Do you have an idea for a documentary project that is in development or early production stage? Make sure that your synopsis, trailer, and presentation skills gain the attention of the most demanding decision makers and succeed internationally. Within one year, three week-long sessions provide you with intensive cooperation and consultations with internationally renowned experts. Learn more about legal issues, international co-productions, and different forms of promotion and distribution while getting feedback, contacts and further support for your project.
Find all about the Ex Oriente Film and the projects at the festivals on our Ex Oriente Film facebook page.
Ex Oriente Film is an international training programme for documentary professionals supporting the development and funding of creative documentary films from Central and Eastern Europe. The core of the Ex Oriente Film workshop is based on three week-long residential workshops held over 9 months. Each year we select up to 12 projects that receive assistance from a wide range of film experts, with each workshop focusing on a different segment of development. Our participants are given a tailored guidance in developing the subject, narrative and the visual style of their projects, making drafts of a financing and distribution strategy, and finding international partners.
The course culminates in the pitching sessions of projects at the East Doc Forum co-production meeting, featuring the final pitching in front of Europe's and North America's leading commissioning editors and independent producers, distributors, buyers and film fund representatives.
The three residential Ex Oriente Film workshops and the East Doc Forum pitching are supplemented by the Follow-Up Programme - a yearlong chain of follow-up support and additional activities for projects that have completed, or are currently completing, the Ex Oriente Film workshop.
Ex Oriente Film was established in 2003 as the very first training initiative for East European creative documentary film. In the eighteen years of its existence, more than 200 documentary projects from Eastern and Central Europe went through the Ex Oriente Film workshop, including award-winning films from key international festivals, such as Brothers, The Domino Effect, Blind Loves, At the Edge of Russia, Rabbit a la Berlin, Village Without Women, Bakhmaro and Over the Limit.
Ex Oriente Film tutors in previous editions include director Viktor Kossakovsky, director and producer Mike Bonanno (The Yes Men), editor Niels Pagh Andersen, director Anja Salomonowitz, Cintia Gil, KVIFF artistic director Karel Och, director Salomé Jashi, director and producer Robert Kirchhoff and the artist Kateřina Šedá.
Contacts:
Anna Kaslová - Ex Oriente Film Manager: kaslova@dokweb.net
Tereza Šťastná - Ex Oriente Film Coordinator: stastna@dokweb.net
Training