Runner up was Czech producer, director and scriptwriter Vaclav Marhoul who received a special mention for his screenplay for Painted Bird.

Speaking at the ceremony ScripTeast and Apple Film Dariusz Jablonski, congratulated the winners and pointed out that so far all scripts that had won the annual award had either been produced or were in various stages of production as feature films. The gala ceremony was attended by VIPs of European film including head of the MEDIA unit of the European Commission, Aviva Silver.

Scripteast which is supported by MEDIA and the Polish Film Institute is one of the most successful scriptwriting training programmes in Europe with 10 projects that have gone through the year long intensive programme already produced as films and string of other projects in various stages of production.

The awards ceremony was the culmination of the seventh edition of the ScripTeast programme in Cannes which saw the scriptwriters of 12 scripts from 8 countries (Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, Estonia, Slovakia, Czech Republic and Serbia) take part in a programme of seven days of intense work that included meetings with producers, sales agents, festival consultants, head of film founds and distribution representatives.

The winning screenplay The Mute, which also received a cash prize of 10 000 EUR to be spent on further work on the project, is a story in the early Middle Ages, and recounting the conflict between two men as they struggle to convert a remote Pagan community.

Marhoul’s Painted Bird which received the Runner Up award is an adaptation of Jerzy Kosinski’s harrowing tale of an abandoned boy in World War II.