The fifth edition of the screenplay and pitch competition has started!
Entries are open until April 2nd, 2023.
The American Independent Film Festival (AIFF) announces the launch of the fifth edition of the WRITE A SCREENPLAY FOR (WSF)… | WRITE A SCREENPLAY FOR… contest organized by Asociatia Cinemascop with the support of PRO TV.
Now in its seventh edition, the American Independent Film Festival will take place this year between April 21st-24th in Bucharest.
After the first editions of WSF encouraged screenwriters to write for Sebastian Stan, Anamaria Marinca, Vlad Ivanov, Ioana Bugarin or for the Generation Z audience, this year screenwriters are invited to write one or more comedy or thriller scripts to be developed during interactive training workshops with prestigious mentors from the film and television industry: Marietta von Hausswolff von Baumgarten – film and television screenwriter, Gabriela Iacob – Head of Scripted Development PRO TV and Cristian Mungiu – director and screenwriter, founder of the American Independent Film Festival and Les Films de Cannes à Bucarest.
Swedish-born Marietta von Hausswolff von Baumgarten is a screenwriter and international script consultant. Her work includes projects such as Sundance Labs, Torino Film Lab, Binger, Biennale College Venice, Feature Expanded, Hezaya (Doha), Toronto IFF, Cinelink Drama Sarajevo, Bridging the Dragon, Talent Campus, Midpoint, Fly Film Lab (Philippines, Korea), Locarno Open Doors and Myanmar Script Fund. She is a voting member of the European Film Academy and a member of the Swedish Screen Writers Guild. Her film Call Girl won the FIPRESCI Award in Toronto and has travelled to festivals around the world. She has written for Netflix and other streamers. Marietta has worked on script development in countries such as China, Mongolia, Nepal and Pakistan and has served on international juries around the world. Many of the films she has consulted on have won awards at prestigious film festivals. She is the creator of the Write Retreat programme.
Gabriela Iacob is Head of Scripted Content Development at PRO TV, is part of the selection committee of Cinema Pendent L’Alternativa Barcelona and is a tutor of the new format Mentoring Projects Alternativa Pro. Throughout her career she has been Head of Development at MediaPro Pictures, Head of TV Development at Multi Media Est and set up a storytelling studio in Barcelona. She has worked with both established and novice writers as a developer, script doctor and trainer; from developing TV series to mentoring fiction, documentary and/or hybrid projects.
Cristian Mungiu is one of the best known Romanian filmmakers in the world, his films have been presented and appreciated in the most important film festivals in the world and subsequently distributed in many territories. He has a number of awards to his credit, both as a director and as a screenwriter, the most notable of which are the Palme d’Or at Cannes for 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days in 2007, the Best Screenplay Award in 2012 at Cannes for Beyond the Hills and the Best Director Award at Cannes for Graduation in 2016. He is the founder of Les Films de Cannes à Bucarest, which will celebrate its 14th edition this year, the American Independent Film Festival (now at its seventh edition) and many film-related projects, including the Write a Screenplay For… screenwriting contest.
“Write a Screenplay For… has grown a lot since the first edition five years ago, especially since it turned into an international script development workshop. Write a Screenplay For… offers the most direct opportunity for both amateur and professional screenwriters to turn their ideas into screenplays, and is the only workshop that aims to get projects into production. The aim of the programme is to effectively accompany screenwriters in developing their ideas and to put them in direct contact with those who actually produce films or series. This year at the Berlinale we enjoyed the premiere of the Spy/Master series, developed within the WSF, and I hope we will have the opportunity to continue this tradition in the years to come,” says Cristian Mungiu.
This year WSF is organised in partnership with PRO TV. “We started with TV scriptwriting workshops for writers recommended by production houses, so the proposal to partner with a long-established competition like WSF came as a natural step, part of a strategy to discover and support local storytellers. It’s easy to forge partnerships when you have common goals: discovering new talent, discovering local stories, but especially the importance of mentoring writers. I think this interest in mentoring, shown in many other ways before, led Cristian Mungiu to create a special format for the contest, including one-on-one development. From our first discussion, it was clear that both the WSF team and ourselves see this project as more than a contest, perhaps more of a screenwriting incubator, so we decided together to develop the training part in addition to the already existing one-on-one development. We are excited about the partnership and hope to develop other initiatives together.” says Gabriela Iacob.
Write a Screenplay for… has two sections: TV mini-series projects, with stories structured over six or eight episodes, and feature-length fiction films. Finalists of the competition will benefit from a period of active individual and group work with writers and project development consultants who will guide them to develop a full script. The project development phase will also include individual and group training sessions with Gabriela Iacob on writing film and TV scripts.
Afterwards PRO TV and Asociatia Cinemascop will choose the winning projects and the projects that will be considered for entry into the TV production circuit (mini-series) or the film production circuit (feature-length fiction projects).
Applications, in the form of short script summaries, should be sent to info@cinemascop.eu by April 2nd, 2023, 11:00pm (Romanian time). The competition is open to both professional and first-time screenwriters or writers. There is no entry fee.
Entrants to the competition do not need to have their scripts finalised by the application date, but must submit a story logline (maximum 3 sentences), a story description, an artistic statement, a detailed synopsis for mini-series, outline for feature film and/or a pitchdeck) of maximum 3 pages, a conflict scene with dialogue from the script (maximum 2 pages) and a professional CV.
Asociatia Cinemascop and PRO TV will analyze all the proposals received and choose the shortlist of projects (12-15) that will go through to the second stage of the competition (between 5 and 10 projects) for each section. The list of semi-finalists will be published on www.filmedefestival.ro.
Between 10-15 April the shortlisted projects will participate in interview and pitching sessions via Zoom about the projects, after which the six finalists will be chosen to enter the development phase with the three script consultants: Marietta von Hausswolff von Baumgarten, Gabriela Iacob and Cristian Mungiu. The names of the finalists will be announced at the AIFF.7 opening gala and subsequently on www.filmedefestival.ro.
Applications will be submitted in Romanian. The development of the finalist projects will be in Romanian and English. Translation will be provided for those who need it.
The actual writing of the scripts is expected to take place until October 1st, 2023, and during this period finalists will have group as well as individual meetings with the three consultants. The scripts will be written in Romanian.
At the end of this process, the winning projects will be chosen for further support, with PRO TV choosing the mini-series TV project and Asociatia Cinemascop the feature film project.
More than 700 projects have been screened in previous editions of Write a Screenplay For…, with the winning projects including the screenplay for the HBO Europe mini-series Spy/Master, which was presented this year at the Berlinale Series, the first Romanian project to be shown in this section.
Started in 2017, the American Independent Film Festival is a film, culture and lifestyle festival that aims to build on the popularity of American narrative cinema and the values promoted by it to achieve cultural, educational, humanitarian and formative goals among a Romanian audience in whose education these values have a significant place.
The American Independent Film Festival introduces the newest, most creative and original American cinema films of the moment to the Romanian audience and organizes workshops, meetings, debates, masterclasses with world-renowned filmmakers.
Past guests have included Joaquin Phoenix, Ethan Hawke, John C. Reilly, Milena Canonero, Kent Jones, Roberto Minervini, Kitty Green, Sebastian Strasser, Dennis Lim, Maya Hawke, Sebastian Stan and Steven Spielberg.