Georgian director Dea Kulumbegashvili selected for prestigious Italian filmmaking program

Award-winning Georgian film director Dea Kulumbegashvili and her debut feature film America have been selected for the 2016 edition of an international cinema laboratory's annual scriptwriting training in Italy.

The Script&Pitch training by TorinoFilmLab selected Kulumbegashvili and 11 other filmmakers working on fiction feature films over this year for the course.

The Georgian filmmaker - director of the award-winning short film Invisible Spaces - will feature in the training with her new in-production film alongside participants from Europe, Middle East and South America.

See the trailer for Dea Kulumbegashvili's short film Invisible Spaces below:

A three-week local workshop in addition to two online sessions within the training program aimed at developing scriptwriting abilities will guide the selected artists through the advanced training.

The cinema laboratory said the scriptwriting course would follow the process "from generating ideas" up to the "final pitch in front of producers and sales agents".

Launched in 2008, the TorinoFilmLab focused on supporting up-and-coming cinema artists with a particular focus on filmmakers working on their debut feature productions.

Kulumbegashvili made her cinema debut in 2014 when her short film Invisible Spaces was nominated for Palme D'Or at the Cannes International Film Festival.

The film became the first cinema production from independent Georgia to feature at the famous festival's official competition.

Her debut work was also selected for more than a dozen other festivals and competitions and won the Best International Short Film award at the Rome Independent Film Festival last year.

The full selection of filmmakers and their feature works selected for the Script&Pitch training can be viewed here.