Ex Oriente Film is an international project-based training program - a creative laboratory for both established and emerging film professionals and talented storytellerssupporting the development and funding of exceptional, creative documentaries from Central and Eastern Europe.
Do you have an idea for a documentary feature-length project or documentary series that is in development or early production stage? Make sure 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 and docuseries 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 feature-length projects and 5 documentary series 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 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 Rabbit a la Berlin, A Loss of Something Ever Felt, Love Is Not an Orange, Boylesque, Planet Petrila, Over the Limit, Outside, The Other Side of the River, Non-Aligned: Scenes from the Labudovic Reels, Village Without Women, Blind Loves, Cash & Marry.
The 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 & East Doc Forum Manager: kaslova@dokweb.net
Katarína Karafová - Ex Oriente Film Coordinator: karafova@dokweb.net