News

“Vigdís,” the four-part biopic about Iceland’s iconic former president Vigdís Finnbogadóttir, widely known as the world’s first democratically elected female head of state, will bow Feb. 17 at the Berlinale Series Market Selects, courtesy of REinvent International.

The show – which chronicles Finnbogadóttir’s journey from 1948, when she finished secondary school, up until her presidential election in 1980 – lands in Berlin off the back of a strong national run on pubcaster RÚV, where it premiered on Jan. 1.

“It’s one of the most successful TV series broadcasted in Iceland, with around 60% accumulated viewings per episode,” boasts producer Rakel Garðarsdóttir, co-creator with co-writers Ágústa M Ólafsdóttir and Björg Magnúsdóttir (“The Minister”). In the small nation of 390,000 inhabitants, ruled by two women- President Halla Tómasdóttir and Prime Minister Kristrún Frostadóttir, the series about Finnbogadóttir, who championed equality and women’s rights during her presidency (1980 to 1996), has sparked a national craze for everything related to Vigdís.

Scandinavia’s leading sales outfit REinvent has boarded Norway’s true crime “Escaping Bolivia,” currently filming in Cape Town, South Africa, after an initial shoot in Oslo.

Fenomen (“Rod Knock”) and longstanding outfit 4 ½ (“Out Stealing Horses”) are producing for TV2 Norway, in co-production with Germany’s pubcaster Ndr and Oslo Film Fund.

Helmer Anna Gutto, behind Lionsgate’s “Paradise Highway” starring Juliette Binoche, is concept director, working next to creator and episodic director Emilie Beck, attached to Netflix’s “Royalteen.” Toplining the six-part series are Jakob Oftebro (“Agent Hamilton”), Ella Øverbye, from Dag Johan Haugerud’s “Dreams,” Josephine Tetlie, Lisa Hovden and Danish actor Joachim Fjelstrup (“The Girl With the Needle”).

The show is inspired by the infamous drug case of three Norwegian girls aged 17, 18, 21, who were imprisoned in Bolivia after being caught in 2008, with 22kg cocaine in their bags. Two managed to escape – one with a child, helped by...

Writers Johan Fasting, Silje Storstein, and Kristin Grue are the recipients of the 2024 Nordisk Film & TV Fond Prize for their political drama Power Play (Makta).

The trio were awarded the prize Tuesday evening during a ceremony on the first day of the Göteborg Film Festival’s series focused sidebar TV Drama Vision.

As part of the award, they will share a Nok 200 000 (approx € 20 000) award, funded by the Nordisk Film & TV fund. This is the eighth year Göteborg has been the home of the Nordisk Film & TV Fond Prize. This year’s jury included Vinca Wiedemann, editor, producer, and screenwriter (Denmark); Joel Spira, actor, (Sweden); Kateryna Vyshnevska, producer (Ukraine); and Charlotte Winberg, journalist and critic (Finland).

Announcing this evening’s win, the jury said: “Choosing a winner from a diverse array of such high-quality drama has been both a privilege and a pleasure for us, the jury. The nominees have...

“Power Play” – a scathing, scabrous chronicle of Gro Harlem Brundtland unlikely climb to power as Norway and Scandinavia’s first woman prime minister – won the 2024 Nordisk Film & TV Fond Prize for best drama series screenwriting at Sweden’s Göteborg Film Festival Tuesday night.

Awarded at the fest’s TV Drama Vision, the prize went to the satirical series’ main writers Johan Fasting, Silje Storstein and Kristin Grue. The Nordic drama series screenwriting award carries a cash prize of €20,000.

With the Nftfp win, “Power Play,” like “Blackport” before it, completes a double of winning a top TV fest in Europe – it walked off with best series at Canneseries last year – and then the Nordisk Film & TV Fond Prize.

While Nordic Noir exposed human evil festering below Scandinavia’s acclaimed social democracy, “Power Play” underscores a more recent TV phenomenon of exposing the myth to that model and its decline via comedy and farce.

REinvent International Sales has secured global rights to “Vigdís,” the next big Icelandic TV show from the talent-driven shingle Vesturport and local public broadcaster RÚV, after the 2021 Series Mania winning show “Blackport.” Filming is due to start this fall.

As announced in Variety, the four-part series, co-penned by Björg Magnúsdóttir (“The Minister”) and Ágústa M. Ólafsdóttir, chronicles the inspiring true story of Vigdís Finnbogadóttir, Iceland’s former president and the world’s first woman democratically elected head of state.

Created in full cooperation with Finnbogadóttir, the show centres on the young woman’s transformation from a teenager to a single working mother who defies the nation’s patriarchal society and her election as president in 1980.

Vesturport is now fully producing, with Rakel Gardarsdóttir serving as producer together with Ólafsdóttir.

Versatile actor, director, producer Björn Hlynur Haraldsson, will be directing, alongside Tinna Hrafnsdóttir (“Quake”), while seasoned actor Nína Dogg Filippusdóttir, one...

Norwegian writer-director Kenneth Karlstad has won the 2023 Nordisk Film & TV Fond Prize for his gritty coming-of-age series Kids in Crime.

Karlstad was awarded the prize Wednesday evening during a ceremony on the first day of the Göteborg Film Festival’s series focused sidebar TV Drama Vision.

As part of the award, Karlstad receives a Nok 200,000 cash prize, funded by Nordisk Film & TV Fond.

This is the seventh year Göteborg has been awarded the Nordisk Film & TV Fond Prize. This year’s jury comprised actor Amanda Collin, producer Nebojša Taraba, journalist Wanda Bendjelloul, and producer Leif Holst Jensen.

Announcing Karlstad’s win, the jury said: “We have based our evaluation on three main criteria: craft, relevance, and originality. The winner has it all. It’s based on a true universe from a certain time. The authenticity, honesty, brutality, and friendship drive the story and engage the audience. Accuracy, details,...

The series will be produced by Fremantle-owned The Apartment and Fandango.

Oscar-winning French filmmaker Florian Zeller is joining forces with Italian producers Lorenzo Mieli and Domenico Procacci to direct, write and co-produce a drama series adaptation of The Lehman Trilogy, based on the Tony award-winning play by Italian playwright Stefano Massini.

It will be Zeller’s first production through his newly-formed banner Blue Morning Pictures, and will be made in collaboration with Procacci’s Fandango and Mieli’s Fremantle-owned The Apartment.

The epic drama series follows three immigrant brothers who arrive in America and launch an investment firm, exploring...

A round-up of European drama deals and appointments.

Blackport snares international broadcasters

Icelandic drama Blackport has reeled in its first international broadcast deals following its launch at MipTV earlier this year.

Buyers for the quirky drama include Topic in the US and Canada, Sbs in Australia, AMC Networks International Southern Europe in Spain and Portugal, Rts in Switzerland and TG4 in Ireland.

Blackport had been previously pre-sold to Dr in Denmark, Nrk in Norway, Svt in Sweden, and Yle in Finland. It won the Series Mania grand prize in 2021.

The eight-parter is produced by Vesturport and Turbine Studios for Arte...

Format

HBO Max in Hungary will stream a local version of hit survival reality format “The Bridge.” The competition sees participants tasked with building a 250-metre-long bridge to an island for the chance to win a large cash prize. Presented by Csaba Magyarósi, “The Bridge Hungary” is produced locally by Free Monkeys Production. This is the sixth adaptation of the format, which was created in Spain by Zeppelin, part of Banijay Iberia and has U.K., Brazil and Australia versions..

Banijay Rights struck multiple deals for the U.K. version with broadcasters in the Netherlands and across Africa and Latin America. The U.K. series also aired on HBO Max in the US, Latin America, and Asia.

The Hungarian agreement was negotiated by Veronique Verges, senior VP German territories, Poland and Hungary, Banijay Rights.

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LA and London based production company The Ats Team have launched competition series “Clash of Trades.

Click here to read the full article.

French pay-tv group Canal+ and Italian public broadcaster Rai have picked up Audrey’s Back, the Quebecois dramedy about a coma victim’s return to life that won the Grand Prix at this year’s Canneseries festival.

Germany’s Beta Film, which is handling international sales on the show, closed deals with Canal+ and Rai, with future deals in the works. Beta launched Audrey’s Back at the MIPTV market earlier this year.

Florence Longpré, who co-wrote the 10-part series, stars as the titular Audrey, a coma patient, put into hospital following an accident on prom night, who suddenly wakes up after a decade and a half and slowly returns to life, learning to talk, to walk and to remember the person she was before. Co-creator Guillaume Lambert calls Audrey’s Back a typical coming-of-age story “just 15 years too late.”

Denis Bouchard, Josée Deschênes,...

HBO Max To Build ‘The Bridge’ In Hungary

HBO Max’s Hungarian arm will run a local version of Banijay survival format The Bridge. The format tasks bringing contestants together to build a 250-metre-long bridge to an island for the chance to win a large cash prize, and this latest deal marks its sixth international adaptation. Presented by Csaba Magyarósi, The Bridge Hungary is produced locally by Free Monkeys Production, based on the original Spanish format. Production took place neat Lake Belis in Romania, near the Hungarian border. Deadline understands it was given the greenlight before HBO Max stopped commissioning in the Cee region. Most production staff in Europe have now been let go, as Deadline revealed last month.

eOne Bolsters Canadian Non-Scripted

eOne has bolstered its non-scripted offering in Canada by signing a VP Development and promoting Scott Boyd to the same level. Christine Diakos joins in the newly-created...

Ticking multiple boxes, and a competition frontrunner, “Paradys” walked off on Tuesday night with the Series Mania Forum Best Project Award, the biggest industry plaudit at one of Europe’s largest TV festivals.

A novel crime drama “Paradys” is produced by South Africa’s Quizzical Pictures and Keshet International, which also handles international distribution. The project was pitched at Series Mania by Quizzical producer Nimrod Geva and creator-writer Darrel Bristow-Bovey.

Carrying a €50,000 cash prize, the award marks a triumph for Keshet International’s ever more expansive production reach, and for Johannesburg-based Quizzical Pictures, part of South Africa’s burgeoning premium series production scene and a Rose D’Or-winning production company for “Hopeville.”

The series is also the first from South Africa selected for the Forum’s Co-Pro Pitching Sessions, its industry centrepiece.

Also created by Anton Visser and executive produced by Avi Nir for Keshet International, “Paradys” turns on two...

It may only be six months since 2021’s pandemic-delayed edition of Series Mania took place, but the annual Lille, France-based drama festival returns once again but this time in its traditional slot of March 18-25.

It’s been “challenging” for the Series Mania team to pull together 2022’s program so soon after last year’s event, says general director Laurence Herszberg.

However, it hasn’t been hard to attract projects to the festival. In a reflection of both Series Mania’s growing stature and the buoyant state of the scripted TV market, the event had 331 submissions from 46 different countries to the competition program. She says Series Mania, which was created in Paris in 2010 and moved to Lille in 2018, is very different from a giant TV sales market, which she reckons the industry is shifting away from. Rather it’s a place where scriptwriters, producers and platforms can build relationships and make connections,...

Featuring in this year’s eight iteration of the Berlinale Co-Production Market’s Co-Pro Series, Italian drama “Belcanto” will hope to follow a trail blazed by former participating European standouts such as “Babylon Berlin,” “Freud,” “Furia,” and last year’s Series Mania winner “Blackport.”

Co-created by the trio of Mariano Di Nardo, Antonio Manca and Federico Fava and produced by leading Italian distribution-production house Lucky Red, the series project is set in 1798, as 14-year-old Carolina, her 17-year-old sister Antonia and their mother Maria seek refuge in the city of Milan after stabbing their violent father to death.

The elder sister dreams of becoming a renowned singer, much as her mother once hoped for when she was the girl’s age. However, an unhappy and often violent marriage waylaid young Maria, who is now willing to go the extreme lengths to ensure that her daughter is afforded every opportunity withheld from herself.

Now in its eighth year, the Berlinale Series Market’s pitching event, Co-Pro Series, wrapped today after two hours of pitches from 10 of Europe’s most exciting independent TV projects. Match Factory Production’s “The Report” was the day’s big winner, scooping the Series Mania Award, meaning the production’s team will be invited to pitch again at next month’s Lille-based get-together.

“The Report” will look to emulate the successes of former participating Co-Pro Series standouts such as “Babylon Berlin,” “Freud,” “Furia,” and perhaps most especially Icelandic period drama “Blackport,” a former Series Mania Award-winner that last year took the French festival’s top prize when it returned as a finished series.

A major move from Germany’s Match Factory Productions, “The Report” marks one of the legendary film company’s first forays into series production.

Based on true events, the series will follow a U.N. commission...

One of the highlights of the Berlinale Series Market is the pitch event Co-Pro Series, which looks to match projects with suitable co-producers and financiers.

Ten international series projects from Europe, Canada and Latin America have been selected to pitch at this year’s Co-Pro Series, where they will also have the opportunity of meeting one-on-one with potential partners.

Taking place over two days (Feb. 15-16), and held online once again due to the pandemic, Co-Pro Series has a track record of showcasing drama projects that have not only gone on to be produced, but that have also achieved success.

International hit “Babylon Berlin,” Austrian-German crime series “Freud,” Norwegian-German domestic terrorism drama “Furia,” Icelandic thriller “Blackport” and 1920s-set German drama “Eldorado KaDeWe” have all participated in previous Co-Pro Series pitches. In total, 19 projects have been made since the event launched in 2015.

Co-Pro Series is curated and organized by the Berlinale Co-Production Market,...

Danish debut feature helmer-writer Tea Lindeburg’s period drama “As In Heaven,” that portrays a fateful summer day and night in 19th century farming society, came away the biggest winner at the 44th Göteborg Film Festival, scoring on Saturday the best Nordic film kudo, this year worth approx. $44,000.

Meanwhile, Seidi Haarla of Finland’s Oscar-shortlisted drama, “Compartment No. 6” took the best acting prize. The film, helmed by Juho Kuosmanen, also nabbed the Fipresci critics nod.

Norway-born Dp Sturla Brandth Grøvlen claimed the Sven Nykvist Cinematography Award for his work on the Norwegian film “The Innocents,” directed by Eskil Vogt. The perfectly executed thriller about rival playmates with paranormal abilities also took the audience award for best Nordic film.

Danish helmer Simon Lereng Wilmont captured the best Nordic documentary title and a purse of approx. $27,000 for “A House Made Of Splinters,” a masterful portrayal of the children and daily life at an orphanage in Eastern Ukraine.

Icelandic smash hit drama series “Blackport” won on Wednesday the 2022 Nordisk Film & TV Prize, Scandinavia’s top plaudit for drama series writing.

The award was announced on site at the end of an intense first day of conference panels at the Göteborg Festival’s TV Drama Vision, with two of the series’ three writers, Gísli Örn Garðarsson and Mikael Torfason on stage to collect the Nordic TV Drama Screenplay Award, carrying a €20,000 cash prize. They were accompanied by producer Nina Dögg Filippusdóttir. The prize also went to fellow screenwriter Björn Hlynur Haraldsson.

Clinching the Nftf Prize, “Blackport” has scored a remarkable triple, winning the Series Mania Award at the Berlinale Series Market’s 2018 Co-Pro Series competition after an inspired on-stage pitch by Garðarsson and going on to take the top prize at Series Mania last September.

“Blackport” fought off stiff competition from Oscar-nominated Danish director Lone Sherfig’s “The Shift,...

Already celebrating the success of a top win at Series Mania, as well as 80% national audience approval, RÚV’s Icelandic series “Blackport” has now been nominated for 2022’s 6th Nordisk Film and TV Fond Prize at Göteborg. The prize will be presented during the film festival’s industry conference TV Drama Vision on Feb. 2, and serves to reward exemplary writing in Nordic drama series.

“Blackport,” which follows Iceland’s 1980s fishing quota power struggle, is tightly paced for action, and the three nominated writers pull no punches, leaving only their characters’ arms to the cutting room floor. Two “Blackport’s” writers – Gísli Örn Gardarsson and Björn Hlynur Haraldsson – direct and star in the series. Writer Mikael Torfason is also nominated for the prize.

Variety spoke with all three of the nominated writers ahead of the Göteborg Film Festival.

How well known is the story of “Blackport” among Icelanders? How much...

The Göteborg Film Festival’s annual TV industry event, TV Drama Vision, has unveiled its program, which focuses on sustainability and healthy working conditions at a time of hyper-competition in the drama space.

TV Drama Vision is set to unspool both in-person and online over Feb. 2-3.

As opening keynote, Johanna Koljonen, author of the anticipated Nostradamus Report, will kickstart the event’s conference strand, which is also due to new paths for creative producers, public funding at a crossroads, green filmmaking, diversity, changing business models and storytelling.

“The program, designed as always in close collaboration with the industry, will reveal how the streaming disruption, accelerated by the pandemic, is affecting us all. It’s important for all partners to find common grounds and reflect on long-term plans to create a sustainable industry,” says Göteborg head of industry Cia Edström, who will be hosting the event with moderators Johanna Nunnu Karppinen,...

Showrun by Oscar-nominated Danish director Lone Sherfig, “The Shift” will battle it out with Series Mania top winner “Blackport” and Canneseries winner “Countrymen” for 2022’s 6th Nordisk Film & TV Fond Prize.

Also in contention are Finnish crime drama “Transport” and psychological thriller “Vi y Villa,” an early show from Sweden’s Discovery Plus.

All five titles, however diverse, underscore the strong social issue drive of much upscale Nordic and indeed European drama, affording a snapshot of larger tensions coursing society at large.

Winners of the Nordic TV Drama Screenplay Award, which goes to a show’s main writer, will receive a €20,000 cash prize, announced during the Göteborg Film Festival’s TV Drama Vision, a highlight of the festival, on Feb. 2.

“Good scripts form the basis of our strong Nordic drama series,. Writing talents should be cherished every day and celebrated through script honours and awards,” commented Liselott Forsman, CEO of...