United Media backs script competition to develop south-east Europe creatives | News

Nataša Buljan will sit on the judging panel

The content arm of major south-east European telecoms and media provider United Group is set to contribute €10,000 (US$10,743) to a competition to develop a winning script and turn the pitch into a TV series.

Projects from Bulgaria, Croatia and Serbia have made it to the final six in the Make the Scene! pitch competition and workshop, a partnership project between Pula Film Festival in Croatia and United Media.

The winning project, set to be decided by a jury consisting of United Media fiction development director Nataša Buljan and Croatian actor Goran Bogdan, will receive a prize of €10,000 and the opportunity to further develop and produce the project with United Media.

The six projects are: Deconstruction (Bulgaria), from Plamena Velkovsky; To The Movies! (Bulgaria) from Kristian Stoichev, Boris Rachev and Boris Krastin; You Have to Live Somewhere (Croatia), from Sanja Milardović; Rainbow (Serbia), from Srđan Anđelić; Wonderful (Serbia), from Isidora Veselinović, Katarina Mitrović and Vladimir Tagić; and Dert (Serbia), from Katarina Krstić.

The projects will be pitched by their creators on July 17 at Pula Film Festival in Croatia. It comes as United Media as seeks to further encourage and strengthen the creative industry in south-east Europe.

The workshop will be led by Greek screenwriter Nicos Panayotopoulos, the author and co-author of numerous award-winning screenplays for short films, television series and feature films.

“The response of creative people from the entire region is great, the number of applications we have received is impressive, as well as the quality and variety of projects by genre,” said Buljan.