As part of the 41st Warsaw Film Festival (10-19 October), the Warsaw Industry Talks initiative returns from 15-17 October, with three days of panels, lectures and case studies designed for accredited professionals, mapping the pressures and opportunities shaping today’s European screen sector.

Unspooling at the Museum of Modern Art’s Kinomuzeum, this year’s conversations range from script development and the mental wellbeing of creatives to the nuts and bolts of achieving visibility at festivals and markets. International guests will ask what makes certain national cinemas break through while others remain off-radar, probing how distinctive voices, curatorial choices and industry strategy translate into sustained attention. A dedicated track dissects social-media workflows for Polish titles, with distributors and digital creators unpacking campaign playbooks drawn from TikTok, Instagram and YouTube.

Cross-sector dialogue is another through line. A Polish-only session looks at writers, directors and producers moving between film and games, with representatives of the CD Projekt RED and 11 bit studios conversing with filmmakers. Elsewhere, two renowned script consultants will lead a master class on safeguarding individual creativity during development, while another strand takes a pragmatic look at AI – what fails, why it fails, and how post houses are already folding those lessons back into production pipelines.

Producers eyeing the region’s finance and standards ecosystem will find several useful waypoints. A hands-on Q&A details platform workflows and expectations for Central and Eastern Europe, while national bodies and guilds parse forthcoming reforms to Poland’s incentive scheme in light of a new study commissioned by the Producers Guild of Poland. Other sessions also explore avenues for collaboration with partners from the Arabian Peninsula, spotlighting recent ties with Saudi Arabia, and offer a walk-through of Poland’s funding tools, including the 30% cash rebate and new post-production priorities.

As ever with Warsaw, the programme isn’t self-contained. The talks dovetail with adjacent industry strands across the week, including showcases and market activity, so as to facilitate encounters between creators, sales agents, distributors and institutions. Industry accreditation is required for access and remains available until today, 10 October.

Full information and daily updates can be found on the festival’s official website.