The Winners of the Fourth Edition of La Bottega della Sceneggiatura

The winners of the fourth edition of La Bottega della Sceneggiatura have been announced today. The initiative, a high-level coaching and training programme created and developed by Premio Solinas and Netflix, is dedicated to young talents who want to build a career as professionals in series writing.

The first prize, worth €7,000 , goes to SANGUE CALDO by Iris Aresu and Mattia Salvetti, while the second prize, worth €2,000 per project , has been awarded ex aequo to DUE CULTURE E MEZZA by Nawal Chouaf and Imane Kamil and UFORIA by Edoardo Melchioretto and Giorgia Conigliaro. At Netflix's discretion, the authors of the winning projects may receive an offer to work as assistants in the Writers' Room of a series project in which Netflix is involved.

A love of stories told on screen and a desire to enrich Italian series with new creativity and a diversity of voices and points of view, reaching people from underrepresented groups - with particular attention to gender and gender identity, disability, ethnicity, and sexual and romantic orientation - is what drives the initiative. This year again, it offered a multi-phase programme to deepen and sharpen skills in serial storytelling, putting young talents directly to the test on writing projects they conceived and developed under the supervision of outstanding mentors and jurors: Francesco Cenni, Laura Colella, Alessandro Fabbri, Flaminia Gressi, Antonio Le Fosse, Laura Luchetti, Michele Pellegrini, Monica Rametta, Ludovica Rampoldi, Marco Raspanti, Re Salvador, Stefano Sardo, Davide Serino, Michela Straniero, Eleonora Trucchi, and the winning assistant writers of the second edition of La Bottega della Sceneggiatura : Raffaele Iaccarino, Jessica Romagnoli and Giacomo Zibardi.

The jury's reasons for choosing each winning project:

• SANGUE CALDO by Iris Aresu and Mattia Salvetti: For the strength of an original, irreverent and deeply contemporary authorial voice, able to portray adolescence without idealising or judging it. Through complex, contradictory and vital characters, Sangue caldo explores the need to belong, the search for one's own identity and the difficulty of imagining a future in a world where even having a dream can feel like something to be ashamed of. With bold writing, a recognisable visual world and a gaze that moves between irony, rawness and tenderness, the project offers a fresh portrait of provincial Italy, far from stereotypes and conventional depictions, giving a voice back to a generation that shields itself with cynicism but has not stopped wanting. The jury awards Sangue caldo for its narrative identity, the sensitivity of its storytelling and its ability to remind us that, even when dreaming seems out of fashion, to keep doing it is perhaps the most revolutionary act. At any age.

• DUE CULTURE E MEZZA by Nawal Chouaf and Imane Kamil: For the ability to give space to unique voices that take us inside the Barriera di Milano neighbourhood in Turin: a working-class, multicultural area that mirrors a society full of tensions and contradictions, but also of new possibilities for living together. Through the chaotic, unpredictable daily lives of its protagonists, the project takes on current themes with a lightness that is never superficial, such as the conflict of those who must constantly translate themselves, almost unconsciously learning which parts of themselves to show to others. It is in the sudden rupture created by meeting the other that the project finds its most authentic strength: a break that questions identity and belonging and opens up new possibilities for connection. The result is a comedy that is both universal and deeply rooted, touching and irreverent, but above all sincere. By turning the complexity of encounters between cultures into a living story that is never stereotyped, Due culture e Mezza offers a mirror of society that alternates hope and disenchantment, makes us laugh, moves us, and lets us recognise, in someone else's experience, something deeply our own.

• UFORIA by Edoardo Melchioretto and Giorgia Conigliaro: Uforia builds a narrative universe that is both intimate and over the top, where laughter embraces melancholy and where a close encounter with UFOs becomes the ground on which funny, fragile antiheroes move, stubbornly faithful to their view of the world. The project's identity takes shape through their eyes: characters who prefer impossible explanations to truths that are hard to bear. In the gap between what happens and what they choose to believe, a desperate and tender comedy emerges. One of a kind. The quality of the writing stands out in particular, holding absurdity and humanity in delicate balance and exploring universal themes such as loss and friendship through a completely original lens. Almost alien.

Download the winners' photos HERE

Download the group photos HERE