19/09/2022 - Representatives of national broadcasters will convene at the industry sidebar of the country's only festival of its sort to discuss the current state of affairs in episodic production

The only Czech festival for online and television series, Serial Killer, the International Festival of Television and Web Series, is bracing for its 5^th edition with the latest crop of small-screen offerings hailing mostly from European countries. The event will screen a medley of genres across the main competition and international panorama sections. These will include the Ukrainian series Picnic by Iryna Gromozda, which tracks the half-life of an ordinary family after the central husband-and-wife pair's family system implodes during a picnic with their friends; the Serbian mystery horror-drama Block 27 by Momir Milošević, unfolding in a housing estate in New Belgrade; the Estonian family drama with crime plotting Who Shot Otto Müller? by René Vilbre; the award-winning Croatian series The Last Socialist Artefact [+see also:
series review
series profile] by Dalibor Matanic; and Spider’s Web by Łukasz Jaworski (Poland).

In addition to Tim Mielants' series The Responder, starring Martin Freeman as a burnt-out Liverpool cop, Richard Laxton's tragicomedy The Thief, His Wife and The Canoe, starring Eddie Marsan and Monica Dolan, Funeral for a Dog by David Dietl, The Lesson by Eitan Zur, Blackport [+see also:
interview: Olivier Wotling
series profile] by Gísli Örn Garðarsson and Björn Hlynur Haraldsson, and Helsinki Syndrome by Juuso Syrjä, the festival showcase will include a commented overview of the current web series landscape. Joel Bassaget, partner researcher at the University of Wollongong and head of the Web Series World Cup, will discuss the latest trends, evolutions and perspectives of the web series phenomenon and its situation in 2022.

This year's edition features two thematic sidebars. Women's Perspective flips gender and genre conventions not only with the French dystopian comedy A Very Ordinary World by Ovidie, following a budding porn actor’s bid at a career in the adult entertainment industry. Mister 8 by Teemu Nikki and Cardo by Claudia Costafreda and Lluís Sellarès also form part of the Women's Perspective strand. Another special section is dedicated to a country in focus, which this year will be Sweden, “the cradle of Scandi noir”, with series such as the middle-class satire Suburbia by Henrik Schyffert, the psychological thriller The Dark Heart by Gustav Möller, the thriller with social-drama elements Caliphate [+see also:
interview: Gizem Erdogan
series profile] by Goran Kapetanovic, the feminist gangster series Dough by Levan Akin, The Congregation by Goran Kapetanovic and Real Humans by Harald Hamrell.

Serial Killer will also present the latest domestic offerings, including David Ondříček's period biopic miniseries The King of Šumava: The Phantom of the Dark Land, which is also competing in the main competition, about people smuggler Josef Hasil on the Czechoslovak-German border after the onset of communism, the latest comedy Good Morning, Brno! by Jan Prušinovský, who is behind the most popular domestic comedy series Most!, set among the cast and crew of a morning show, and Czech Television's newest addition to its growing roster of webseries, Five Years by Damián Vondrášek, about a rape and the night that the victim and perpetrator remember differently.

The festival is also building an industry footing in the Central and Eastern European territory and will host its traditional three-day-long industry programme TV Days for television professionals. The industry sidebar includes several panels that will be introducing upcoming series from Spain, France, Estonia, Sweden, Flanders, Belgium, Finland and the Czech Republic while representatives from Netflix will discuss development and production in the CEE region.

Furthermore, the industry programme will host the Kyiv Media Week, presenting the success stories of television production made during the war and co-production projects in the early stages of development, and a panel discussion about the common ground for cooperation between CEE countries and Ukraine. Ellie Haworth from BBC Media Action will talk about cooperation with partners in Eastern Europe and their work to uphold freedom of speech and engage audiences with truthful and trusted content, while Netflix's director of local language series for CEE, Anna Nagler, accompanied by her colleagues Tomasz Dabrowski, responsible for the EMEA production policy, and Anton Romalijskij, manager of licensing and co-pros, will speak about the streamer's work in the region. Netflix representatives are also holding a private workshop for selected local creators.

The 5^th edition of Serial Killer runs from 20-25 September in Brno. The full programme is available here.