Please note that there has been a change of group mentor. The workshops were originally scheduled to be led by director and screenwriter Jagoda Szelc, but due to personal reasons she will not be able to mentor the group throughout the entire Film Spring Open Workshops. We are, however, very happy that Jagoda Szelc will still join us at Film Spring Open 2026 and meet with participants during a special lecture.

Film Script Open is designed for those who want to think of a screenplay not only as a text, but also as the living structure of a future film – a space for artistic, dramaturgical, and directorial decisions. During the group sessions, participants will develop their own fiction film ideas, confront them with the mentor’s perspective, and learn how to consciously build stories, characters, scenes, and dramatic tension.

Agatha Dominik will share with participants her creative experience and practical workshop knowledge, covering both screenwriting and directorial thinking: the relationship between text and image, rhythm, actors, casting, and the film crew. The meetings will offer an opportunity to discuss how intuition, observation, and personal impulses can be shaped into material that may become the basis for a short or feature-length film.

We invite those who wish to develop treatments for fiction films as part of the Film Spring Open Workshops in Kraków to apply. The group work under Agatha Dominik guidance will focus on deepening projects, refining their form, and searching for an individual method of working on a screenplay.

Group members will work on developing their original screenwriting ideas. Projects may concern both short and feature-length films. The group may include a maximum of 30 people: 8 participants whose texts will be discussed during the meetings, and 20 auditors.

Those selected on the basis of previously submitted treatments will develop their screenplays in dialogue with the mentor and the other group participants. The collaborative work will include analysis of dramaturgical assumptions, scene construction, relationships between characters, the language of film, and the directorial potential of individual projects. The workshop process will be complemented by lectures from outstanding specialists, broadening participants’ perspectives on various areas of contemporary filmmaking practice.

Those interested in joining the group are asked to submit a treatment for a fiction film – either short or feature-length – of no more than 2 pages to: biuro@filmspringopen.eu. The application deadline is 30 September 2026.

Agatha Dominik is a graduate of the Department of Theatre Studies at the National Academy of Theatre Arts in Warsaw. After immigrating to the United States, she launched her Hollywood career as a literary agent before transitioning to Story Editor and later Creative Executive at TriStar/Columbia. She then served as Vice President of Production at Dennis Quaid’s studio-based production company, where she produced Hideaway, a feature film adaptation of Dean Koontz’s bestselling novel.

As a full-time screenwriter, Dominik has penned over 60 screenplays for major studios, including Warner Bros., DreamWorks, Paramount, Universal, Fox 2000, and Miramax, as well as for independent production companies both in the U.S. and Europe. Specializing in adaptations, she has also written several limited series, including the Golden Globe- and Emmy-nominated Human Trafficking, starring Donald Sutherland, Mira Sorvino, and Robert Carlyle. Throughout her career, she has collaborated with acclaimed Oscar-and-Emmy-nominated directors such as Agnieszka Holland, Christian Duguay, and Roland Joffé.

In addition to her screenwriting work, Dominik has shared her expertise as an MFA screenwriting instructor at EICAR, the International Film and Television School of Paris, and most recently, at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts’ School of Filmmaking.

She is a member of the Writers Guild of America, the Writers Guild of Canada, and SIAE, the Italian Society of Authors and Publishers. Dominik is represented by Gersh Agency in the U.S. and ZA Agencja in Poland.

The group is sponsored by ZAIKS