This year’s two-day Industry @ Tallinn & Baltic Event’s TV drama showcase TV Beats Forum which closed last night, was about celebrating togetherness and how to survive the changes in the industry. The top awards reflected Europe’s capacity to forefront heart-warming and entertaining stories from its past, as well as suspenseful myths, while rejigging co-production partnerships.
Three of the winning shows among seven contenders from the TV Beats Co-financing Market had garnered industry attention at earlier TV showcases.
“Wool,” winner of the coveted Council of Europe €50,000 ($58,600) Series Co-Production Development Award, was first pitched at this year’s Series Mania. Last night, the international jury consisting of Cia Edström (Göteborg TV Drama Vision) Marc Lorber (The Art of Coproduction), and Clementine Trolong-Baily (Series Co-Productions Pilot Program) praised “Wool” as a “true story that knits together fashion with female empowerment in a rural-meets-international setting, making it as relevant today as it was then, backed with a killer soundtrack that does the same.”
Created by producer Milena Dzambasovic for her Belgrade-based Film Road Production, the six-part series, set in 1960s Yugoslavia, centres on a visionary woman who overturned a patriarchal society by uniting village housewives into a knitting collective. Their traditional crafts become a global fashion sensation, transforming rural lives and defying norms.
Dzambasovic co-wrote the screenplay with Mladen Maticevic, Stephie Theodora and seasoned writer Birkir Blaer Ingolfsson (“Reykjavik Fusion”). Ingolfsson’s partner at Act4 Hörður Rúnarsson is co-producing, together with high-powered Berlin-based Danna Stern of In Transit Productions, former founder of Tel-Aviv’s Yes Studios. Pre-production is set for next year.
Edström also handed out the TV Drama Vision Select Award to the Spanish mystery drama “Dark Waters” (“Aigües de Foscor”) which bowed recently at Serielizados Mind the Gap co-production session in Barcelona.
“We’ve chosen a supernatural mystery, a story about climate change, a tale that intertwines the mythological world of Iceland and the Ebro Delta of Catalonia,” she said.
Produced by Federation Spain’s Juan Solà and Lastor Media’s Tono Folguera, the eight-part series is co-penned by Amèlia Mora (“Undercover,” “La Unidad”) and Héctor Manteca, with idea creator Maria Rocher of Federation Spain serving as exec producer.
Cia Edstrom, Maria Rocher, “Dark Waters” winner
Credit: Annika Pham
Another buzzy project pitched earlier at Series Mania, the cold war satire “Nuclear Sunset Cruise” (“MS Völkerfreundschaft”), walked off with the TV Beats Co-Production Market Public Favourite Award, after collecting 496 votes from industry delegates gathered on Monday at Tallinn’s Apollo Kino Plaza. Created and directed by Florian Gallenberger, an Oscar-winner for the short film “Quiero”, the German series, produced by Schiwago Film, has received backing from broadcaster ARD Degeto Film.
Elsewhere, the Polish comedy “We Are Still Here,” pitched alongside eight projects part of the Midpoint Series Launch training program, took home the program’s Favourite Award. The show was penned by Aleksandra Hulbój for producer Piotr Śmiechowski.
Taking centre stage at the Kinomaja Bar & Stage in Tallinn’s medieval Old Town last night, TV Beats Forum co-heads Petri Kemppinen and Roosa Toivonen also handed out the Honorary TV Beats Producer Awards to heavyweight co-winners Gudny Hummelvoll from Norway and Jevgeni Supin from Estonia.
In a separate awards ceremony on Monday, the inaugural Serial Bridges Baltic Best Project Award went to the Lithuanian comedy drama “Therapies,” produced by Just a Moment, which also picked the section’s Audience Award.
Written and directed by Birute Kapustinskaite from her own hit play, the drama comedy turns on a cancer-stricken professor who shares her cancer-ward with six loud women. “We believe that the all-female ensemble, offering drama and chaos but finally support and friendship, will be a pleasure to watch”, said jurors Dominika Erhart-Braná (Serial Killer), Erik Pack, (Boat Rocker Studios), and Finnish screenwriter Anna Ruohonen, recipient of last year’s top TV Beats Co-Production Development Award.
Roosa Toivonen and Petri Kemppinen, TV Beats Forum awards
Credit: Karolin Linamae
Baltic TV Push
Commenting on the first Serial Bridges Baltic training workshop in Tallinn, set up to boost series from the Baltics and their ties to the European market, Pierre Ziemniak, director of program at the Series Mania Institute said the six selected writer-producer duos from Estonia, Latvia and Estonia made “remarkable progress during the five-day workshop under the mentorship of Hungarian writer/producer Gabor Krigler, Finnish writer Jemina Jokisalo (“Money Shot”) and support from TV experts Emmanuelle Guilbart (About Premium Content), producers Emmanuel Eckert, and Patrick Nebout. “All six Baltic teams fine-tuned their vision and made their project more appealing for an international audience,” he said.
Ziemniak said the Lithuanian creators of “Therapies” will join all the winners of the Series Mania Institute’s Serial Bridges initiatives in Kazakhstan, Taiwan, Rio de Janeiro at Series Mania’s first Serial Bridges ceremony in 2026.
In a separate new initiative to champion Baltic TV drama, three upcoming premium shows looking for partners were presented by their respective creators: realistic Estonian cop show “Crossing the Line,” Lithuanian drama “Hijacked Life,” about a father and son’s hijacking of a Soviet airplane in search of freedom in 1970, and Latvian thriller drama “The Hostages.”
Kemppinen and Toivonen said TV Beats Forum was attended by nearly 30 key buyers and commissioners including Beta Film, Bavaria Film, About Premium Content, Eccho Rights, Rainmaker, and all key Baltic players including the streamers Elisa, Go3, pubcasters EER in Estonia, LRT in Lithuania and LSM in Latvia. More than 200 closed meetings and over 100 1:1 sessions were facilitated over Nov. 17-18.
“We are here to build bridges between the Baltic region and the rest of the world, and help local producers from those smaller nations, navigate the changes in the shifting and complex global audiovisual industry,” noted Kemppinen and Toivonen, themselves producers.
A first-time attendee at TV Beats Forum, Ziemniak said, “I loved the mid-size of the event-allowing for quality meetings with key decision-makers from the Baltics and beyond. “
For him, Baltic TV Drama and talents are yet to conquer the world. “Baltic feature films have been taken seriously for a long time, but series are in their starting blocks. Only a few series so far have managed to breakthrough,” he said, citing the Jevgeni Supin-produced period drama “Von Fock,” the first Estonian series ever to receive support from both Creative Europe’s Media Program and the Council of Europe’s Pilot Program for Series Co-Productions, and psycho thriller “My Dear Mother” showcased at this year’s Berlinale Series Market Selects program. “We are therefore pleased with Serial Bridges Baltics to accelerate Baltic shows’ global push.”
Also in attendance at TV Beats Forum for the first time, French-Swedish producer Patrick Nebout who has shot several Swedish high-end productions in Lithuania, including Disney+/SVT’s “Whiskey on the Rocks” said: “I’m overwhelmed by the vivacity, the energy, the creativity, the agility of drama producers and creators in the Baltic region. These are tiny markets in comparison to the Nordic countries, and yet, they demonstrate such positivism and entrepreneurship in times of severe shifts within the global industry.
This stands in striking contrast to the atmosphere of gloom and doom that prevails right now in most markets across the Nordics and Continental Europe. We should take an example from such a forward-oriented stance.”
The seasoned producer said he is in talks with an Estonian producer to source scripted formats and perhaps co-develop projects and IPs, aimed at international audiences.
Edith Sepp, CEO at the Estonian Film Institute (EFI) which has a €80,000 ($92,600) budget earmarked towards the development of mini-series and the post-production of TV docu series said “TV Beats Forum supports the goal of strengthening co-production, improving story scale and quality, reaching international audiences, aligning very well with EFI’s strategy of boosting export and visibility of Estonian screen work.”
She said this year’s involvement of the Series Mania Institute and French Institute via Serial Bridges Baltics “signals that the Baltic region is taken seriously; it raises our regional standing, but above all, it proves that we do make interesting series and we have stories to tell.”
The Industry@Tallinn & Baltic Event runs through Nov. 21, Tallinn’s Black Nights Film Festival until Nov. 23.
