CinéDOC Mentoring & Pitch

This post starts with a quote from a text I wrote, when the Film Mentoring Program of Cinédoc Tbilisi started:

“I have not talked to anyone, who prefers zoom to face-to-face meetings. On the other hand the zoom or teams or skype make it possible to see and talk to each other in these times of pandemic. And it works well as I experience right now being part of the Film Mentoring Program of the International Documentary Film Festival CinéDOC-Tbilisi. The cast are 15 young and younger filmmakers from Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Russia, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan – and 5 mentors: Gitte Hansen Schnyder, Audrius Stonys, Sergey Dvortsevoy, Phil Jandaly and me. Organised by Ileana Stanculescu and Artchil Khetagouri, and their excellent team, who I know from the festival and from summer schools, online and physical. It’s super-professional and with warmth and enthusiasm in the spirit of ”we want to help”. 

The set-up is new and exciting for me: Each mentor works with 3 filmmakers 3 x three hours with weeks in between, where the filmmakers write or film or think… So far I – and the other mentors – have had the first round of individual meetings plus two times group meetings  with 3 filmmakers, who are not the ones with whom you have face-to-face meetings.” And then after hours and months of pleasure a zoom pitch took place yesterday – for four hours where the filmmakers presented their projects. 66 (including the filmmakers) were there from the start welcoming projects from Caucasus and Central Asia, and only a few had to leave the session. There were major doc festivals, funds, a couple of producers and one broadcaster, Current Time TV. So no comments on slots etc. Cecilia Lidin and Martijn de Pas had done the pitch training. The Swiss SDC and the Civil Society Centre in Prague gave support. Here comes the list of winners: 

After three months of film mentoring program, pitching training and a productive pitching day, attended by more than 30 international film professionals, representing major film festivals and markets, the winning projects were revealed!

1. New Talents Caucasus and Central Asia Pitch Award 2000 USD (funded by SDC) – “River Dreams” directed by Kristina Mikhailova

2. New Talents Caucasus and Central Asia Pitch Post Production Award 1500 USD (funded by SDC) – “Invisible Blood” – directed by Sofia Melikova

3. New Talents Caucasus and Central Asia Pitch Development Award 1000 USD (funded by SDC) – “Cherry Trees on Fire” – directed by Bakar Cherkezishvili

4. Current Time TV Award 2000 USD – “Dedovshina” – directed by Elyor Nemat

5. One project is selected for the Baltic Sea Forum for Documentaries held in Riga, Latvia – “Dedovshina” – directed by Elyor Nemat

6. One project is selected for presentation at the industry platform of Doclisboa – Nebulae – “Bitter Sugar” – directed by Ana Barjadze

7. One project is selected to participate in Ji.hlava Academy (Ji.hlava International Documentary Film

Festival) – “Bitter Sugar” – directed by Ana Barjadze

8. One project will receive a Pitch the Doc consultancy award – “Dedovshina” – directed by Elyor Nemat

9. One project will receive a DAE (Documentary Association of Europe) consultancy award – “During War” – directed by Silva Khnkanosian

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Tue Steen Müller
Tue Steen Müller

Müller, Tue Steen
Documentary Consultant and Critic, DENMARK

Worked with documentary films for more than 20 years at the Danish Film Board, as press officer, festival representative and film consultant/commissioner. Co-founder of Balticum Film and TV Festival, Filmkontakt Nord, Documentary of the EU and EDN (European Documentary Network).
Awards: 2004 the Danish Roos Prize for his contribution to the Danish and European documentary culture. 2006 an award for promoting Portuguese documentaries. 2014 he received the EDN Award “for an outstanding contribution to the development of the European documentary culture”. 2016 The Cross of the Knight of the Order for Merits to Lithuania. 2019 a Big Stamp at the 15th edition of ZagrebDox. 2021 receipt of the highest state decoration, Order of the Three Stars, Fourth Class, for the significant contribution to the development and promotion of Latvian documentary cinema outside Latvia. In 2022 he received an honorary award at DocsBarcelona’s 25th edition having served as organizer and programmer since the start of the festival.
From 1996 until 2005 he was the first director of EDN (European Documentary Network). From 2006 a freelance consultant and teacher in workshops like Ex Oriente, DocsBarcelona, Archidoc, Documentary Campus, Storydoc, Baltic Sea Forum, Black Sea DocStories, Caucadoc, CinéDOC Tbilisi, Docudays Kiev, Dealing With the Past Sarajevo FF as well as programme consultant for the festivals Magnificent7 in Belgrade, DOCSBarcelona, Verzio Budapest, Message2Man in St. Petersburg and DOKLeipzig. Teaches at the Zelig Documentary School in Bolzano Italy.

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