Pitching Lab 2023

46th Drama International Short Film Festival
4 – 10 September 2023

10 years Drama Pitching Lab / Forum

Mastering the Art of Pitching is a necessary process on the journey to seeing your initial idea transformed into a movie. There are no quick fixes that define a great pitch, but there is a definite path that leads to successfully communicating the crux of your idea and story.

Barbara Dukas – Pitching Lab conductor

This year, the creative team of DISFF’s PITCHING LAB has received 122 entries from all over the world. Once again, we are very pleased about this valuable interaction, as it is essential for an international festival. Through this educational process, we get to listen and learn at an early stage, the anxieties, ideas, and thoughts of young people from all over the world who aspire to become audiovisual artists.

As every year, the social dimension depicted in the draft scripts, from regions battered by inequalities, social and environmental concerns, wars and population movements, has been intense and more comprehensive than ever before. Stories with a lot of humour, as well as original documentary themes, were not absent. We would like to note here, the abundance of animation projects of an exceptional drawing and concept level, from Greece and abroad.

It is very hard to select only 12 projects that will be prepared in Drama with our help this year, in order to be presented at the Pitching Forum on the last day of the Festival, on Saturday 10th of September.

However, we are pleased to officially announce the selection of 8 additional Greek projects, which will participate in a separate pitching workshop during the Festival’s regular visit to Athens at the end of October.

The PITCHING LAB team

Barbara Dukas
Stathis Paraskevopoulos
Georgina Kakoudaki
John Stephens

So, a total of 20 projects aspire to find their place in the short films production, and to communicate with the audience:

  1. The Heaviness of Absence Jalal Maghout – Germany, Syria / animation
  2. When Saints Turn Machine Svenja Heinrichs – Germany / fiction
  3. My tears, a sea for Jakarta to sink Andrea Nirmala Widjajanto, Annisa Adjam – Indonesia / Sci-fi / Romance
  4. The Blind Man At The End Of The World Jake Muñoz Consing, Sita Valenzuela, Carlo Valenzona – Philippines
  5. Lifescore Zorana Mušikić  Zorana Mušikić , May Odeh – Germany, Serbia, Nigeria
  6. Beneath her shroud Hyash Tanmoy  – India / fiction
  7. Hero Alexandros Rellos – Greece / fiction
  8. Simon Martin Vallejos – Germany, Chile, Holland,Bolivia / animation
  9. The Station Isidoros Rostadakis Isidoros Rostadakis, Dimitris Kotselis – Greece / Fiction
  10. All flowers in time bend towards the sun Michalis Kimonas – Greece
  11. The Reverse Side of Asphalt Esranur Güler – Turkey / fiction
  12. Wild Streets Panos Ydraios, Dimitra Mitsaki – Greece / doc

Greek Projects for ATHENS

  1. The garden of the dead (Αντί-Στεφάνου) Katerina Kalentzi, Christos Marmeris  
  2. Wheel To Live Nikolaos Tsongidis, Vicky Anastasiadou, Semkou Konstantini
  3. The Last Performance Nefeli Spiliotakou
  4. Vicious Λήδα Κοντοπανάγου, Steven Gekas
  5. Your God Yannis Chatzistavris
  6. The Wolf’s Mouth Mary Kolonia
  7. Jesus’ Sneakers Thanos Tokakis, Tasos Koronakis, Marina Danezi
  8. Forema Maro Lesioti, Konstantina Agoratsiou

TRAINING VIDEOS

In the following link you can find four training videos by the Head of the programme Barbara Dukas and Pitching Lab instructors Georgina Kakoudaki, Stathis Paraskevopoulos and John Stephens, explaining the significance of pitching an idea for a film, a glimpse of the workshops that are going to take place the Drama Film Festival Pitching Lab.

DISFF45 | PITCHING LAB