The 4th edition of the Heart of Europe International TV Festival & Forum has officially started in Warsaw. This prestigious event brings together representatives from 12 public broadcasting organizations, alongside nearly 200 creators, producers, and public service media (PSM) delegates from Central and Eastern Europe.

As with tradition, this year’s festival will see juries comprised of creators, producers, scriptwriters, and experts from public television stations across Central and Eastern Europe, selecting the finest productions across six competitive categories: Film & Series, Documentary, Short Documentary, Entertainment, Digital, and Children & Youth. Thet jury has been assigned to each category to ensure a comprehensive evaluation process.

In parallel with the festival, the Heart of Europe Forum presents a dynamic agenda filled with exciting project pitches and panel discussions. The Forum's primary objective is to foster co-production collaborations among representatives of CEE countries. Participants include not only project submitters, but also broadcasters, audiovisual content distributors, as well as producers and key delegates from the production and programming departments from CEE.

This year's Forum has welcomed submissions across three key categories – Feature Film, Series, and Documentary – with projects at various stages of development. The most promising pitches will be presented live during the event in Warsaw.

The Heart of Europe Festival will conclude with the award ceremony on September 18, to be held at the Vienna House by Wyndham Mokotow Warsaw.

The first day of the event opened with a panel titled Binge-Worthy Public Media: Serial Storytelling in PSM hosted by Małgorzata Dzieciniak (TVP) and featured representatives of three public broadcasters in CEE: Jana Semjonova (LTV - Latvian Television), Jiří Vlach (ČT - Czech Television) and Sergiy Nedzelskyy (Suspilne Ukraine). The executives agreed that good storytelling is at the center of successful fiction projects. Semjonova noted that now viewers have become spoiled with so much content and so many stories and platforms and channels and filmmakers should think about the start, the end, structure, dynamics - storytelling plays a great role in today’s world. The exec also gave an example with the series Borgen which started as a political drama, but later added other layers like the strong woman and family line which provided much bigger opportunity to reach the audience. Nordic content was also given as an example of content crossing borders and helping people understand each other better.

Suspilne’s Nedzelskyy said that sometimes series provide an escape, a space where they can feel safe, especially with the war in Ukraine. The exec also shared that it is difficult for Suspilne to shoot fiction projects and the pubcaster focuses on documentaries. CT’s Vlach noted that with the advent of binge series, the way the audience watches them has changed and it sees the series differently from the content creators, they have to put “hooks” in the storytelling because the audience sometimes rearranges the way they watch. Semjonova also talked about “hooks” and how creators should give reason to the audience to watch the series, giving an example with Emily in Paris and its open season finales. In terms of competing with commercial broadcasters, the panelists noted that it’s a dialog, conversation between the broadcasters and the audience, this conversation may be different between a pubcaster, streamer, commercial broadcaster. The panelists also underlined the public mission and values of the broadcasters which is the main difference between commercial networks and them. As main advantages of public broadcasters, CT’s Vlach noted the stable audience and the reliability in providing information. The pubcaster execs also noted the increasingly important role of co-productions and the need for strong independent producers. LTV and Suspilne have limited fiction productions, with the Latvian pubcaster expecting to shoot new series in 2025, with a pitch for new project taking place in 2 weeks. CT’s Vlach highlighted one of the Czech pubcaster’s latest series – The Defender – noting that it included not only a criminal plot but also the storyline connected to the social system, solving problems in society. The panel concluded that great series should be able to solve social problems and even change ‘bad’ laws, to be impactful and leave something for the years, to give stories that work across borders and change people’s perspectives.

The esteemed partners for this year’s event include MIDPOINT Institute, the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), MIPCOM, New Europe Market (NEM), Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival, EnergaCAMERIMAGE, Kyiv Media Week, and CEETV.