Workshops
Daily instructor-led intensive sessions.
Directing Actors
Working with different types of actors in pre-production and on-set to bring out a collaborative performance.
The Dawn of AI in Cinema
2001: A Space Odyssey, Stanley Kubrick’s iconic cut from a bone—symbolizing humanity’s first tool—to a spacecraft, feels like a prophetic metaphor for AI’s transformative role in human evolution. This now includes cinema, especially photography, sound, music, art direction, and performance. How will storytelling and audience experiences be reshaped? How will the cinematic process, long rooted in human craftsmanship and collaboration, change with AI’s influence? Here we tackle these questions and more.
Mise-en-scène
How do directors create their own style? How do past styles inspire new generations, from Ozu to Jarmsuch or Leone to Tarantino? To this end, we will look at how directors use light, color, wardrobe, hair & makeup, composition, art direction, aspect ratio, and acting styles to tell a story and reference pre-existing genres.
Rough Stuff: Raw Footage, and What No One Else Sees
Using actual footage, participants will look at the rough footage, including mistakes, surprises, and happy accidents, that no one else sees of a finished film. A great way to see what is actually shot and how it’s manipulated.
Getting it Made
How to make your film. At all costs. [Can’t stop, won’t stop!]
Previz
The art of imagining a project before it exists.
Exercises & Activities
Individual creativity and group collaboration.
Exquisite Corpse Filmmaking
A 15 minute film, which will include a one minute segment directed and edited by each participant. This method, invented by the Surrealists, collectively assembles a group of short pieces of writing or images into a single work of art. Creating our own tradition, the film will be screened on the last evening of the retreat.
Pitching
Over the course of the retreat, participants will learn the art of the pitch. Neal and Mika will pitch past or future projects. Some participants might try their hand at a no-pressure group pitch as well!
Screening & Discussions
We'll watch a bunch of films. Our discussions will range from Q&As with the filmmakers themselves, to why we’ve found these films to be inspiring and exciting, to how they’re relevant to the workshops.
Daily Meditation Sessions
Using meditation to unlock creativity, connect to your unconscious, and improve your intuition.
Visiting Filmmakers
Award-winning filmmakers will bring their unique perspectives on creativity, production and festivals.
The visiting filmmakers are one of the most wonderful parts of Wandering Cinema!
Tolga Karaçelik
Istanbul, Turkey
Tolga Karaçelik is one of the youngest directors to win the Golden Orange (Best First Film, Best Actor and Best Cinematography), at the prestigious Turkish Film Festival. His second feature Ivy premiered at Sundance, as did his follow-up Butterflies, which won the Grand Jury Award for World Cinema. His latest film, Psycho Therapy: The Shallow Tale Of A Writer Who Decided To Write About A Serial Killer, premiered at Tribeca, and is currently playing at IFC Center in New York.
Sonja Prosenc
Ljubljana, Slovenia
Sonja Prosenc is a Slovenian writer, director, and producer whose films have premiered at Tribeca, Karlovy Vary, Sarajevo, and numerous other festivals, earning critical acclaim and multiple awards. All three of her feature films - The Tree (2014), History of Love (2018), and Family Therapy (2024), were Slovenia’s official Oscar entries. She co-founded the production company Monoo and actively supports emerging voices. Selected by Slamdance as one of four global “Directors of the Future,” she was named one of eight European female directors to watch by Cineuropa and included in Eurimages’ Gold Album of 50 prominent European female directors of the past 20 years. Sonja is currently pursuing a Doctorate of Arts in Film and working on her next feature, further developing her distinctive visual language and approach to intimate narratives grounded in contemporary social realities.
