Julia Solomonoff to lead RBC Focus: Filmmakers’ Immersion 2013

Award-winning Argentinian writer, director and producer Julia Solomonoff will be the lead facilitator for the RBC Focus: Filmmakers’ Immersion, to be held at the ttff/13.

Solomonoff is the writer and director of The Last Summer of la Boyita (2009), which was co-produced by Pedro Almodóvar’s El Deseo SA and won over twenty international awards including best film, best director and best screenplay. Her directorial debut, Sisters (2005), opened at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), while her original script for the film was developed at the Sundance Writers’ Lab.

As a producer, her credits include Julia Murat’s Historias que existem quando lembradas (ttff/12), and Everybody’s Got a Plan, (associate producer), directed by Ana Piterbarg and staring Viggo Mortensen, which premiered at TIFF 2012.

A Fulbright Scholar, Solomonoff teaches Film Directing at Columbia University School of the Arts, from which she graduated with an MFA in Film in 2000. She has also taught directing workshops at FUNAVE (Cervantes Institute), NYFA/Femis, France NYFA/Cambridge, UK, CIC, Cievyc and Facultad Libre (Argentina).

Now in its third year, RBC Focus: Filmmakers’ Immersion is an intensive development programme for ten selected emerging filmmakers from the Caribbean and its diaspora. Each filmmaker enters the programme with a concept for a feature-length film, from which they will be expected to develop a detailed treatment. This year, the spotlight is on narrative filmmaking.

At the end of Focus, the top five participants as decided by the facilitators will be chosen. These five participants will be given an opportunity during the ttff/13 to pitch their project to a jury at a public event. The participant with the best project and pitch, as determined by the jury, will win a cash prize of TT$20,000.

Focus takes place from 24–27 September. The ttff, now in its eighth year, runs from 17 September–01 October.