Hellenic Film Academy presents Short Film Fund at Thessaloniki

Aiming to create both a new financing tool as well as a hands-on training experience, the Hellenic Film Academy presented its Short Film Fund initiative during the Thessaloniki Film Festival. The SFF will be part of this year’s Film Factory, a yearly set of training activities scheduled to take place in December.

Gathering funds from private sponsors Ote TV and the Onassis Cultural Center, the HFA will hand out €30,000 evenly split between the SFF’s two winning projects. Looking for scripts aiming for an 8 to 15 minute film, the SFF does not require the project to have secured a producer, as it’s mostly looking for raw talent rather than film-making experience.

A five-member jury comprised of three HFA-awarded filmmakers and one member from each of its sponsors will comb through the applications and pick out twelve projects, whose writers/directors will be then interviewed by the jury during the Film Factory activities.

Six projects will then advance to a three-month-long series of seminars by HFA members, in order to help applicants set up their film’s pre-production. Further on, two projects will be picked for financing and will be announced during the HFA Awards ceremony.

Their film makers will have to have their films ready by December 2016 in order for them to be screened during the following year’s Film Factory, while applications to the Short Film Fund will be open until November 22.