The Industry Days serve as a perfect platform for the Zlin Film Festival to update on current film production in the Czech Republic and neighbouring countries. This programme for professionals includes the Central European Children’s Film CoProduction Forum and the Kids Kino Lab as some of its most significant elements.
It’s the aim of the CoProduction Forum to support partnerships between producers from the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Germany and Poland. The Forum includes presentations of selected young audience projects in their development phase, within this edition seven projects were pitched to a panel of decision makers. Among the projects were Czech historic adventure DIVINE LIGHTNING (about the life of scientist Prokop Divis, Barbora Chalupova), the poetic Slovakian sci-fi quest OT15 (producer Peter Dobias) and the animated Ukrainian folktale MAVKA. THE FOREST SONG (Oleg Malamuzh).
The Central European Children’s Film CoProduction Forum was founded by three leading young audience film festivals: Zlín, Schlingel and Ale Kino.
Kids Kino.Lab
Kids Kino.Lab is an international development programme for feature films, documentaries and TV series aimed at a young audience. During this nine-month trajectory, 12 teams of screenwriters and producers meet during workshops and consultations under the guidance of experienced tutors. One of the crucial stops in their trajectory is the Zlin Film Festival. The Lab programme in Zlin was packed with a co-production masterclass by German sales agent Pauline Mazenod and Canadian financial expert Michel Prodier, and a pitch training session with Danish director Thomas Borch Nielsen.
Czech producer Juliette Sichel: “This Lab experience is very profitable for our project. The Czech film community should know about such initiatives, and Czech decision makers should be aware that this is taking place here in Zlin.” “The National Film Fund should stimulate productions to participate in similar Lab trajectories,” adds producer Maria Motovska. “But the Kids Kino.Lab is definitely the best!”
Other highlights in the Zlin Industry Days were the FILMTALENT Pitching Forum (for upcoming projects by young filmmakers applying for support from the FILMTALENT ZLÍN Endowment Fund) and the International conference on film and audiovisual education ‘Cutting School for Cinema 2022’ (on the availability of films in schools).