This year’s two-day Industry @ Tallinn & Baltic Event’s TV drama showcase TV Beats Forum concluded last night, and it was all about celebrating togetherness and how to survive change in the industry. The top prize reflects Europe’s ability to bring to the fore the heartwarming and entertaining stories and suspenseful myths of the past, while recalibrating co-production partnerships.
Three of the winning shows from the seven nominees in the TV Beats co-financing market had garnered industry attention in previous TV showcases.
Winner of the coveted Council of Europe Series Co-Production Development Award of €50,000 ($58,600), “Wool” debuted at this year’s Series Mania. Last night, the international jury, made up of Shea Edström (Göteborg Television Vision), Mark Lorber (The Art of Co-Creation) and Clementine Trollong-Bailey (Series Co-Creation Pilot Program), praised Wool, saying it was “a true story that marries fashion and female empowerment in rural and cosmopolitan settings, as relevant today as it was then, and backed by a fantastic soundtrack.” It’s the same. ”
Created by producer Milena Zambasovic for Belgrade-based Film Road Productions, the six-part series is set in 1960s Yugoslavia and centers on a visionary woman who unites village housewives into a knitting collective to overthrow a patriarchal society. Their traditional crafts become global fashion sensations, transforming rural life and upending norms.
Djanbasovic co-wrote the screenplay with Mladen Matičević, Steffi Teodora and veteran writer Birkir Brá Ingolfsson (Reykjavik Fusion). Ingolfsson’s partner on Act4, Horzur Runarsson, is co-producing with Berlin-based In Transit Productions powerhouse Danna Stern, former founder of Tel Aviv’s Yes Studio. Pre-production is scheduled for next year.
Edström also presented the TV Drama Vision Select Award to the Spanish mystery drama “Dark Waters” (“Aiguez de Foscole”), which was recently bowed out at the Selierizados Mind the Gap co-production session in Barcelona.
“We chose a paranormal mystery, a story about climate change, a story that intertwines the mythical world of Iceland and the Ebro Delta of Catalonia,” she said.
Produced by Juan Sola of Federation Spain and Tono Folguera of Lastre Media, the eight-part series is co-written by Amelia Mora (Undercover, La Unidad) and Hector Manteca, and executive produced by Idea Creator María Roche of Federation Spain.
Shea Edstrom, Maria Roche, “Dark Waters” Winners
Credit: Annika Pham
Another high-profile project previously proposed on Seriesmania, the Cold War satire “Nuclear Sunset Cruise” (“MS Völkerfreundschaft”), ended Monday with the TV Beats Co-Production Market Public Favorite Award, receiving 496 votes from industry representatives gathered at Tallinn’s Apollo Kino Plaza. It is a German series produced and directed by Oscar winner Florian Gallenberger for the short film “Quierro” and produced by Siwago Film, with support from broadcaster ARD Deget Film.
Elsewhere, Polish comedy “We Are Still Here,” proposed alongside eight projects that are part of the Midpoint Series Launch Training Program, won the program favorite award. The show was written by Aleksandra Hrboj for producer Piotr Śmiechowski.
Standing in the center of Kinomaja Bar & Stage in Tallinn’s medieval Old Town last night, TV Beats Forum co-chairs Petri Kempinen and Rusa Toivonen handed out the honorary TV Beats Producer Award to heavyweight co-winners Gudni Hummelvoll from Norway and Evgeni Supin from Estonia.
At a separate awards ceremony on Monday, Lithuanian comedy-drama Therapies, produced by Just A Moment, won the inaugural Serial Bridges Baltic Best Project Award, as well as the Audience Award in the same category.
Written and directed by Bild Kapustinskaite, who wrote his own hit play, the drama-comedy focuses on a cancer-stricken professor who shares a cancer ward with six boisterous women. “We believe that an all-female ensemble that brings drama and chaos, but ultimately support and friendship, will be a joy to watch,” said jurors Dominika Erhard Branagh (Serial Killer), Eric Pack (Boat Rocker Studios), and Finnish screenwriter Anna Ruohonen, who won the TV Beats co-production and development award last year.
Rosa Toivonen and Petri Kempinen, TV Beats Forum Award
Credit: Carolyn Linamae
baltic tv push
Commenting on the first Serial Bridge Baltic training workshop held in Tallinn, Pierre Ziemniak, program director of the Series Mania Institute, said that the six screenwriter-producer duos from Estonia, Latvia and Estonia made “remarkable progress during the five-day workshop under the guidance of Hungarian writer and producer Gabor Krigler and Finnish writer Gemina Jokisalo.” (‘Money Shot’), with support from TV expert Emmanuel Gilbert (on premium content) and producers Emmanuel Eckert and Patrick Nebou, “all six Baltic teams fine-tuned the vision and made the project more appealing to an international audience,” he said.
Ziemniak said the Lithuanian creators of “Therapies” will join all the winners of the Series Mania Institute’s Serial Bridge Initiative in Kazakhstan, Taiwan and Rio de Janeiro at Series Mania’s first Serial Bridge Awards Ceremony in 2026.
In another new initiative to champion Baltic TV drama, three upcoming premium shows looking for partners have been offered by their respective creators. The realistic Estonian police drama “Crossing the Line,” the Lithuanian drama “Hijacked Life,” about a father and son who hijack a Soviet plane in a bid for freedom in 1970, and the Latvian thriller drama “The Hostages.”
Kempinen and Toivonen said the TV Beats forum was attended by nearly 30 major buyers and commissioners, including Beta Film, Bayern Film, About Premium Content, Echo Lights, Rainmaker and all major players in the Baltics, including streamers Elisa, Go3, Estonian pubcaster EER, Lithuania’s LRT and Latvia’s LSM. More than 200 closed-door meetings and more than 100 one-on-one sessions were facilitated from November 17th to 18th.
“We are here to build bridges between the Baltic region and the rest of the world and help local producers from those small countries cope with the changing and complex global audiovisual industry,” said Kempinen and Toivonen, who are also producers.
Ziemniak, who attended the TV Beats Forum for the first time, said, “I really liked the medium-sized event, which allowed me to have high-quality meetings with key decision-makers from the Baltics and other regions.”
For him, Baltic TV dramas and talents have not yet conquered the world. “Baltic feature films have been taken seriously for a long time, but the series is still at the starting stage. So far only a few series have been able to make a breakthrough,” he said, co-author of Creative Europe’s media program and the Council of Europe’s series. He cited Evgeni Supin’s historical drama “Von Fock,” which was the first Estonian series to receive support from both co-production pilot programs, and the psychological thriller “My Dear Mother,” which was screened at this year’s Berlinale Series Market. Select a program. “We are therefore pleased with the Serial Bridge Baltics, which will accelerate the global promotion of the Baltic Show.”
Also attending the TV Beats Forum for the first time, French-Swedish producer Patrick Neveu, who shot several high-end Swedish productions in Lithuania, including Disney+/SVT’s Whiskey on the Rocks, said: “I am overwhelmed by the vitality, energy, creativity and agility of drama producers and creators in the Baltic region. These are small markets compared to the Nordic countries, but they are still showing such strength.” Positivism and entrepreneurship in times of profound change within global industries.
This is in sharp contrast to the gloomy and doomed atmosphere currently prevailing in Scandinavia and most of continental Europe’s markets. We should also emulate this positive attitude. ”
The experienced producer said it is in talks with an Estonian producer to source a scripted format and possibly co-develop a project or IP aimed at an international audience.
Edith Sepp, CEO of the Estonian Film Institute (EFI), which has a budget of €80,000 ($92,600) allocated for the development of the miniseries and the post-production of the TV documentary series, said: “The TV Beats Forum supports our goals of strengthening co-production, increasing the scale and quality of our stories, and reaching a global audience, and is very much in line with EFI’s strategy to increase the export and visibility of Estonian film production.”
She said that this year’s participation of the Institute of Series Mania and the French Institute through Serial Bridge Baltic States “is a sign that the Baltic region is being taken seriously. It enhances our regional status, but above all it proves that we are making interesting series and that there are stories to tell.”
The Industry@Tallinn & Baltic event runs until November 21st and Tallinn’s Black Nights Film Festival runs until November 23rd.
