Industry@Tallinn

TV Launch, an "idea-to-market" drama series project development program, is the only existing residential, project-based training targeting and tailoring its content for the creative teams of emerging professionals coming from the Central and Eastern European region and the only program of this kind working with both limited and ongoing series.

Collaborating with a wide spectrum of tutors from both Western and Eastern Europe, who bring their expertise in the fields of writing, directing, producing, financing, marketing, pitching and distribution, the program offers a thorough and effective development process. It also helps the projects to be built in a “bottom-up” manner: from a very early development stage, the creative teams of writers and producers are led to defining their series concept and theme and outlining their pilot scripts, to creating their season arc and season outlines, as well as pitching documents and a financing strategy, to marketing and pitching their project and expanding their network.

Projects developed within MIDPOINT TV Launch are presented at the most established professional industry platforms, accepted to the leading international TV markets and festival, commissioned and developed by significant European broadcasters and financiers and its graduates have proven to become an important element in both their local and the international audiovisual ecosystem.

With regard to the current coronavirus situation, the 2020 edition of MIDPOINT TV Launch transformed to a fully online training, spanning over 6 months.

MIDPOINT TV Launch HBO Europe Award (5 000 USD)

Winner: Afterparty (Croatia)
Writer: Dora Sustic
Producer: Maja Pek-Bruenjes

In the words of Steve Matthews, who handed over the award on behalf of HBO Europe:
“The difficulties of running the MIDPOINT programme online this year have certainly not resulted in any loss of quality: the participants all rose to the challenge with professionalism and innovation. As always this was a very difficult decision: several of the projects displayed extremely high levels of craft and attainment from teams who were collaborative and determined always to keep pushing themselves. But one stood out for having achieved those craft objectives, but which also displayed an additional spark of personal passion and the courage to explore difficult and controversial modern topics with great honesty. A writer’s job is to explore an issue, not to preach about it – and for that reason the winner of this years’ HBO Europe prize is AFTERPARTY.“

MIDPOINT TV Launch is realized with the support of the Creative Europe – MEDIA Programme of the European Union, the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic, the Czech Film Fund and the Slovak Audiovisual Fund. It runs in partnership with HBO Europe, Industry@Tallinn & Baltic Event, Series Mania, Marseille Web Fest, Czech Audiovisual Producers' Association, Meeting Point Vilnius, New Europe Market, C21 Media, Serial Eyes, MediaXchange, MIA TV Market Rome and Seriencamp. MIDPOINT Institute operates under the auspices of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague.

Watch the presentations of the nine graduating projects of the TV Launch 2020 program, the so-called “Season Finale

MIDPOINT TV Launch 2020 participating projects

Afterparty (Croatia), writer Dora Sustic, producer Maja Pek-Bruenjes
Agents (Serbia), writer Gvozden Djuric, producer/director Uros Tomic
Hotel Intercontinental (Hungary) writers Andras Voros and Peter Akar, producer Laszlo Dreissiger
Hugo & Co. (Czech Republic) writer Tomas Plhon, producer Gordon Lovitt
Lazlo (Latvia), writers Ermins Baltais and Kristina Martinuka, producer Aija Berzina
Black Square (Ukraine) writer/director Daria Onyshchenko, writer/producer Anna Palenchuk
The Red Princess (Czech Republic), writer Barbora Namerova, producer Milos Lochman
The Neighbours (Ukraine)  writer/producer Alexandra Tkachenko, writer/producer  Marina Chikalovets
NOSTOS (Greece) writer Stavros Pamballis and writer/producer Christos V. Konstantakopoulos