The Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival and its summit and trade fair for audiovisual industry professionals, Industry@Tallinn & Baltic Event, have launched a brand-new industry initiative for drama series, dubbed the TV Beats Co-Financing Market.

In detail, the TV Beats Co-Financing Market will be a prestigious showcase for high-quality drama series with international sales and distribution potential. The call is open to projects in development, primarily from the Baltic Sea countries and Scandinavia, but also those who may be interested in working together with the region, with a producer, screenwriter and/or director attached. The people presenting the six to eight selected projects will have the opportunity to organise meetings with financiers, partners and broadcasters. As at the established Baltic Event film co-production market, a selection of prizes will be awarded for the best projects in the co-financing market.

The co-financing market is part of TV Beats, the drama-series strand of the festival and Industry@Tallinn & Baltic Event. It will see the participation of leading broadcasters, VoD platforms, producers, screenwriters and other industry professionals. It promises to be “a place to meet key international players in the Baltics, Central and Eastern Europe, and the Nordics”.

Moreover, the event has also announced the call for Script Pool Tallinn, an international film competition for projects with high distribution value in the final stage of development. Script Pool Tallinn is part of the new Future to Film talent programme, which will showcase up to six projects and the team behind them (scriptwriter, director and producer). The projects and their teams will be partnered with international industry decision-makers, including sales agents, financiers and co-producers. The competition features a preparatory phase that takes place both online and physically, which includes general workshops, one-to-one sessions with mentors and a public pitch during the participants’ stay in the Estonian capital.

In the festival’s official press release, TV Beats Co-Financing Market & Script Pool project competition manager Triin Tramberg shared her take on the new co-financing market: “Through TV Beats, we’ve been part of the local series industry for several years now, watching it grow into a really significant business in the Baltics. We feel it’s exactly the right time to launch a regional drama-series market and help connect talent to the backers, funders, broadcasters and more that they need to turn their projects into international hits.”

The deadline for submitting projects to the TV Beats Co-Financing Market and Script Pool Tallinn is 18 August 2021. You can find detailed guidelines here.