This year KYIV MEDIA WEEK will be held in a new format, allowing to expand the events range and give participants maximum access to all activities of the forum. To ensure that KMW guests will be able to visit as many events as possible and tailor an ideal program of seminars, presentations, discussions, pitching, workshops and round tables for themselves, the traditional Format Show, Film Business, Pay TV in Ukraine and other conferences have been transformed into a number of narrow-focused thematic events. Registration for the conferences is replaced by a single participant’s badge for each day, buying which the attendees will receive unlimited access to all events of the day and the International Content Market, which will be held in the course of KMW on September 17-18.

KYIV MEDIA WEEK 2018 will gather more guests and speakers from all over the world, official delegations from Korea, China, Moldova, the United States and other countries of the world, as well as special events from partners of the forum – leading Ukrainian and international companies.

K7 will be holding two exclusive presentations for KMW attendees. One of the discussion topics will focus on ‘FAANGS trends’, discussing the latest innovations in the field of content production and distribution by Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Google and Snapchat. A topical subject matter, with FAANGS’ platforms absolutely critical to modern media businesses today. K7 Media provides insights and intelligence on global content TV trends to the world’s biggest media brands.

Another partner of KMW, Vancouver Film School, will bring exclusive guests to the forum – Maria and Andre Jacquemetton, showrunners of MAD MEN. They will talk about the creation of the series, showrunning on American channels, as well as reveal the secrets of their sensational project.

Another star of the media forum will be Anders Tangen, CEO of Viafilm (LA / Oslo). Anders will make a presentation ‘Step out of Nordic noir. One Night case study’. For more than 20 years Anders has been producing series, feature films and documentaries. The peculiarity of the project One Night, where Tangen was the executive producer, is the creation of two language versions of the series (Norwegian and English) by replacing one key actor. The speaker will talk about producer’s decisions of the project and the new direction for the development of Scandinavian content, which replaces the Nordic noir.

The final round of SMALL WORLD. BIG IDEAS formats competition will be held in the course of the media forum in partnership with the international distributor Small World IFT (USA) and the largest international content market MIPCOM (France). The winner of the contest will get unique opportunities for professional development internationally, and the format will travel the world and get a chance to conquer the audience of all continents. This year SMALL WORLD. BIG IDEAS contest is held for the fourth time, but for the first time – in the course of KYIV MEDIA WEEK.

The highlight of the traditional events line-up dedicated to series production, organized by KMW in partnership with Ukraine TV channel, this year will be the presentation by Karni Ziv, head of drama and comedy production at Keshet (Israel). One of the most successful and sought-after women in the television industry, will deliver a report entitled ‘Series production. Local goes global. Story of Keshet’. Keshet became one of the leaders in series production and distribution in Europe, and more recently Keshet International co-produced a new HBO series about the conflict in Gaza (Karni Ziv is the executive producer of the project).

With the support of Ukrainian State Film Agency, KMW will traditionally host a series of events dedicated to film business. For example, Lawrence David Foldes, a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences of the United States and a member of the Executive Committee of the Student Academy Award, is expected to deliver a keynote at KMW. The speaker will tell exactly how the jury of the Academy evaluates the ‘Oscar’ films and by which criteria they choose the film in the category ‘Best Foreign Language Film’ and will report on the work of the Executive Committee of the Student Academy Award and on the opportunities that the prize provides to young filmmakers.

The documentary films theme, widely presented at KYIV MEDIA WEEK 2017, will be expanded further this year thanks to the round table ‘More docs on TV! Yes, it works’ that will be co-organized with another traditional partner of the forum – the international platform Baltic to Black Sea Documentary Network (B2B Doc). Documentarians from Sweden and other countries together with the representatives of European and Ukrainian TV channels will discuss the issues of popularization of the genre among the wide audience and will consider all possibilities and prospects for producing documentary content. Besides, like in the past year, KMW together with the B2B Doc platform will host pitchings of documentary projects.

Also for the second year in a row ‘Clear Sky’ Initiative will organize in the course of KMW the conference ‘Fighting piracy in Ukraine. What’s done. What to do. 2018’. Like in 2017, the event will bring together rights holders, content producers and lawyers from Ukrainian and international companies to have a constructive dialogue for joint decision-making on future actions to protect copyright.

The conference ‘Television as Business’, organized by the traditional partner of the media forum – Television Industry Committee (TIC) – will be held on the fourth day of KMW. For the ninth year in a row, the participants of the conference – Ukrainian media leaders and professionals of the television sphere – will talk about the current content, finance, management and the latest media technologies.

KYIV MEDIA WEEK 2018 will be held on September 17–21, 2018 at Hyatt Regency Kyiv (Kyiv, Ukraine).