Rising Danish screenwriter Ingeborg Topsøe, whose credits include director Milad Alami’s award-winning The Charmer, has won this year’s Nordic series writing award for her work on Netflix’s smash hit Secrets We Keep.
The award, one of the Scandinavian industry’s most prestigious awards, was announced on Tuesday at the Gothenburg Festival’s videoconferencing section and market, TVDrama Vision.
Always active on the front lines, Tosoe managed to overcome a difficult double whammy by writing “The Secrets We Keep.” In this captivating thriller set in North Zealand, Copenhagen’s opulent Riviera of white stone mansions, a wealthy Cecil investigates the disappearance of a neighbor’s au pair, an investigation that is simultaneously charged with the privileges of noblesse oblige and the social observances of its economics. So are parenting, racism, and gender violence.
The script also forms an excellent platform for the director of “Par Fly” (“Follow the Money”). The gorgeous visuals add social irony to the tight, tense mystery plot, creating Fry’s epic final shot that captures the protagonist’s newfound full understanding of his own social fears.
Produced for Netflix by Uma Film’s Claudia Saginario (The Opponent, The Excavation) and starring Marie Buck Hansen (The Legacy, White Sands) as Cecily, Keeping the Secret topped Netflix’s worldwide non-English language TV chart on May 15 of last year and remained at number one for three weeks, with a total of 3,400 It recorded over 10,000 views. This number means that in 2025, there will be five other Netflix non-English series.
“This year’s winners ask the following questions: Can intimacy be outsourced? How far are you, as an individual, willing to go to maintain your position in life? At what cost are you willing to maintain existing power relationships, both in the private sphere and on a global scale?” the jury for the Nordic Series Writing Award said in a statement. “By confronting us with the harsh realities of human existence without suffocating the audience with numbing escapism, Winner showed that it is possible to combine a compelling and harrowing detective thriller with powerful social commentary.”
(LR) “Secrets We Keep” Simon Sears as Mike Vinter-Jensen, Marie Buck Hansen as Cecil Mike Vinter-Jensen, Lukas Zuperka as Viggo. Cr. Provided by Netflix © 2024
Provided by Netflix
‘Blood Cruise’ wins Creative Courage Award
The second place Creative Courage Award went to the Swedish series Blood Cruise, created by Alexander Romberg (Fables of the North) and Will Tennant (Imaginarium Productions) and commissioned by SVT’s Johanna Gardare and Sonja Nilsson Helmele.
This honorable mention aims to recognize individuals and companies who take risks and champion new directions for Nordic theater. The Creative Courage winners will be chosen from entries by streamers and broadcasters across Scandinavia, Gothenburg Festival explained on Tuesday.
The winners of the Creative Courage Award were selected by Liselot Forsmann, CEO of Nordisk Film & TV Fond, and Sia Edström, Head of TV Drama Vision at the Gothenburg Film Festival.
“We salute the courageous commissioners and producers who brought this extraordinary horror series to life, combining a family story, a microcosm of Sweden, and a proliferation of vampires on a ferry,” they said.
Blood Cruise, written by Mads Strandberg and Marin Lagerlev, was produced for television by Mads Strandberg and Chris Andreu.
