Celtic Media Festival International Pitching Forum returns for 2023 with the winner to receive development money of £10,000
Date Posted: February 21, 2023
The Celtic Media Festival (CMF) is delighted to announce that the International Pitching Forum’s development prize will return this year, following on from the continued success of last year’s event.
The Proposal Pitching Round is now open, with this year’s focus on Factual Programming. The festival is welcoming pitches from producers who have until 5pm on Tuesday 21st March to send their pitches to [email protected]. The CMF International Pitching Forum will take place at the festival in Dungloe from 6th to 8th June and will feature a live pitching event.
Now in its 44th year, the CMF is an annual three-day media-industry event that travels across the Celtic nations and regions, combining a major conference of seminars, networking events and masterclasses with presentations of coveted prizes in an international competition across all the main content genres in TV, radio, film and digital media.
Since launching in 2016, the CMF’s International Pitching Forum has continued to grow in stature and influence, giving production companies the opportunity to meet and pitch to international broadcasters in one space and attracting promising pitches from across the Celtic nations.
The CMF International Pitching Forum has given rise to several successful productions, including ‘TIDE’, one of the biggest co-productions in the Celtic nations and regions, which was broadcast to critical success and high ratings on four channels.
In 2019, for the first time the International Pitching Forum awarded a £10,000 development prize to the “best pitch”. Indelible Telly won the prize for the exciting project ‘Finding Nessie’.
In 2021, the prize was awarded to Scout Studios’ ‘Life with a Predator’, and in 2022 the prize was awarded to Dhivya Kate Chetty, Banoyi Films for ‘The Crossing‘, an observational documentary series charting the ordinary and extraordinary stories of some of the passengers on the ferry crossings between Liverpool & Dublin, and Liverpool & Belfast.
Catriona Logan, Festival Director, said: “We’re thrilled to bring back the International Pitching Forum in 2023, and very happy to again be offering our £10,000 development prize. This is a fantastic opportunity for producers to pitch their ideas to a worldwide audience of some of the most influential decision makers in the industry. Since the launch of the CMF’s International Pitching Forum in 2016 we’ve received an truly impressive array of pitches, and the CMF is regarded as a key platform on the festival circuit that consistently attracts the best conference speakers and emerging talent.”
The fund comes through the generous support of the festival’s core funders, including BBC Wales, BBC Scotland, BBC Northern Ireland, MG ALBA, S4C, RTÉ and TG4.
