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SARAJEVO 2017 Industry / television

CineLink Drama: Training the crosshairs on the future of original Balkan series

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- Six ambitious TV projects were presented during an open pitching session, offering a glimpse of what we can expect to see coming out of the region in the near future

CineLink Drama: Training the crosshairs on the future of original Balkan series
The pitching session for All Panthers Are Pink, written by Dimitrije Vojnov, and produced by Miroslav Mogorović and Titus Kreyenberg

Following last year’s impressive start, CineLink Drama launched its second edition during the Sarajevo Film Festival’s CineLink Industry Days this year. At its core, the Drama section featured a pitching session for six upcoming TV projects from the region, but the proceedings were certainly not limited to just this, as important master classes and panel discussions were also in the spotlight, and along with the close partnership with MIDPOINT TV Launch, which hosted its last workshop in Sarajevo, the event provided a showcase of the full spectrum of today’s TV market.

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The pitching session was preceded by a detailed presentation of the Göteborg Film Festival’s Nordic TV Drama Market by Andrea Reuter, who gave an overview of one of the biggest TV markets in Europe and specifically how it has evolved over the past few years. Some of the most successful Nordic TV series had a chance to participate in the market, which gave them some much-needed exposure to both local and international professionals.

Afterwards, the audience comprising film and TV professionals, along with the CineLink Drama jury made up of ZDF/ARTE commissioning editor Meinolf Zurhorst, Palladium Fiction head of development Tatjana Andersson and SKY Italy story editor Giacomo Durzi, watched the pitching session for the new TV projects.

The Film Center Serbia CineLink Drama Award, worth €10,000, went to All Panthers Are Pink, written by Dimitrije Vojnov and produced by Miroslav Mogorović and Titus Kreyenberg, while a Special Mention was awarded to Glycerin, created by Miloš Pušić and Ivan Knežević (click here for more details on the CineLink Awards).

The rest of the TV projects presented were as follows:

Burn Baby Burn (Serbia), a psychological thriller with fantasy elements, co-written by Marijana Verhoef and Ognjen Sviličić (Armin [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
These Are the Rules [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
), directed by Dejan Zečević and produced by Nikolina Vučetić Zečević. The series follows a German lawyer who wants to find his missing fiancée in a village in Eastern Serbia. The story aims to explore the undiscovered face of the true, deepest Balkans and should address the unconventional aspects of a culture that is so distant from a “westernised” background. It portrays a cultural clash in the open space of the Balkan fields.

Danube (Croatia), a drama co-written by Sandra Antolić and Jasmina Kallay and produced by Jasmina Kallay, in which the troubled captain of a cargo vessel on the Danube has to cope with the challenges of his job as he deals with the Black Sea Mafia, while he is also looking for his brother, who went missing during the siege of Vukovar in 1991.

The Last Socialist Artefact (Croatia/Serbia), an adaptation of Robert Perišić’s novel No Signal Area, created and produced by Ankica Jurić Tilić, written by Milan F Živković and Hana Jušić (Quit Staring At My Plate [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Hana Jušić
film profile
]
), directed by Dalibor Matanić (The High Sun [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Dalibor Matanic
interview: Tihana Lazovic
film profile
]
) and co-produced by Milan Stojanović. The story is about two big-city guys who come to a small, remote town in the Balkans promising to bring back the good old times of socialist “prosperity”. But there is likely to be a catch to their proposal.

Return to Sorrento (Macedonia), a satirical musical jukebox, created, written and directed by Ann Tsitskishvili and produced by Labina Mitevska. This comical Sturm und Drang musical set in Italy blends romantic, humoristic and magical elements with reality, borrowing from the characters of Goldoni and Molière and adding in a hint of Baz Luhrmann’s Moulin Rouge.

The open pitching session was followed by one-on-one meetings in which the participants could talk to professionals from the TV industry, and representatives of VoD and SVoD distribution companies.

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