The industry programme at the 19th Pragueshorts
The industry program of the 19th Pragueshorts will bring a special presentation for filmmakers, master class by the NEOZOON collective and a talk focused on audience design. The entry to all of the events is free.
Industry presentation: Would You Buy This?
Friday 28 February, 11am, Goethe Institut, 4th floor
How do distribution, sales, and VOD professionals select short films for their portfolios? The industry session Would You Buy This? presents a unique opportunity to find out what determines a film’s success on the marketplace.
Selected filmmakers will present the first three minutes of their film to a panel of experts, who will assess its distribution potential and provide valuable feedback. In order to make the selection as diverse as possible, the program features a wide range of short films representing multiple genres – from documentaries and animation to experimental and mainstream work. Besides providing the filmmakers with valuable insight, the program also give audiences the chance to observe the process of short film evaluation and distribution.
The program will be in English without interpretation.
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Master class: NEOZOON – NOTHING CUTE HERE
Friday 28 February, 5:45pm, Světozor cinema
Meet NEOZOON, an art collective that has been bringing together film, activism, and public space since 2009. At this master class, artists Friederike and Michaela will discuss their creative process, the beginnings of the collective, their artistic interventions, and the themes they address in their work. How did they work with recycled fur in street art? How do they create edgy, ironic film collages from YouTube videos? And how do the issues of people’s relationship to animals, consumerism, and religion resonate in their films?
The master class offers an exclusive look at NEOZOON’s work through excerpts from their films and an open discussion about art, humor, and society in today’s audiovisual world. The event, moderated by Iranian film journalist Hossein Eidizadeh, will be held in English without interpretation.
The festival will present NEOZOON’s films as part of its Tribute NEOZOON section (at the Světozor cinema on 27 February and again on 1 March). One screening is before the master class and one is afterwards, but the meeting with the filmmakers is sure to be captivating even without prior familiarity with their films.
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The Art of Connection: Audience Design for Filmmakers
Friday 1st Match
2pm
Světozor cinema
How do you ensure your film not only gets made but also finds the audience it was meant for? Audience Design is a creative and strategic mindset that helps filmmakers build meaningful connections with viewers – without compromising their artistic vision. It’s not just about industry partnerships with producers, distributors, and sales agents; it is about directly engaging with your potential audience early in the process. By learning who they are, how they behave, how they do not behave, what resonates with them, and how your film can speak to them, you can actually strengthen your creative intentions rather than dilute them.
This lecture will guide filmmakers through the core principles of audience design – an approach that moves beyond traditional marketing formulas to embrace audience engagement as part of the storytelling process itself. Through real case studies we will explore how identifying emotional, visual, and narrative touchpoints with audiences can enhance a project’s impact across platforms and borders.
We will also discuss the importance of two-way communication with target audiences: it’s not about guessing who might watch your film, but about listening, testing ideas, and understanding how viewers relate to the story. By adopting this mindset, filmmakers can create films that don’t just pass through festivals unnoticed but actually leave a mark – whether within niche communities or among broader international audiences.
The lecture will be led by Petar Mitric.
Petar Mitric
Petar Mitric is an assistant professor in film studies at the University of Copenhagen, where his research focus is on audience design, film distribution, and European audiovisual policy. His work examines how audience relevance can be defined, measured, and integrated into the creative and distribution processes of contemporary film and television production. In particular, Mitric is interested in the challenges of reaching audiences for arthouse and co-produced content within the European market.
Mitric has collaborated with TorinoFilmLab (TFL) as an audience designer since 2018, applying his expertise to international film projects with a focus on audience development and distribution strategies. Notable TFL projects that he has worked on include Cannes and Venice titles such as The Birds of Passage (Colombia, Denmark, France, 2018) by Ciro Guerra and Cristina Gallego, The Brink of Dreams (Egypt, France, Denmark) by Ayman El Amir and Nada Riyadh, and White Building (Cambodia, France, China, 2021) by Kavich Neang.