Script Pitch

Script Pitch – the Script Competition by interfilm

The international Script Pitch is back on the big stage! After last year’s break we are looking forward more than ever to direct the spotlight on what is essential for many good short films for the ninth time – the screenplay. Eight authors from Denmark, France, Germany, Israel, Kenya, the Netherlands, the Philippines and Romania were selected from more than 200 applications. After an intense Script Lab taking place online and on-site, they present their scripts to an international audience and have five minutes to win over an international jury with their material.

The pitch will take place on 19th November 2022 from 11:00 to 13:00 in the hall of House 13 at Pfefferberg. The international jury judging the projects consists of director and camerawoman Francy Fabritz, producerJulia Niethammer (Chromosom Film GmbH) and Romane Pangrazzi (Brussels Short Film Festival).

The event will take place in English. All industry guests are invited and are kindly asked to register at interforum@interfilm.de.

The winner is:

DEEP SEA BLUE
Hilke Rönnfeldt / Dänemark

Jury Statement: We, the jury, have decided to award a visual essay that uses the short film format to experiment with its subject on different cinematic layors. Thanks to the sharp vision of Hilke Rönnfeldt, it questions the constuction of borders. We believe the director will create an experiment that will leave a deep blue spark with the audience, just as the script and the pitch left with us. The interfilm script pitch award 2022 goes to DEEP SEA BLUE Hilke Rönnfeldt.

Special Mention:

TRANSACTION
Wanjeri Gakuru / Nairobi/ Kenia

Jury Statement: Our special mention goes to a very well-tuned script about a young woman fulfilling her long-awaited need for pleasure through self-love and empowerment. Giving a humorous tone to an urgent topic has the potential to bring it to a broad audience. The 2022 interfilm script pitch special mention goes to TRANSACTION By Wanjeri Gakuru.

The Selected Finalists 2022

Bogdan Drumea / Romania / SLEEPS

Wanjeri Gakuru / Kenya / TRANSACTION

Judith Rose Gyabaah / Germany / POEM OF POTTED PLANTS

Mathilde Jouaud / France / CUTLERIES

Shannon Lester Cristal Paraico / Philippines / #bagets rider FREE HD

Hilke Rönnfeldt / Denmark / DEEP SEA BLUE

Gaya von Schwarze / Israel, Germany / GOLDEN

Veerle de Wilde / Netherlands / ULTRAVIOLET

More about the finalists here

The participants and scripts were selected by Rebecca Heiler, Maria Cristina Hervas, Ali El Kareem and Petra Palmer in August 2022.

About the Selected Scripts

Every year, we are astonished by the range of the scripts submitted. This year, the participants will present feature film projects, which correspond with each other in their sincerity.

In SLEEPS, a pregnant woman unexpectedly encounters a neglected little boy and proceeds to take him in, a tender gesture in a grim world. Then there's Waks, a young overweight Kenyan woman, who aims to give her sex life a push – with the support of a male sex worker. TRANSACTION tells whether her efforts pay off. In POEM OF POTTED PLANTS, a young Black woman is faced with a difficult choice when she is forced to decide whether to terminate a pregnancy – her adoptive mother's wishes are little help in this dilemma. Things are no less dramatic in CUTLERIES: here 12-year-old Soline has to protect herself from her violent father and seek help, no easy step to take. In #BAGETS RIDER FREE HD, an old sex video becomes a trap for young food deliveryman Bryan – or does it represent a chance to escape the poverty of Manila's slums? In DEEP SEA BLUE, after inadvertently crossing a boundary into territorial waters a white female ship's officer suddenly runs up against invisible boundaries everywhere she turns within her nautical microcosm, as hierarchies, cultural differences and gender boundaries abound. Overcoming boundaries is what Sudanese cook Hashim does in the Israeli – title giving – club GOLDEN, when he helps a desperate woman he finds standing right in front of his kitchen – even if he can only save her briefly. In ULTRAVIOLET, a girl on the gradual path to maturity has to learn that ignoring her mother's mental illness won't help her.

In all of these stories, the protagonists grow beyond their limits, take steps in unfamiliar directions and are confronted with their innermost feelings. The loneliness of the characters and the depth with which we get to know them are both particularly striking this year.

The Script Lab and the Festival Programme

This year, the Script Lab starts earlier than usual and therefore the workshops are more stretched out than during the last years. The content remains the same though: The dramaturgical basics will be examined in a two-day script development seminar with author and filmmaker Marijana Verhoef (SRB) and author Sandra Stöckmann (DE). The authors receive feedback from the group and individual feedback from the tutors and will dive deep into their projects. Actress, coach and long-time interfilm curator Andrea Schwemmer (DE) coaches the participants in their public appearance, body awareness and explores breath techniques on stage. Rhetorical finesse is trained in the pitching seminar with industry expert and Berlinale Co-Production director Martina Bleis before the pitch competition on Saturday.

We would also like to point out two programmes at interforum 2022 that are closely connected with Script Pitch: Get Them Out There! Packaging for Short Films with Shinji Manlangit, dealing with the presentation of short films at a development stage, and It Started with a Script: Films of the Script Pitch Alumni, showing four films that took part in Script Pitch at a script stage.

18. + 19.10. / Script Development (not public)

16.11. / Coaching Session: Voice & Body Awareness (not public)

17.11. / Get Them Out There! Packaging for Short Films (Masterclass, public)
It Started with a Script: Films of the Script Pitch Alumni (Screening, public)

18.11. / Pitch Training (not public)

19.11. / Script Pitch (public)

Script Pitch participants will be given the opportunity to participate in the rest of the festival as well, watch films and meet international filmmakers, writers and industry experts at networking events at the International Short Film Festival interfilm Berlin.