Berlinale Series Market: the Cutting-Edge of Contemporary TV

Instagram post on Tuesday, which featured a photo of her and Robbie. It’s been three years since Robbie has seen Kelly, or, at least a “fake” one.

Margot Robbie starred in "Bombshell," she had a chance encounter with one of the real life subjects of the film: Megyn Kelly."Bombshell encounter in Deer Valley Utah," Megyn captioned an Instagram photo of the women on Tuesday, March 7. "She was gracious & friendly."A post shared by Megyn Kelly (@megynkelly)In the snap, the women wear dark tops, smiles and seem to be genuinely cordial.The former "Megyn Kelly Today" host added, "Kind of weird for both of us since she spent months with the 'fake me' for a movie.

Margot Robbie just had a “bombshell encounter” with Megyn Kelly.

Frank Doelger’s eco-thriller drama The Swarm has made a splash on German TV.

Malina Saval Associate Editor, Features With “Fleishman is in Trouble,” Taffy Brodesser-Akner has sparked a wave of nostalgia for viewers who, like the FX limited series’ three main characters, Toby, Libby and Seth, met during a study abroad program in Israel. Whether it was Hebrew U. in Jerusalem or Tel Aviv U.—or Bar Ilan U., where Brodesser-Akner spent her junior year of college— the TV adaption of the best-selling novel is not only an excavation of divorce and parenthood in the modern age, but a vessel through which fans of the show can relive one of the most impressionable periods of their early twenties, that period during which they left America, nurtured their Jewish identity in a foreign country and forged relationships that stretched into their adulthoods. 

EXCLUSIVE: MRC has made a deal to develop Pornsak Pichetshote’s Eisner Award-winning graphic novel bestseller The Good Asian into a series. James Wan, Michael Clear and Rob Hackett are producing for Atomic Monster. Will Rowbotham and Luke Maxwell are producing for 3 Arts. 

When Laurence Herszberg first launched Series Mania back in 2010 in Paris, the former Forum des Images director was keen to apply her deep knowledge of film and the film festival model to the television sector. At the time, says the French exec, no one was doing any kind of TV festival “solely dedicated to series.”  

Leo Barraclough International Features Editor Jan Naszewski’s Warsaw-based sales outlet New Europe Film Sales has sold North American distribution rights for its Berlinale-selected drama “Delegation” to Greenwich Entertainment. “Delegation” is a story of three Israeli high school friends who take part in a class trip visiting Holocaust sites in Poland – their last time together before going to the army. During the trip, shy boy Frisch, aspiring artist Nitzan and class heartthrob Ido deal with issues of love, friendship and politics against the backdrop of concentration camps and memorial sites. The journey will change them forever. The deal for the film, which had its premiere in the Generation 14Plus competition, was negotiated by Naszewski and Greenwich co-president Edward Arentz.

The restructures, layoffs, cancelations and a maybe-strike currently impacting the U.S. TV industry rippled through the halls of the Berlinale Series Market this week as senior execs forecasted an international future.

Berlinale Series and one of Disney+’s early big plays in Southern Europe, U.K.-Italian mafia series “The Good Mothers” walked off on Wednesday night with the Berlin Festival’s inaugural Berlinale Series Award.  A large virtue of the series is to come in at the mafia from a novel angle: a real story of women who dare to defy the Italian mob.  The title forms part of the first European slate by new Disney+ international streaming service Star. It tells how bosses at the the Calabrian mob were targeted by a female prosecutor – thanks to the collaboration of three women inside the ‘Ndrangheta organized crime clan. 

Naman Ramachandran Acclaimed actor Vijay Varma is one of the leads in “Dahaad” (“Roar”), the first Indian series to compete in the Berlinale Series Competition. Produced by Excel Entertainment and Tiger Baby and directed by Reema Kagti (Amazon Prime Video series “Made in Heaven”) and Ruchika Oberoi (Venice winner “Island City”), the other leads are Sonakshi Sinha, Gulshan Devaiah and Sohum Shah. “‘Dahaad’ is about the investigation of a series of crimes conducted by a small town, rookie police officer at a small police station in Rajasthan [western India] – there are these disappearing girls and somehow the young police officer finds a certain similarity between these these disappearances,” Varma told Variety. “It’s a slow burn, investigative drama and it’s also very atmospheric and moody and noir-ish.”

The Good Mothers, Disney+’s hard-hitting mafia drama series, has won the first ever Berlinale Series Award.

Christopher Vourlias The crime noir genre gets a distinctly South African twist in the new series “Donkerbos,” which premiered its first episodes this week as part of the Berlinale Series Market Selects lineup at the European Film Market. The show begins when the bodies of six children are found in the forests of a provincial backwater town, and a local detective (Erica Wessels) is called in to investigate the shocking crimes. But as the series unfolds, she’s forced to wrestle with her dark past, her family and a distrustful community to catch the killer before another child is taken. Written and directed by Nico Scheepers, “Donkerbos” is produced by Nagvlug Films and sold globally by MultiChoice, which bowed the show last year on its SVOD platform Showmax.

The White Lotus is almost certainly checking into an Asian hotel for its third season — and it’s been revealed Netflix’s Dahmer star Evan Peters nearly starred in the second run.

EXCLUSIVE: Members of the first ever Berlinale Series Award jury have predicted that TV awards could soon rival film at the world’s major festivals.

Christopher Vourlias Firefly Productions is prepping a new high-end drama that the Belgrade-based outfit is billing as Serbia’s first ever superhero series. “Generation Tesla” is based on the famed Serbian American inventor Nikola Tesla, best known for his pioneering work on electricity. In the series Tesla creates an electric frequency at the time of his death that opens a portal to a new dimension, where many of his unfinished projects and ideas are hidden. As the keeper of a vast trove of secrets and knowledge, Tesla must confront the greatest enemy ever known to man, who is looking to steal the secret of this mysterious frequency to rule the world. To fight him, Tesla assembles a team of superheroes, whom he contacts through a video game-obsessed teenager, in order to save the planet.

Netflix’s The Tinder Swindler director Felicity Morris has said the documentary market is going to contract and warned filmmakers against “chasing the next viral story that everyone is talking about.”

Emiliano De Pablos Banijay’s Endemol Shine Israel and Munich-based producer Neuesuper (“8 Days”) have inked German adaptation rights to Israeli hit comedy series “Nevsu,” to air on public broadcaster ZDF.  Israel’s “Nevsu” won the International Emmy Award for best comedy series in 2018. Its German adaptation, “I Don’t Work Here,” sees three generations from two worlds come together to form one family. Revolving around Laura and Dawit, a young multi-racial couple, and their daughter, the pair are battling living with her parents and facing huge scrutiny from her mother-in-law. 

Marta Balaga Crime shows look for a new angle, argued Berlinale Series participants on Monday.  There is no shortage of new offerings, from Berlinale Market Selects’ “Two Sides of the Abyss,” Serbia’s “The Fall” or South Africa’s “Donkerbos,” created by Nico Scheepers, to China’s melancholic, decades-spanning “Why Try to Change Me Now,” with Golden Bear winner Yinan Diao attached as executive producer. But while there is still an appetite for traditional detective stories, producers and broadcasters are venturing out of the “damaged, middle-aged white detective slot on a Sunday night,” suggested All3Media International’s Rachel Glaister. They are also thinking about their younger audience.

Ed Meza @edmezavar “Snow,” an Austrian-German co-production and one of 16 titles presented in the Berlinale Series Market Selects showcase, weaves the timely issue of climate change and local folklore into a suspenseful mystery drama set in the picturesque Austrian Alps. Brigitte Hobmeier stars as Lucia, a physician who with her husband and children moves to the village, where she is replacing the local doctor, who is retiring. Things take a troubling turn when her daughter is visited by a strange woman at night. The series presentation at the EFM event brings the title back to Berlin, where it came together in 2020 at the Berlinale Co-Production Market’s Co-Pro Series event.