Meetup #187

Thanks to our guest director/producer for the talk this week.

Summer break starts now, through 9.8.2026. We’re back with a talk from a filmmaker about her award-winning short. Also just announced: Moviesprint IV, our next 72-hour sprint, 17-20.9.2026.

New projects: a trojan-horse social-media horror brand, shorts disguised as pranks and outfit-transition videos specifically to dodge platform content strikes, first episode turning a “paint your partner” challenge into horror. A Croatian folk-tale graveyard-dare short. The ongoing Berlin-teenager dramedy feature, now actually shooting its tattoo-parlor scene. And a 70s/80s-styled practical-effects sci-fi short about an isolated cargo-hauler pilot.

Our guest speaker this week, a director/writer/producer from Luxembourg, told us the story of his career and honestly it’s a lot: an improvised no-budget feature shot in Uganda that played Berlinale two years later. A national grant, about 120,000€, approved only after adding a co-writer credit that wasn’t entirely accurate. A comedy short shot with a mid-production lead-actor illness forcing rewrites, edited while he was living in his car, where literally everyone but him got paid. A second short made for free with a loyal crew, real police cooperation (uniforms, cars, the works), a free four-hour airport shoot, and a recognizable actress lending PR support, that went on to play Tribeca plus about 120 other festivals and got close enough to short-film Oscar consideration to talk about it. He’s also written a filmmaking survival guide, worth tracking down.

That’s it until 9.8. Go make something over the break. We mean it.

Stop waiting. Start creating.