Screen Talent Europe Pitching Forum 2024, Grimstad, Norway.

The past few weeks have been a whirlwind, in the best kind of way. I found out at the end of May that I was selected for this year’s Screen Talent Europe Pitching Forum 2024, to represent the National Talent Academy / Ardán, supported by Screen Ireland. I think I had applied twice before to the event unsuccessfully, and wasn’t expecting to get it at all due to the amount of applications they receive, so it was a lovely surprise. Two weeks later and I was on the flight to Norway! I flew to Oslo first, then transferred domestically to beautiful coastal town called Grimstad, where the Norwegian Short Film Festival was taking place (Kortfilmfestivalen) where I would be pitching my short film “The Queen of Puck”

Logline: Ida, a young Nigerian girl living in a rural village in the West of Ireland refuses to speak. Local Gaelgoir and tutor, Eugene, 60’s is tasked with helping her, but when Ida is crowned The Queen of an Ancient Irish Festival, it not only challenges Ida who has to make a winning speech, but Eugene, who harbors a secret heartbreak of his own. 

The entire event exceeded my expectations in every way - when we arrived we had a brilliant intensive workshop with Mediefabrikken, who put emphasis on the experience being a collaborative networking event, rather than a pitching competition, so to speak. This instantly relaxed everyone and it was a great experience getting to know the other selected filmmakers from across Europe.

The workshop itself was hands on, we casually pitched our films ( no notes allowed) to each other, then had to pitch other peoples films to the group from memory, which was a really useful exercise as you could hone in on what parts of your film were connecting and landing with audiences, and what parts were not. We also had timed writing exercises, for example ‘take 30 seconds to write your film from beginning to end, with spoilers,’ this was hard but useful as it forced you to succinctly summarise your movie in a short space of time, really focusing on the inner engine of your film. Overall at the end of the workshop most of us re-wrote our pitches, we had a much clearer sense of theme and why we want to make our stories, and what drives us emotionally as a storyteller. Pitching so much this day really boosted confidence and was great public speaking practice prior to the actual pitching event.

The next day was Pitch day at the festival, which was open to the public and where an independent jury would select the winner of a 4,000euro production grant. I was the 7th person to speak, which was nice as I got to enjoy the other pitches beforehand. You could really see that everyones pitches had improved overall in every sense - they were clear, to the point and really gave a sense of each filmmakers personalities and why they wanted to make the film. I didn’t envy the jury for having to pick a winner!

We could have some visuals behind us for the actual pitch, I chose a poster visual which really conveyed the landscape of my film and the vibrant cinematography. I had 4 minutes to pitch, the space felt really supportive and encouraging. I was delighted with my pitch in the end and felt it was received well by the audience.

After the pitch we were brought on a tall ship boat networking event along the fjords, which was stunning. This event thought ticketed, was open to festival members which was brilliant as there were a lot of audience members who attended our pitch on board, so it was great to have people come up to you and connect with your story and film. That evening the pitch winner was announced as Yousra Said for her film Doki doki, the competition was very stiff, so a big congratulations to Yousra. I’m excited to see all the filmmakers movies on the screen at festivals soon.

Overall the experience was hugely beneficial to my career and development as a writer - it was an invaluable networking event, I learned a huge amount about pitching, and summarising your film in a succinct but effective way.

Grimstad, Norway is absolutely beautiful. and I would highly recommend Kortfilmfestivalen to any filmmaker, they put on a brilliant programme over the few days. I would recommend to all emerging filmmakers to enter next years STE Pitching Forum, I got a huge amount of it that I will bring forward with me not just on my current project, but for all my upcoming projects.

In two weeks I fly to France for another Pitching event, and feel fully prepared thanks to this experience.

A huge thank you to Screen Talent Europe and Mediefabrikken, the National Talent Academy Ireland, Ardán and Screen Ireland for all of their support.