two Lithuanian animation projects – Bruno by Danas Bereznickas (prod. Gabija Budreckytė) and The One Who Knows [Ta, kuri žino] by Eglė Davidavičė (prod. Agnė Adomėnė) - will be presented at the event alongside Elena Rožukaitė’s fiction Tell It To My Heart [Pasakyk, kad myli] (prod. Gabrielė Misevičiūtė).
Poland will be represented by Corpus Christi screenwriter Mateusz Pacewicz with his fiction project Team Building (prod. Ludka Kieczak) as well as Betina Bożek’s Dessert Dachshund [Deserowy Jamnik] (prod. Aneta Zagorska, Robert Sowa) and Karolina Żebrowska’s Ebony (prod. Shruti Sidhan).
Daugėlaitė-Cegelskienė said:
“We’re happy to have received a record number of applications this year. It shows how the Baltic Pitching Forum has become an important industry event in the region. I just want to note that this year we’ve got more animation submissions from Lithuania than in the previous editions. For the last few years there has been a positive increase in short animation development which shows that filmmakers aren’t afraid to search for innovative forms.”
Applications from the Baltic countries were selected by the international selection committee which consisted of the representatives from Lithuanian Short Film Agency “Lithuanian Shorts”, Estonian Short Film Center | ShortEst, PÖFF Shorts (Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival), Riga International Film Festival, Riga International Short Film Festival 2ANNAS. This year’s Guest Country’s Polish submissions were evaluated by the experts appointed by the Polish Film Institute.
The Baltic Pitching Forum is organised by Lithuanian Short Film Agency “Lithuanian Shorts” in partnership with Riga International Film Festival, Riga International Short Film Festival 2ANNAS, PÖFF Shorts | Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival and Estonian Short Film Center | ShortEst. It is supported by Lithuanian Council for Culture, Lithuanian Film Center, Vilnius City Municipality, Polish Film Institute. Partners – Creative Europe Desk MEDIA Offices in Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia.
