Bay of Plenty filmmakers are being given a rare opportunity to sell their content to international industry executives attending this week's indigenous film festival.

Top level industry executives such as Linda O'Shaughnessy, Acquisitions manager from APTN - Canadian Indigenous TV, and Anusha Lee, the Acquisitions Manager for NITV - Indigenous TV Australia, are wanting to meet local producers and film makers.

Film Bay of Plenty board member and festival director Piripi Curtis was successful in selling his own television content to Linda O'Shaughnessy when he attended MIPCOM a number of years ago. MIPCOM is an annual event held in Cannes, providing a premium networking hub for film makers and producers to buy and sell content from around the globe.

'Linda and Anusha will be looking for content, which must be filmed and ready to sell, from independent producers, both experienced and emerging, to create and share unique stories that inspire and lead to a greater understanding of indigenous people and culture,” says Piripi.

'The best outcome we can hope for is that our producers get to sign a deal to sell their shows into Australia and Canada as this will help strengthen our local indigenous film and television industry while growing our connections to our indigenous brothers and sisters abroad.”

The Rotorua Indigenous film festival – RIFF - is a three-day event that begins September 26 bringing some of the best indigenous films from around the world. RIFF was created by a group of award-winning film makers - Piripi Curtis, Mike Jonathan and Lara Northcroft of the Steambox Film Collective.

The festival is now into its second year. The opportunity for local filmmakers from the Bay of Plenty to get their films out to a global audience is a unique feature of RIFF. As well as meeting with Linda and Anusha, appointments will also be available for producers and film makers to meet with New Zealand Film Commission, TVNZ, Prime TV, Maori Television, Te Mangai Paho, Radio New Zealand and New Zealand on Air.

The exclusive 15-minute appointments will only be open to registered members of RIFF. Anyone can register at www.riffnz.com. The RIFF programme is available to view at www.riffnz.com/programme.