The first School of Film Agents (SOFA) will run in Wroclaw from August 19 -30.

Young film professionals from Central and Eastern Europe, Central Asia, the republics of Caucasus and Germany are being invited to Wroclaw in Poland for a two-week workshop.

It marks the first School of Film Agents (SOFA) and will run from August 19 -30, initiated by Nikolaj Nikitin, the Berlinale’s pre-selector for Eastern Europe.

SOFA provides residency and intensive workshops enabling ten young film agents to develop a tailor-made concept and financing plan for their particular project - individually and intensively accompanied by the experts’ feedback.

It is designed for curators, festival organizers, distributors and cinema operators – “film mediators“ - who actively contribute to the sustainable noticeability of film and cinema in their respective home country.

 “SOFA is a unique institution which strongly and sustainably supports diversity and freedom of the arts”, says Nikitin.

Possible projects which participants submitted for selection include film festivals, regional film funds, independent art-house cinemas, film museums, film archives, VoD platforms, film magazines as well as workshop initiatives that, like SOFA, contribute to the strengthening of film culture and industry.

The tutor list includes Claudia Dillmann (German Film Institute), Marion Döring (European Film Academy), Karel Och (Artistic Director Karlovy Vary), Tudor Giurgiu (Transilvania Film Festival), Roman Gutek (Gutek Film), Renate Rose (European Film Promotion) and Katriel Schory (Israel Film Fund), as well as Oliver Baumgarten and Ewa Puszczynska as main tutors.

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, 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 and the German Consul General in Wroclaw.

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