Haifa Film Festival Announces New Haifa Script Distillery

Pnina Blayer (Artistic Director, Haifa Film Festival) and Guilhad Emilio Schenker (Artistic Director, Haifa Script Distillery), announced today the inaugural year of The Haifa Script Distillery. This new program has been created to aide Israeli writers, who seek to develop scripts for film and television in English, find success in international markets.

Created by Tadmor Entertainment, together with Keshet International, ENDEAVOUR Content and the Rabinovich Foundation - four very significant international media companies, this is the first grassroots initiative to support burgeoning creative writing talent coming out of Israel and will launch at this year's Haifa International Film Festival.

In its first year, The Haifa Script Distillery plans to develop six to eight original projects, or adaptations, by Israeli creators from an initial pool of 400 entries. These will span a broad range of genres, including horror, fantasy, Science fiction, comedy, action, and more. Each shortlisted project will win a development grant of 50,000 NIS, with the associated writers receiving personal mentorship and training from international tutors from the supporting partners and others, in addition to unique access to major players in the international market.

Artistic directors for the program include Guilhad Emilio Schenker, Yuval Horowitz and Adi Ezroni.
Curator: Ruth Lev-Ari.

Once fully developed, the shortlist of 6-8 shortlisted projects will be presented to an industry panel of international commissioners at the Innovative TV Conference (INTV) in Jerusalem in March 2019. INTV, hosted by the Keshet Media Group, brings together industry leaders, innovators, and disruptors from across the world.

"In recent years, Israeli television content and films hit waves in theaters and TV screens across the world. For the first time ever, three world-leading companies united in the effort to promote and build a well-constructed bridge between Israeli talent and the international film and TV market," says Guilhad Emilio Schenker, Artistic Director, Haifa Script Distillery, "I am confident that the international audience will again hit the theaters and home screens and provide a stamp of quality and innovation for the projects created in the Haifa Script Distillery creations."

"We are very excited to inaugurate the first Haifa Script Distillery, a one of a kind project to promote Israeli films and television in the English language for the international market. Many thanks to Gideon Tadmor, and Guilhad Emilio Schenker for this developing initiative with Keshet International, Endeavor Content and Rabinovich Foundation as our unique international partners," says Pnina Blayer, Artistic Director, Haifa Film Festival.

Endeavor Content will provide mentorship for recipients selected into the program.

"At Keshet, we recognize that strong, local content is the starting point for all successful international content. In Israel, we are truly blessed with creators who have a quality of writing that inspires and connects others. We are thrilled to be working alongside these other great partners to nurture and develop Israel's next generation of creative writing talent, and to help launch them on to the world market," says Adi Ezroni of Keshet International.

Twenty projects were selected from over 400 submissions that will be presented at Haifa Film Festival.