Pitching is a tool for screenwriters and filmmakers to tell their stories in a limited amount of time and mostly with words. The speaker has to phrase in about 5 minutes a film that could ultimately be from 10 to 30 minutes long. It is used in various circumstances in the film industry – to get a producer’s attention, to talk to your crew or funding bodies. Although pitching has its limits, it makes it possible for the audience to grasp what the project is about and whether they feel a connection to it, through the choice of words, the order of the presentation, the emotions the speaker experiences…
At ShorTS International Film Festival, it is used as a scriptwriting tool to spot the potential flaws and analyse the problems a story may have, based on feedback and the involvement of the other participants. Indeed the group dynamic is essential here. It is often way easier to spot weaknesses in somebody else’s pitch than in one’s own. ShorTS Pitching Training gives writers keys to rework their script through a condensed hands-on workshop.

Selected projects

MAARIA SAYED, SONO A CASA

Born in Pakistan, raised in Italy, Fatema struggles when a refugee girl from a neighbouring country arrives in her town. Identifying herself as ‘just another Italian,’ Fatema fears she’d lose her uniqueness in her group of Italian friends.

VALERIO FILARDO, TANA LIBERA TUTTI

Patras, Greece. Alì, a young Afghan boy is saved by Claudio, an Italian kid, just when he’s about to get deported to his home country.

“Tana liberi tutti” is a story about a friendship between two young boys who will never meet.

DAVIDE ANGIULI, THE BEST ACTOR IN THE WORLD

Jovali is a young Albanian immigrant. He lives in the Bari suburbs and he asked to the Madonna to become an actor.
Jovali has found a small bag of cocaine, and, after spending the night celebrating, he will have to decide which compromises he’s willing to make for his dreams.

TATIANA PLEVAK, BLACK HOLE

9 years old girl comes to the bar to find her father and get him home, so he doesn’t have a fight with her mother again.  It is emotional and tragic film, about that moment when everything changes, innocence is lost and nothing will ever be the same again.

SARA BIANCHI, RADICI

‹‹So che tornerò, prima o poi›› Maddalena is a young girl living in a small town on the Apulian coast. She has to move to northern Italy in order to join a prestigious acting school but shortly. before her leaving, everything seems to be putting spokes in her wheels, above all, the sea.

BOGDAN ILIESIU, 6TH OF SEPTEMBER

After finding herself in a middle of a quarrel between her father and a gypsy woman begging for money at her grandfather’s funeral, 7 years old Valentina gets cursed and she’s told when she’ll die: on 6th of September.

JOSÉ JANAVICIUTE, HOW TO BE A HUMAN BEING

A woman in her mid-thirties meets a man from her past during a conference in a distant suburbian hotel. She blames him for ruining her life that one April night. He, now a family man, thinks that was a misunderstanding. They both hold their truth. The snow storms outside, they cannot leave.

MAKSYM NAKONECHNYI, RHESUS CONFLICT

A young man is asked for help and he is able to give it, but, suddenly, a hidden part of his identity becomes an obstacle for that.

FOTIS SKOURLETIS, NIGHTWORK

In 1951, in an isolated mountain village of Greece, a young woman returns home after having been physically and sexually abused by a fellow villager and the rest members of the family, her mother and her siblings, are forced to face the situation and decide the way they react to this serious matter of honor and moral justice.