Series projects by filmmakers Kevin Macdonald, Barbera Albert and Erik Matti have won key prizes at the second edition of Seriesmakers, Series Mania’s development lab for film directors moving into series.
Macdonald and producer Femke Wolting won one of two Beta Development Awards worth €50,000 for their series project George Blake which tells the story of the prolific British double agent.
Macdonald has won the Oscar best documentary feature prize for One Day In September, while The Last King of Scotland won an Oscar for lead actor for Forest Whitaker. He was unable to collect the prize which was picked up by Wolting. Speaking to Screen after the awards, Femke said the project was at an early stage and that no broadcasters or platforms are yet attached.
The other €50,000 Beta Development Awards was won by Philippines director Erik Matti and producer Ronald Monteverde for The Squatter, which is billed as an East-meets-West crime story centring on a secretive Filipino maid and a tenacious Ukrainian detective have to unravel the mysteries of a crime. Matti’s On The Job 2: The Missing 8 (2021) played at Venice and won best actor for John Arcilla.
Meanwhile, Sleeping Swans by German director Barbara Albert, writer Ulrike Tony Vahl and producer Martina Haubrich won the Kirch Foundation / HFF Award worth €20,000. Set in Eastern Germany, it sees an expert trying to work out why children are inexplicably falling into a mysterious and deep sleep. Albert’s Nordrand (1999) played in competition at Venice, while Free Radical (2003) premiered at Locarno and Mademoiselle Paradis (2017) premiered at Toronto.
The recipients of this year’s Beta Development Award will work with Beta’s Content Division, led by CCO Koby Gal Raday, to develop the pilot script and a full package.
Ten projects in total were selected for this year’s Seriesmakers. The initiative also featured projects from directors including Kaouther Ben Hania, who directed the Oscar-nominated doc Four Daughters, and Greek director Yorgos Zois.
Seriesmakers sees director-producer or director-writer teams closely mentored by experienced and successful drama series creatives while working on their series and developing a full pitch deck.
Speaking at the awards ceremony for the projects, Albert said she had enjoyed working on a series project as it ”allows you go to deeper into characters because you have more time.”
Matti said he had pivoted to series since the pandemic which had closed cinemas in the Philippines. Although cinemas have opened up again, Matti said: “We haven’t found the traction – even Hollywood films not making money now. So I started in another direction, making series.”
Femke said the “bigger scope” of George Blake’s story lends itself to a series more than a film.
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