Producer David Lester Mooney led the team pitching ‘Down the Hatch’, written by Jenny Dahlstroem (Finland). The project won the major prize of €3,000 plus a guaranteed slot at the pitching sessions at the Mannheim International Film Festival in November. Also, writer and director David Tynan's television project, ‘The Ropes’, won the joint second prize of €2,000. Both David Lester and David Tynan are recent graduates of the National Film School's undergraduate degree in Film & Television Production.

This is the second year of the ENGAGE project, which is funded by the EU MEDIA Programme, and is a collaboration between Screen Academy Scotland at Edinburgh Napier University; the National Film School at IADT, the Baltic Film & Media School inTallinn, Estonia and, new in 2009, the University of Art & Design (UIAH) in Helsinki.

The prize development fund came from the film funding agencies in each country: the Irish Film Board, Scottish Screen, the Estonian Film Foundation, and the Finnish Film Foundation. The Irish Film Board sent their development executive, Andrew Meehan, to represent them on the workshop’s pitching panel.