The 27th Baltic Sea Forum for Documentaries (BSD), “the most important documentary co-financing pitching event in the Baltic countries,” according to organisers, has put out a call for projects for its next edition running 3-10 September 2023 in Riga, Latvia. The deadline for submissions is 12 June.
Applications are welcome from independent production companies from the wider Baltic Sea region countries, Eastern Europe and Caucasus region, and from other countries if the documentary subject relates to the region. Due to Russia’s full scale invasion in Ukraine, production companies from Russia and projects focusing on Russia are excluded, organisers say.
The focus of the BSD is on full-length creative documentary projects, but cross-media applications are also welcome. The international selection committee will select 18 projects to be pitched for the international broadcasters, sales agents, film funds and other industry representatives.
This year, the BSD’s Industry section will include two new activities. The Coming Soon session will feature several projects in the post production stage previously pitched at the BSD. In response to the continuously growing importance for co-productions, a special networking event will be held to enhance even closer collaboration between Baltic and European producers (this event will be organized by the CE Media desks initiative Travelling Docs). There will be separate calls for these activities.
Participation at Baltic Sea Docs is free of charge. The selection results will be announced by 12 July. Guidelines and application form is accessible on the Baltic Sea Docs website.
Completed films presented as projects in the previous editions of the Forum include Outside (directed Olha Zhurba, 2022, Ukraine, Denmark, Netherlands), The Jump (directed by Giedrė Žickytė, 2020, Lithuania, Latvia, France), My Favourite War (directed by Ilze Burkovska Jacobsen, 2020, Norway, Latvia), among many others.
The 27th Baltic Sea Forum for Documentaries is organised by the National Film Centre of Latvia, with financial support from the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Latvia, Creative Europe Media programme “Markets & Networking”, and Limbaži Municipality. Parallel to the industry activities, Baltic Sea Docs presents a film program of recent documentaries.
“Baltic Sea Docs has been running for almost three decades. It was established at the end of the 1990s as a platform for documentary filmmakers from the emerging democratic countries to find their ground in the European industry,” comments Zane Balčus, Project Manager.
“Over the years it has maintained its position and has become the main documentary industry event in the Baltic countries, where strong stories from the wider region emerge and films with unique cinematic language are created. We have decided to add this year a couple of new activities in addition to the pitching forum to highlight the projects previously pitched at the Baltic Sea Docs and enlarge producers’ professional network with colleagues from other countries. We hope that this will result in even greater visibility of the projects presented at the forum and more collaborations between different production capacity countries.”
