The first Script & Story workshop took place at Sarajevo International Film Festival between 17-19 August 2009.

Script & Story is a new script editing project designed to create a pool of trained script advisers across south east Europe. It is part of Creative Collaboration, the British Council's international programme to encourage cross border cultural partnerships.

20 professional filmmakers from Israel, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Turkey and the UK will participate in a one year development programme taking place across all four countries. British experts from The Script Factory will run a series of script editing workshops to develop the writing skills of the filmmakers involved, creating a pool of trained script editors and contributing to the film industry in the participating countries.

The 20 Script & Story participants. Photo taken during their first workshop at Sarajevo Film Festival 2009.

As Katriel Schory, head of the Israeli Film Fund, told Variety in a recent interview: 'Ultimately, script writing is a solitary business, and the lack of creative criticism from an independent outside source is evident in the film-writing cultures of many countries in the region. From my experience of bringing the Script Factory to Israel in the past, I understood that good script editors are a rarity, and this is an area that has been neglected in the recent development of professional skills in the film industry in this part of the world.'

The next workshop for the 20 participants will take place in London on 1-3 December; there will be two further workshops held at Istanbul International Film Festival in April and Jerusalem International Film Festival in July.

For more information on the project and partners involved see this page on our Creative Collaboration site.