INDUSTRY PROGRAM 20. PRAGUESHORTS
Alongside short films, this year’s Pragueshorts will once again feature a programme for film professionals. A panel on international co-productions of short films will offer practical, creative, and strategic perspectives on cross-border collaboration. You can also look forward to a masterclass by filmmaker, producer, and educator Andrea Gatopoulos, exploring filmmaking as both a personal and production discipline.
VAdmission to the events is free.
50 Shades of Co-production
Thursday 26 February
11am
Goethe Institut
4th floor
We invite you to an inspirational panel dedicated to short film co-production, offering insights from multiple perspectives - practical, creative, and strategic. Why pursue co-production and how does it work in practice? What challenges does it bring, and how can the experience benefit a producer’s future career? What does co-production mean for a director, and what qualities make a project suitable for international collaboration? And where can you find the right partners?
The discussion will connect the experiences of producers, filmmakers, and institutional representatives from different European environments and production models. The program will also feature a case study of the film Loynes, presented in the Pragueshorts Labo competition, introduced by producer Clyde Gates (Scum Pictures, Belgium) and director Dorian Jespers.
Panel guests:
Guillaume Dreyfus (Tripod, France)
Maks Piłasiewicz (Animoon, Poland)
Andrea Gatopoulos (Il Varco, Italy)
Kamila Dohnalová (Truelovers, Czech Republic)
Sari Volanen (YLE, Finland)
Moderator: curator and short film expert Jing Haase (Denmark)
Language: English
Admission: Free
Duration: 60 minutes, coffee break, 60 minutes
Do It Yourself!
A hybrid masterclass by Andrea Gatopoulos
Friday 27 February
11am
Světozor cinema – third hall
Andrea Gatopoulos began his career as an editor and cinematographer and has since established himself as a director, producer, distributor, and educator. Although only 31 years old, he is already one of the most active figures in contemporary European cinema. His work is marked by a distinctive poetics, a strong interest in virtual spaces, and innovative low-budget production models that challenge traditional film industry structures.
Andrea Gatopoulos is already making films in the way many of us will soon have to learn to work in a rapidly changing world - through technology, alternative financing and distribution models, and a strong belief in the DIY approach.
This is the kind of filmmaker you simply want to meet and look behind the scenes of his thinking. We invite not only emerging filmmakers, but anyone interested in the future of cinema, to a dynamic and unconventional masterclass that combines inspiration, practical tools, and a generous dose of creative hacks.
Andrea will present filmmaking as both a personal and practical discipline. He will connect reflections on the psychology of authorship with concrete technical approaches, showing how filmmakers can discover their own identity while mastering the tools and strategies needed to bring projects to life.
What does it really mean to be an author today? How can filmmakers understand their creative instincts and translate them into cinematic language? Which contemporary production formats are the most demanding, and which are surprisingly accessible? And how can a DIY approach become not a compromise, but a shortcut to higher quality?
In the second part of the program, Andrea will break down different forms of filmmaking through concrete examples — from animation and narrative fiction to desktop documentaries, machinima, and AI-generated projects — explaining what each format requires and how to approach it strategically. The masterclass will also address key production topics, including how to find the right producer, how to access labs and residencies, and how to work with alternative financing models.Participants are encouraged to attend, before or after the masterclass, the film retrospective Andrea Gatopoulos: Digital Prophecies, which presents him as a director, producer, and curator of a creative residency.
Language: English
Admission: Free
Duration: 90 minutes, coffee break, 90 minutes
Andrea Gatopoulos
Andrea Gatopoulos is a film producer, director, and distributor, a member of the European Film Academy, and an alumnus of Berlinale Talents, Torino Film Lab, and Locarno Spring Academy. He was born in 1994 in Pescara and lives in Rome.
In 2024, he founded the publishing and production company Il Varco, with which he has produced 28 short films, 4 feature films, and published 11 books. He is also the founder of the film residency Nouvelle Bug and the distribution company Gargantua Film. His productions have screened at more than 450 festivals worldwide.
As a director, he made Materia Celeste (2019) and Polepole (2021). In 2020, he took part in the Werner Herzog Film Accelerator, where he developed Letters to Herzog and Flores del precipicio. He was a finalist for Premio Zavattini 2021/2022. His film Happy New Year, Jim (2022), shot entirely inside video games, premiered in the Quinzaine des Réalisateurs in Cannes as the first machinima in the festival’s history. In 2023, at Locarno Spring Academy, he created Eschaton Ad, a film about the apocalyptic rise of AI, and attended a workshop by Apichatpong Weerasethakul in Mexico. His feature documentary A Stranger Quest screened at the 41st Turin Film Festival.
His short film The Eggregores’ Theory opened the 39th Venice Film Critics’ Week as the first AI-generated film in the festival’s history, received a Special Silver Ribbon, and earned nominations for the European Film Awards and the David di Donatello Awards. He is currently developing several feature projects, including the period film The Hallucinations, which received the CNC Development Award at the Résidence du Festival de Cannes.
