‘Gold’, the outstanding project of the Berlinale Series Market, has won an invitation to next month’s Series Mania Forum, the industry section of Europe’s largest television festival.
The announcement was made on Tuesday after the Copro Series pitch session in Berlin. “Gold” was presented by Stefan Eichenberger, a producer at Contrast Film, one of Switzerland’s largest production companies based in Zurich, whose “Davos 1917” was also included in the Copro Series in 2019. The film went on to become the largest television production ever produced in Switzerland, and was a co-production between Contrast Film and Germany’s Letterbox Productions.
Equally ambitious, the thriller Gold, a miniseries in early development, lifts the lid on the gold trade in a major series exposing the gold trade from Switzerland to the Persian Gulf to Africa. Focusing on social issues and characters, Swiss gold trader Hannah leads the case. Hannah turns to illegal trading as her company is heading towards bankruptcy.
But a spectacularly tragic accident in Africa leads her to rebel against the very system of crude exploitation that has made her so powerful.
“Gold,” the biggest premium play in Tuesday’s Copro Series pitch, is written by “Chugga” screenwriters Christian Wehrin and Pascal Gratz, Jessica Hagan, an award-winning Ghanaian-British playwright and author of Series Mania’s Choice “Coup,” and Mariamma Jite (“Unsere kleine Botschaft”).
“We chose the project ‘Gold’ to reveal that behind everything that shines there is suffering. The characters’ moral dilemmas and the questions they raise are an integral part of this powerful series, an ambitious global thriller.” Berliner said Laurence Herzberg, Founder and General Manager of Series Mania, who presented the invitation along with Francesco Capullo, Director of the Series Mania Forum, in the presence of Martina Blais, Head of Les Co-Production Markets.
Despite its welcome, the Berlinale Series Market also invited the series enthusiast project “Antiparos” produced and directed by Alexandros Tsirifonis. The news announced at the Berlinale Series Market included former Buccaneer media executive Richard Turkhart.
“The series stands out in that it places a noir mystery on bright, familiar terrain, gradually fading away until questions of duty, family loyalty, and justice collide,” he told Variety. “Ultimately, it’s about what we owe to this place that raised us, and how far we’re willing to go to protect it.”
