24/04/2014 - The Transilvania Film Festival Fund and Transilvania Pitch Stop are to debut in June

The Romanian film industry is a tough environment for independent filmmakers, especially for those who are just beginning their careers. The 13th edition of the Transilvania International Film Festival (30 May-8 June) is attempting to compensate for the so-called independent funding “black hole” in Romania with two programmes that are expected to discover fresh new talent from all over the country.

The Transilvania Film Festival Fund (TFFF) will help three filmmakers based in the historic region of Transylvania to turn their short-film and documentary projects into a reality. Projects about the region or those that are to be shot there are also eligible. The selected entries will receive a grant of up to €3,000, and the filmmakers will be invited to attend the festival during the three days of the traditional Romanian Days sidebar, which will screen the most recent local productions. The deadline for sending applications in is 15 May.

Transilvania Pitch Stop (TPS), organised in collaboration with Transilvania Talent Lab, focuses on first or second feature projects from all over Romania. After a workshop that will teach participants how best to pitch their screenplay ideas, six projects will be selected. They will be presented during an event organised on 6 June that will allow filmmakers to pitch their projects to foreign producers attending the festival. TPS will also give out two awards: the TPS Development Award and the TPS Production Award. The application deadline is 11 May.

Although it is not Romania’s first pitching project, TPS is without doubt the most complex. This April, the NexT International Film Festival launched The Pitch, for short-film projects, while the National University of Theatre and Film is currently preparing the National Screenwriting Alumni Pitch, a feature-project-orientated programme for its graduates. The scheme will end in December with a pitching session for foreign producers organised as part of the CineMAiubit short-film festival.