A Person Of Interest_Michael Kinirons copy

Source: Beta Film

Michael Kinirons

New series from Michael Kinirons, Mika Kaurismäki and Ofir Raul Graizer are among the ten projects selected for the third edition of Series Mania’s Seriesmakers initiative designed for feature directors moving into series.

The director-producer or director-writer teams selected are closely mentored by experienced and successful drama series creatives while working on their series and developing a full pitch deck.

They are eligible for a €50,000 Beta & Kirch Foundation award in collaboration with HFF Munich with the prize-winning team announced on March 26 during Series Mania Forum (March 25-27). The winning team will have a chance to work with Beta’s content and co-production division to develop a pilot script and a full package.

The Sparrow director Kinirons has teamed up with writer Fergal Rock for Irish crime thriller A Person Of Interest, about a retired detective who links the case of a murdered woman to an unsolved triple homicide.

Gracious Night and The Girl King filmmaker Kaurismäki brings Finnish comedy drama Le Bouton d’Or with co-writers Anastasia Pashkevich and Anna Andersson, about an unsuccessful food influencer from the countryside who enrolls in a posh culinary school in France where she meets the mother she thought she was dead.

Israeli-born The Cakemaker director Graizer heads to Seriesmakers with UK fantasy drama The Wonderful Golem produced by David C Barrot, about a young British runaway in Prague who awakens an ancient creature with immense power who protects the city against a rise of tyranny.

Brazil is represented with two projects: Carolina Jabor’s heist drama Unequal, about a young con artist seeking revenge on the millionaire who ruined her life, and Aly Muritiba’s Cow’s Tongue, about a woman returning to her lawless Amazonian hometown to uncover the truth about her brother’s murder.

Blood Cells director Joseph Bull brings UK biopic Pigs’ Disco, about a British paratrooper drawn to Belfast’s burgeoning rave scene in the early 1990s, while Simon Casal has Spanish political thriller The Interregnum, which is set in 2031 as the EU faces a referendum to replace human judges with AI.

Danish director Jens Dahl (Breeder) has humourous crime drama Falke Motors, about a young YouTuber desperate to outrun her family’s tarnished reputation who achieves online fame, while Icelandic director Gisli Orn Gardarsson heads to Lille with comedy drama Stick‘em Up, inspired by real events about a fishing company owner in Reykjavik during the 1990s neoliberal wave.

Rounding out the selection is dark comic fantasy Death Becomes Him from Nigerian filmmaker Joseph A. Adesunlove, about a man killed by a car then resurrected by Christ who takes on new powers.

This year’s Seriesmakers mentors include German producer Janine Jackowski, Israeli writer and script doctor Ronit Weiss-Berkowitz, international development producer Isabelle Lindberg Pechou and Brazilian producer, director, and showrunner Felipe Braga.

Seriesmakers is run by Series Mania’s founder and general director Laurence Herszberg and Beta’s head of content and co-production Ferdinand Dohna. Filmmakers Kevin Macdonald, Barbera Albert and Erik Matti won last year’s key prizes at the event.

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