As part of the 13th Wroclaw T-Mobile New Horizons International Film Festival, the participants and lecturers of the first School of Film Agents (SOFA), which will take place from 19th until 30th August in Wroclaw (European Capital of Culture 2016), Poland, were introduced on July 26th. SOFA is a workshop initiative, which focuses on supporting the execution of innovative film and cinema projects by young professionals from Middle and Eastern Europe, the republics of Caucasus and from Germany. Initiator Nikolaj Nikitin together with Berlinale director and SOFA's "Godfather"

Dieter Kosslick introduced participants from Bulgaria, Estonia, Georgia, Germany, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia and Ukraine with their respective projects. I attended SOFA from day one, because this project enables young film enthusiasts from structurally weaker countries to present their exceptional ideas, which otherwise would not be heard. These visions are very crucial for the development of cinema in those countries - said Kosslick.

For participants Melinda Boros (distributor, Cluj-Napoca), Gabor Böszörmenyi (distributor, Budapest), Ketie Danelia (Executive Manager of Ablabuda Film LLC, Tbilisi), Leana Jalukse (dramaturg and project manager, Tallinn), Ivan Kozlenko (director of the film archive at National Oleksandr Dovzhenko Centre, Kiev), Eva Krizkova and Eva Pavlovicova (founders of the film magazine KINECKO as well as the FILMTOPIA distribution company, Bratislava), Jan Naszewski (CEO of New Europe Film Sales, Warsaw), Johannes Rexin (producer at HEIMATFILM, Cologne), Mira Staleva (vice director at Sofia International Filmfestial, Sofia) andSonja Topalovic (festival and marketing director at SOULFOOD, Belgrade) the two-week intensive workshop will be all about working on their dream projects. These include diverse ideas like a film museum in Kiev, a wandering film festival at the german-polish border or an independent arthouse cinema in Tbilisi. Altogether, the ten projects share the potential to strengthen the film culture as well as the film industry in their respective countries.

Lecturers Claudia Dillmann (German Film Institute), Fatima Djoumer (Europa Cinemas), Marion Döring (European Film Academy), Roman Gutek (Gutek Film), Sibylle Kurz (Pitching Expert), Marta Materska-Samek (Cinema Development Foundation), Karel Och (Karlovy Vary International Film Festival), Renaud Redien-Collot (Novancia Business School), Thorsten Ritter (Beta Cinema), Renate Rose (European Film Promotion), Katriel Schory (Israel Film Fund) and Gudrun Sommer (doxs! documentaries for children and youth) as well as tutors Oliver Baumgarten (Filmplus) and Ewa Puszczynska (Opus Film) will join the participants in single and team sessions helping them to develop the concept of their projects. Additionally, each an international and a polish expert panel as well as various screenings will take place, not just attracting workshop participants but also interested guests to SOFA.

School of Film Agents (SOFA) is a project of Filmplus UG, in cooperation with the City of Wroclaw, the Polish Film Institute and the New Horizons Association, funded by the Northern Dimension Partnership on Culture, the Foundation for Polish-German Cooperation, the International Visegrad Fund, the Foreign Office, the Film- und Medienstiftung NRW, MEDIA Desk Poland and Goethe-Institute Krakow, and supported by the Adam-Mickiewicz-Institute, the Goethe-Institute Georgia, the Goethe-Institute Hungary, the Goethe-Institute Romania, the Cinema Development Foundation, the Film Commission Poland, the Wroclaw Film Commission and the German Consul General in Wroclaw.

Further informations will follow shortly here: www.sofa2013.org