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Docu Rough Cut Boutique

High-profile mentors, tough selection criteria, intensive group sessions, numerous individual one-on-one meetings and in-depth story editing sessions! Even the best creative minds get tired. Let us be your support squad and first audience! Docu RCB helps to pinpoint and troubleshoot problems – both on the level of structure and subject matter. We are ready to brainstorm with you and craft solutions to your film’s weak areas.

Former Participants and Mentors Share:
Ivo Trajkov, story editor and mentor of Docu Rough Cut Boutique:
“If you imagine film as a road trip, then the driver is the author, the road is the plot line, the passengers are the characters and the vehicle is the form of the film. What is happening on the way is the content of the story and the final destination represents the message. The journey, in specific time and space, expresses the topic. Who is the story editor in that case? He is the GPS navigation helping the driver to find the shortest, fastest and most effective way to his destination, helping him fulfill all his goals in the best possible way. Filmmakers especially documentary filmmakers, know that the real “creation of the film,” as the result of a long process, is happening in the editing room. The selection, editing and structuring of the material creates the final form of the film and gives the audience the satisfaction of intellectual and emotional response. Helping and advising in that process in the editing room is the story editor’s job” 
 
Judith Stalter, expert-observer of Docu Rough Cut Boutique:
“After I participated in Rough Cut Boutique 2014 I was an observer, I returned home with great experience and a lot of information that greatly helped me make progress on my own documentary film, which was in a rough cut stage.” 
 
About us:
Docu Rough Cut Boutique
creates a special space for documentary film in their most exciting and yet vulnerable phase; the rough-cut. That special time when anything is possible and yet so many questions wait for answers. The time when a director has to creatively sort trough the confusion before eventually letting the film go and start living its own life. The balance is delicate, the emotions strong and the need for professional advice is acute.Docu Rough Cut Boutique emerged from the wish to make a difference – to provide high-quality training in a safe environment, to create one-to-one relationship with top professionals and to sustain intensive networks that last. By taking only five projects per year, we give each selected team the attention necessary to consume time together slowly and deliciously and fully enjoy the magic of documentary cinema!
With 20 projects behind us already and a success rate of 90% finished projects, which in only last year won more that 25 awards at leading international festivals, the Sarajevo Film Festival/Balkan Documentary Center’s Docu Rough Cut Boutique has inspired filmmakers and provided them the needed kick for their docs to go big! 
 
Please see that Docu Rough Cut Boutique selects only projects from these countries: Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Georgia, Greece, Hungary, North Macedonia, Malta, Moldova, Montenegro, Romania, Serbia, Slovenia.
 
This special documentary workshop has been done in collaboration with the Balkan Documentary Center from Sofia (www.bdcwebsite.com)