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10 years after taking the helm of Yle drama’s department and contributing significantly to Finnish drama’s hike in quality and international reach, Jarmo Lampela continues to broaden his network of international partners. Italy and Canada are the latest countries to be conquered by the visionary Finn who is attending Lille’s Series Mania confab with several projects.

“Torna a Surriento” will be Yle’s first co-production with Italian pubcaster Rai. The four-part romantic drama, in pre-production, is co-written by Guglielmo Finazzer, Dario Carraturo, Jens Martin Mienna and Aleksi Puranen. The story turns on a Neapolitan hustler who inherits a remote estate in Finnish Lapland. What he sees as a quick payday turns into a tumultuous two-month stay as he ends up clashing with the local Sámi community and falling for a fierce reindeer herder. Finland’s Whatevergroup is producing with Italy’s Viola Films, Norway’s Rein Films and Iceland’s Glassriver.

German series The Zweiflers (Die Zweiflers) took home the prize for Best Series at the Canneseries Awards last night.

This year, Canneseries took place from 5 to 10 April, in parallel with the final MIPTV event. The Zweiflers – which also won Best Music and the High School Award for Best Series – is a six-part series about a Jewish family in contemporary Germany pondering the inheritance of the family delicatessen. Creator and showrunner David Hadda paid tribute to his Jewish grandparents at the premiere of the show, which will premiere in Germany on Ard’s Mediathek streaming service in the spring.

Norwegian series Dumbsday (Dummedag) won for Best Screenplay. The series is set against the backdrop of a virus that causes people’s intelligence to drop to unsurvivable levels worldwide.

Elsewhere, Aina Clotet took home the Best Performance Award for her role as Mariana in Spanish-Swedish comedy drama This Is Not Sweden. The...

German comedy drama The Zweiflers was named best series at the seventh annual Canneseries festival that ran April 5-10 in Cannes.

The six-part series produced by Turbokultur from creator and showrunner David Hadda about a colourful Jewish family in contemporary Germany also won the prize for best music and the High School Award for Best Series voted upon by local students.

Led by an ensemble cast, the series centres on the inheritance of a family delicatessen as the past and future clash among several generations of Zweiflers.

Hadda told Screen of the win, “It was really always my dream to bring the series to Cannes.

Fockers who? Meet “The Zweiflers” instead: Brand new winners of Canneseries.

Created and showrun by David Hadda, the show picked up multiple awards at the French TV fest on Wednesday, including best series and music. Selected as a Variety Hot Pick earlier this month, “it’s destined to be billed as a Jewish ‘Succession’ set in contemporary Germany, with all the baggage that can bring to the table, Variety wrote.

That being said, its creator had another dysfunctional family on his mind.

“My biggest influence was ‘The Sopranos’ and I always said I wanted to do a Jewish ‘Sopranos’! The idea was to change the narrative from the victims’ perspective in Germany to a Jewish patriarch and Holocaust survivor who had lost everything – and everyone, and then came back to rebuild his life. That was empowering for me,” said Hadda.

Produced by Turbokultur for Ard Degeto Film and Hessischer Rundfunk,...

La segunda temporada de la serie se estrenará en Prime Video este año. © Filmax

“Citas Barcelona”, adaptación del popular formato Cites, ha comenzado el rodaje de su segunda temporada. Una serie que sigue la estela de la primera temporada, donde los personajes se encuentran cara a cara después de conocerse por internet; buscando amor, sexo o simplemente alguien que les aleje de la soledad.

Esta nueva temporada tendrá 6 episodios y estará protagonizada por actores y actrices del calibre de Joan Solé, Bruna Cusí, Anna Castillo, Ricardo Gómez, Elisabet Casanovas, Asia Ortega, Yolanda Ramos, Betsy Túrnez, Mara Jiménez, Arnau Puig, Emma Arquillué, Alfons Nieto, Aina Clotet, Aitor Luna, Jorge Suquet, Adrián Lastra, Natalia Tena, Tomy Aguilera, Margarida Corceiro, Lola Rodríguez, Óscar Casas, Leonor Watling, Asier Etxeandia, Verónica Echegui y Fran Perea.

La dirección de la segunda temporada de “Citas Barcelona” correrá a cargo de Nely Reguera, Gemma Ferraté, Paco Caballero, David Selvas...

“The Catalan industry is healthy in the sense that we’re producing a lot,” says producer-director David Matamoros.

Led by Escac, “Society of the Snow” director J.A. Bayona’s alma mater, its film schools turn out top notch novel directors and technicians.

Produced by Barcelona’s Arcadia Motion Pictures, “Robot Dreams” has just scored an Academy Award nomination for best animated feature, while proving one of Neon’s first U.S. pick-ups announced at Cannes.

In 2022, the last year for which records are available, international shoots generated more investment in Catalonia, €77.8 million ($85.6 million), apart from the Canary Islands (€112.9 million: $120.8 million).

Catalonia’s government is also aiming for larger TV industry overseas impact, while firing up 3Cat, Catalonia’s public broadcaster, as an international player.

From 2023, every year, producers of up to five higher-end Catalan-language series, budgeted at over €4 million ($4.3 million), can receive a grant of €1.5 million ($1.6 million). 3Cat can add...

Toledo, Spain — At this month’s Annecy, France’s Canal+, France Télévisions and even Gulli delighted the business by unveiling new production slates which boasted some of the boldest projects being brought to market at the French festival.

At one and the same time, major European broadcasters, the BBC and France Télévisions again, were talking up their streaming services at Annecy.

These used to be treated as a complement to their linear offering. Now it’s increasingly the other way round.

Annecy, of course, is animation. But could the same market forces be at work in live action TV and in Spain?

More than a hint of a step-by-step revolution at work at Rtve, Spain’s public broadcaster, was sensed at an upbeat showcase on Wednesday.

Moderated by José Pastor, Rtve’s director of film and fiction, the show-case, Rtve Co-Productions on Board, featured three shows, “Allende, the Thousand Days,...

The battle for success on the new drama series scene is the battle for talent, led by screenwriters. Following, portraits of Spanish TV scribes or creators, sometimes writing teams, who’ve made an impact, or look set to do so:

Fran Araujo

2022 was Araujo’s year. He co-wrote Berlin Competition’s “One Night, One Day” and “Rapa,” Movistar+’s biggest 2022 bow. “Offworld,” a collective series he coordinated, was a Variety’s International TV Show of the Year. An iconoclast – “if I do the same thing, I get bored,” he says – who tears up the rule book.

Aina Clotet

Best known for acting, winning at Malaga for “The Wild Ones,” but a driving force as co-creator, director and star behind “This Is Not Sweden” a €1.5 million grant recipient and groundbreaking Spain-Scandinavia-Germany co-pro, turning on a couple who think they’ve found a model lifestyle. But “there are no guarantees,” says Clotet.

This year’s Berlinale Series Market kicks off Monday as Spanish series “The Snow Girl,” a missing girl suspense thriller produced by Spain’s Atípica Films, has attracted huge heat for Netflix, punching 101.7 million hours watched in its first three weeks. Doing so, it ranked as the streamer’s No. 1 non-English show in the world over Jan. 30 – Feb. 5.

In all, Spain has more shows and movies in Netflix’s all time non-English Top 10s than any other country in the world, seven to France’s two, for example.

Spain, it could be argued, has cracked online. But its drama series industry wants to ring more options.

As scripted commissions look to have dropped from second half 2022 in not only the U.S. but also Europe and Latin America, an energetic posse of Spanish producers and stars are rolling into Berlin to present new productions. These look set to explore an...

Projects details emerge at Ventana Sur market in Buenos Aires.

Newly established Barcelona-based producer Funicular has boarded ‘Amazon noir’ The Sugar Girl directed by Javi Velasquez Varela, it emerged in the final days of Ventana Sur in Buenos Aires.

Funicular, run by Marta Baldó, Jan Andreu and actor siblings Marc and Aina Clotet, presented an effervescent line-up at the market which includes Bienvenido Mr. Hollywood to be directed by Mar Coll (Three Days With The Family) and Aina Calleja, which took part in Spanish Screenings on Tour.

The Sugar Girl follows an environmental issues reporter who has moved into an apartment building in Iquitos,...

Creating what looks like one of the undisputed highlights of Ventana Sur’s Spanish Screenings, three of Perú’s foremost filmmakers – Daniel and Diego Vega and Joanna Lombardi –have boarded “Bienvenido Mr. Hollywood,” which promises a complete departure for one of Catalonia’s leading edge cineastes, Mar Coll.

Co-created and directed by Coll (“Three Days With the Family”) and Aina Calleja, an editor on Coll’s first series, “Killing the Father”), “Welcome Mr. Hollywood” is written by Coll, Calleja and Diego Vega, who with brother Daniel broke out with his debut, 2010 Cannes Un Certain Regard Jury Prize winner, “October.” A 2013 Locarno best actor winner for Fernando Bacilio, “El Mudo” consolidated the brothers’ reputation as top young Latin America auteurs.

““Welcome Mr. Hollywood” is lead produced by Barcelona’s Funicular Films and co-produced by Daniel and Diego Vega’s Lima-based Maretazo Cine. Lombardi, a former head of fiction at Telefonica Media Networks Latin America,...

Films presented include Baltasar Kormákur’s Whaleman (At The Ends Of The Earth) and Gerardo Herrero’s Raqqa.

Executives from Wild Bunch, A24, Netflix and Focus Features are among those who will attend the inaugural two-day Creative Investors’ conference taking place at the San Sebastian International Film Festival (Ssiff), organised in collaboration with CAA Media and running from September 19-20.

Participants will include A24 Europe’s head of film and head of TV, respectively, Rose Garnett and Piers Wenger; Netflix’s head of international original film Teresa Moneo; Focus Features’ president of production and acquisitions Kiska Higgs; Mubi’s VP...

Co-organized with CAA Media Finance, a new San Sebastian Festival Creative Investors’ Conference will see many of the good and great of the international film business descend on September’s fest edition to be pitched 10 higher-budget Spanish movies by their producers.

The Conference will run Sept.19-20. In a cosmopolitan lineup, titles pitched include international co-productions such as “Whalemen (At the Ends of the Earth)” from “Everest” director Baltasar Kormákur as well as the latest from “Amama” helmer Asier Altuna and “Raqa,” from Gerardo Herrero, an Academy Award wining producer for “The Secret in Their Eyes.”

The conference’s high-profile international investors, producers, agents and executives take in Mubi’s Bobby Allen, Piers Wenger at A24 Europe, Focus Features’s Kiska Higgs, 30West’s Trevor Groth, Vincent Maraval at Wild Bunch International and Netflix’s Teresa Moneo.

Also confirmed are the Elysian Film Group’s Danny Perkins, Neon CEO Tom Quinn,...

Barcelona-based Nanouk Films and Funicular Films and Spanish pubcaster Tve are partnering to produce “This is Not Sweden,” a dark comedy half hour which marks the first Spanish show to be presented at the Göteborg’s Festival’s TV Drama Vision.

Set in the idyllic Vallvidrera, a suburb in the foothills of the Collserola mountains surrounding Barcelona, the eight-part series explores parenting and other family-related issues by focusing on a young couple ­– Mariana and Samuel – who has just moved there and wants to raise their children in contact with nature.

“This is Not Sweden” is created by actor-director Aina Clotet, a Malaga Fest best actress winner for “Someone’s Daughter” and by producer Sergi Cameron. Clotet will direct along with Coll, who won a best new director Goya for “Three Days with the Family.”

“‘This is Not Sweden’s’ international appeal has always been a key objective for Aina, Marta and myself.

Anna Soler-Pont has run the Pontas Literary Agency in Barcelona since 1992. She was one of the early adopters of an attempt that is still being made to establish a market for books which become films. She has brokered deals with her writers to make movie deals many times but, through Pontas Films (a much newer company), this is the first time she has decided to produce a film based on a script she wrote herself (adapting a novel she co-wrote with Asha Miró), directed by Maria Ripoll, starring Nandita Das and Aina Clotet. Imagina International Sales is in charge of international sales.

Before meeting her in Berlin, she wrote us:

Here´s the official note: we have finished the shooting of Traces of Sandalwood between Mumbai and Barcelona!!! Our first fiction feature film produced by Pontas Films!! At last! By the way, the title is now a working title… we´ve decided to change it!

It´s been very hard, difficult, challenging… but also very interesting and I´ve learned so much! Today we have started the complex journey through post-production. And our wish is to be able to have the final cut totally edited by mid-April. Our dream would be to premiere September this year, in Toronto and or/be at the official selection in San Sebastian. We´ll see!

Here you can find the entire collection of making of video clips (one minute each): http://vimeo.com/user11463217/videos

Hug from Barcelona,

Anna

When we met in Berlin she showed us the new promotion and discussed her strategy for entering the world market. It has been an honor that she has kept up with us over the last four years that it has been since she has been working on this film. We are looking forward now to following its arc from debut to accomplishing international sales.

The 2013 Sitges International Fantastic Film Fest wrapped up this weekend with an awards ceremony, and the winners list is overflowing with horror films you should be keeping on your radar.

From the Press Release:

Borgman, by Alex van Warmerdam, was the winning film at the 46th Sitges International Fantastic Film Festival of Catalonia, which awarded prizes to many diverse productions. The award for best direction went to Navot Papushado and Aharon Keshales for the film Big Bad Wolves and for best cinematography to Larry Smith for Only God Forgives. The award for best actress went to Juno Temple for Magic Magic and for best actor to Andy Lau for Blind Detective. The award for best screenplay went to James Ward Byrkit for Coherence and for distinguished special effects to Afflicted, by Cliff Prowse and Derek Lee.

In addition, Only Lovers Left Alive by Jim Jarmusch received the special jury award,...

A lesbian police officer and her forensics expert girlfriend sneaking a quickie at work. A lesbian doctor and a female nurse house-hunting together after finally reuniting. A young woman trying to figure out how to tell her boyfriend of eight years that she's fallen in love with a woman.

No, this isn't the lineup of an American gay TV channel — this is what you'll see on some of the most popular national primetime series in Spain.

While the American primetime television landscape is virtually barren when it comes to lesbian and bisexual visibility — with very few lesbian/bi characters on broadcast TV, and only slightly more on cable or premium channels — lesbian/bi characters are flourishing on mainstream Spanish TV shows.

Spanish TV wasn't always this inclusive. Only 10 years ago, Lgbt characters were primarily limited to smaller shows on regional channels, with a few exceptions such as the lesbian couple...