3-5 June 2011

This year DOCUMENTARIST will host a significant training initiative, the BDC Discoveries 2011. Organized by Balkan Documentary Center (BDC), the workshop is aimed at Balkan documentary projects with an international potential and a cross-media angle. Participants in the workshop should be professional filmmakers who have mainly worked in their home countries before and are looking to step on the international documentary market. The workshop in 2011 will start at the beginning of May with a one-week session in Sofia. In the middle of the period there will be an inspiration session focused on storytelling with 2 established experts invited at DOCUMENTARIST, who have been acquainted with the projects in advance. At the follow-up session in DokuFest, Prizren the Best BDC Discovery Award will be given to one of the projects.
Yasemin Birkehimoglu and Melisa Uneri's project titled "Good Girls Don’t Kiss and Tell" (Yırtık) has been selected to the workshop from Turkey. Here are the full shortlist of the "discovered" projects:

* Andreea Valean, Tudor Giurgiu, Romania / project: Ciorica 
* Atanas Georgiev, Darko Popov, Macedonia / project: Wedding and Funeral Orchestra
* Ivan Mandic, Serbia / project: Against all Odds
* Danijel Damian Nenadic, Oliver Sertic, Croatia / project: Silent Flight
* Petya Novakova, Nina Pehlivanova, Bulgaria / project: The Square
* Sabrina Begovic, Nejra Hulusic, Bosnia&Herzegovina / project: Undercovered
* Yasemen Birhekimoglu, Melisa Üneri, Turkey / project: Good Girls Don’t Kiss and Tell

28-30 May 2011

Shortly before the opening of the festival, DOCUMENTARIST Project Development Workshop will be held between 28-30 May in Sismanoglio Megaro. The participants of the workshop and their projects are:

* "Invisible Labor", Güliz Sağlam, Feryal Saygılıgil
* "Two Women", Tülin Dağ
* "Maya", Rodi Yüzbaşı
* "Silent Graves", Cenk Örtülü, Zeynel Koç
* "The Fisher in Dalyan", Musa Ak, Hasan Basri Özdemir

After the three-day-long first session, the participants will be invited to be observers at the BDC Discoveries 2011 Project Development Workshop which will be held between 3-5 June in the frame of DOCUMENTARIST Istanbul Documentary Days. In mid-July there will be the final session of the workshop which is made possible by the support of The Embassy of Finland.