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Catalan public broadcaster 3Cat, formerly known as Televisió de Cataunya (Tvc), is in talks to make Season 2 of ‘This is Not Sweden’ with the same creative team and producers of Season 1. A distribution deal with a platform is pending.

The Prix Europe-winning series set in a tony middle-class neighborhood on the outskirts of Barcelona was co-produced by Spain’s Rtve and TV3 with Sweden’s Svt, Germany’s Ndr and Finland’s Yle. In the family dramedy series, a young Spanish couple relocates there to provide their children with an optimal quality of life, drawing inspiration from northern European models.

“I’m convinced that we will end up collaborating further with Nordic countries,” said Pío Vernis, 3Cat audiovisual business director, who added: “They are quite small countries with their own language, but with high production standards, as we are.”

Speaking to Variety just before Mipcom, he stressed 3Cat’s push for more international co-productions,...

Now on its 8th edition, the international TV forum Conecta Fiction & Entertainment (Cf&e), held in the ancient Spanish city of Toledo from June 18 to 21, is turning its focus to Brazil and Portugal.

The South American country is haltingly reactivating its audiovisual industry under President Lula de Silva’s new government, which earmarked nearly $1 billion for the sector last year. Meanwhile, Portugal has become a thriving hub for Portuguese-language premium dramas and launched a new 30% cash refund incentive program in April to lure higher-budget film and TV productions to shoot in the country.

Conecta expects a delegation of 50 Portuguese and 30 Brazilian participants, who together represent “a market of more than 217 million potential viewers and a long history of content production,” said Conecta’s founder-director, Géraldine Gonard, at the press conference held on June 4.

The forum will be offering a panoply of activities with 175 speakers, 49.1% of whom will be women, said Gonard.

Be For Films has acquired international sales rights to “Mothers Don’t” (“Las madres no”) directed by celebrated Spanish filmmaker Mar Coll.

The film marks her third directorial outing following “Three Days with the Family“ and “We All Want What’s Best for Her.” The movie tells the story of María, a young writer who has just become a mother, and becomes obsessed by the highly publicized case of a woman who drowned her 10-month old twins in the bathtub. Through writing, María starts understanding the radical experience of her own motherhood.

“Mothers Don’t” stars Laura Weissmahr (“Cardo”), Oriol Pla (“Creatura”), Giannina Fruttero (“Smiley”) and Belén Cruz (“Cell 211”). The film is produced by Escándalo Films and Elastica Films. The latter will distribute “Mothers Don’t” in Spain.

“María, the protagonist of our story is a repentant mother, an association of words that generates automatic unease,” said Coll, who...

In its latest expansive move, independent production house Nevision is opening offices in Barcelona, its first in Europe outside its London-based headquarters.

The Barcelona operation is headed by seasoned publisher, author, journalist and producer Tim Parfitt who will work with Nevision founder James Cabourne to develop scripted series in Spanish for both local and global markets, Nevision announced last week in a written statement.

First up are three projects, two with scribe-helmer Roger Guäl, who broke out with 2002’s “Smoking Room,” an acerbic take on office politics.

Parfitt has lived most of his life in Spain, being dispatched to Madrid in 1987 for six weeks to help launch Spanish Vogue. He ended up staying a decade and running the company as CEO of Ediciones Condé Nast, an experience he recounted in memoir “A Load of Bull – An Englishman’s Adventures in Madrid.” He moved to Barcelona in 2007, authoring art-detective crime thriller “The Barcelona Connection,...

German series The Zweiflers (Die Zweiflers) took home the prize for Best Series at the Canneseries Awards last night.

This year, Canneseries took place from 5 to 10 April, in parallel with the final MIPTV event. The Zweiflers – which also won Best Music and the High School Award for Best Series – is a six-part series about a Jewish family in contemporary Germany pondering the inheritance of the family delicatessen. Creator and showrunner David Hadda paid tribute to his Jewish grandparents at the premiere of the show, which will premiere in Germany on Ard’s Mediathek streaming service in the spring.

Norwegian series Dumbsday (Dummedag) won for Best Screenplay. The series is set against the backdrop of a virus that causes people’s intelligence to drop to unsurvivable levels worldwide.

Elsewhere, Aina Clotet took home the Best Performance Award for her role as Mariana in Spanish-Swedish comedy drama This Is Not Sweden. The...

German comedy drama The Zweiflers was named best series at the seventh annual Canneseries festival that ran April 5-10 in Cannes.

The six-part series produced by Turbokultur from creator and showrunner David Hadda about a colourful Jewish family in contemporary Germany also won the prize for best music and the High School Award for Best Series voted upon by local students.

Led by an ensemble cast, the series centres on the inheritance of a family delicatessen as the past and future clash among several generations of Zweiflers.

Hadda told Screen of the win, “It was really always my dream to bring the series to Cannes.

Fockers who? Meet “The Zweiflers” instead: Brand new winners of Canneseries.

Created and showrun by David Hadda, the show picked up multiple awards at the French TV fest on Wednesday, including best series and music. Selected as a Variety Hot Pick earlier this month, “it’s destined to be billed as a Jewish ‘Succession’ set in contemporary Germany, with all the baggage that can bring to the table, Variety wrote.

That being said, its creator had another dysfunctional family on his mind.

“My biggest influence was ‘The Sopranos’ and I always said I wanted to do a Jewish ‘Sopranos’! The idea was to change the narrative from the victims’ perspective in Germany to a Jewish patriarch and Holocaust survivor who had lost everything – and everyone, and then came back to rebuild his life. That was empowering for me,” said Hadda.

Produced by Turbokultur for Ard Degeto Film and Hessischer Rundfunk,...

Cannes — 3Cat, the newly reset Barcelona-based Catalan public broadcaster, and one of the driving forces behind Canneseries highlight “This Is Not Sweden,” is bringing onto the market a new docuseries “Aitana” as the Catalan-language service seeks to cut through the crowd with some of the biggest IPs a territory has: Its soccer stars.

Sold as both a 90-minute movie and also a three-part 40-minute episode mini, “Aitana” is an inside-track on Barcelona soccer club’s Aitana Bonmatí, winner of the 2023 Women’s Ballon d’Or for best female soccer player in the world.

“Aitana” world premieres on April 23 on 3Cat’s linear channel and AVOD platform on April 23.

“The Signing” (“El Fitxatge”), about how Barcelona, far from the great soccer club of today, signed up the greatest player in the world, Johan Cruyff, is now near to completion and will be released on 3Cat in May 21.

3Cat also spares a thought for José Luis Nuñez,...

Cannes — For years, reports of MipTV’s terminal decline were somewhat exaggerated. Now, however, they’re real. On March 26, Rx France, organizers of MipTV, announced the launch of Mip London, over Feb. 23-28, 2025. MipTV’s 2024 edition will be its last.

Attendance, once 10,000 in 2018, 9,500 in 2019, had plunged to 5,510 on-site delegates last year. That still made it the second biggest TV event in the world. Still dwindling participation this year, is down to around 3,000.

What a MipTV swan song, bulwarked by Canneseries, can deliver, is another question. 10 takes on this year’s edition:

MipTV Sticking to Its Guns

Traditionally, MipTV delivered a straight sales market where sales companies or divisions hold back-to-back meetings with distributors who get links to their shows. History has hardly been on MipTV’s side. As simply raising the finance for a show in an environment of rising costs and declining commissions has become more and more of a challenge,...

“The Killing” star Sofie Gråbøl will serve as the president of this year’s Canneseries competition jury, it was announced on Tuesday.

The Danish actor kickstarted her career with the 1986 film “Barndommens gade” (“The Streets of My Childhood”) and is known for her TV roles including “The Killing,” “Nikolaj og Julie” and “Taxa.”

Joining Gråbøl on the jury are “Madame Hollywood” director, screenwriter and producer Olivier Abbou; “Four Daughters” composer Amine Bouhafa; “City of God” actor Alice Braga; “Blancanieves” actor Macarena García; and “Samber” actor Alix Poisson.

Together, the jury will judge the eight series in competition and unveil the winners on April 10. The series competing in the festival’s main lineup include “Dark Horse” (Denmark), “Dumbsday” (Norway), “Living on a Razor’s Edge” (Brazil), “Moresnet” (Belgium), “Operation Sabre” (Serbia), “This Is Not Sweden” (Spain and Sweden), “To the Wonder” (China) and “The Zweiflers” (Germany).

“This upcoming edition feels like the...

The Killing star Sofie Gråbøl is leading the Canneseries jury.

Gråbøl will be joined by Olivier Abbou, Amine Bouhafa, Alice Braga, Macarena García and Alix Poisson in the six-strong jury judging a strong competition lineup that includes the likes of Denmark’s Dark Horse, Euro co-pro This is Not Sweden and Beta Film’s Operation Sabre.

Multi-award-winner Gråbøl is best known as the star of Scandi noir smash The Killing, in which she played the role of police inspector Sarah Lund, which brought her international fame. Past credits include breakout Early Spring, Taxa and Nikolaj og Julie.

She is joined by Abbou, the director and producer of a number of series and movies including Madame Hollywood, Territories and Get In, along with Braga, the Brazilian actress who has starred in internationally-acclaimed City of God and Hollywood movies such as The Suicide Squad.

García, meanwhile, made her film debut with Pablo Berger...

SeriesFest has set its lineup and it now includes the likes of New Amsterdam star Jocko Sims and creator David Schulner, All American’s Nkechi Okoro Carroll and Dr. Death creator Patrick Macmanus.

This comes as the event, which is held in Denver between May 1 and 5, previously revealed stars such as Minnie Driver, the cast of Grey’s Anatomy and Hasan Minhaj to its lineup.

It has also added a full lineup of panels for its tenth iteration

There will be interviews with the likes of Beatrice Springborn, President, UCP and Universal International Studios, Grey’s Anatomy producer Betsy Beers and Mark Duplass and Mel Eslyn, the team behind Penelope.

The event will also showcase a number of international shows including This is Not Sweden, Zorro, Estonia, Haven of Grace, Lost Boys and Fairies and Split.

“Season 10 of SeriesFest marks a milestone in our journey to elevate emerging and underrepresented voices in episodic storytelling.

“Los caminantes de la calle,” directed by Argentina’s Juan Martín Hsu, Chilean Ignacio Pávez’s docu-fiction drama “An Amputee” and Uruguayan Lorenzo Tocco’s “For God’s Sake” proved the biggest winners at the Malaga Festival’s Mafiz industry area awards, announced at a ceremony on Friday night.

Covering Malaga’s Work in Progress showcase, its Málaga Festival Fund Co-Production forum (Maff) and the Spanish Screenings Content – Málaga Short Corner, prizes were divvied up among a slew of titles, with ‘Sometimes,’ by Sara Fantova and Enrique Buleo’s ‘Still Life With Ghosts,’ both scoring multiple awards.

From his first feature, 2015’s “La Salada,” a patchwork narrative tale of immigrants’ lives, dreams and suffering in Argentina, to 2021’s “La Luna Reprenta Mi Corazon,” a docu feature record of the rencounter with his mother in Taiwan, Hsu has carved out a niche depicting the immigrant experience in Argentina. In “Los caminantes de la calle,...

In a milestone move, Sony Pictures Television has unveiled “La Academia,” its first Spanish-language scripted series filmed in Spain for Prime Video and 3Cat.

“La Academia” is produced for Sony by Brutal Media, commissioned out of Sony Pictures Television’s international production group. Spt is distributing the series worldwide.

A scripted young adult drama series which Spt describes as being set in the high-pressure, high-drama world of elite youth soccer and its rising stars, ‘La Academia’ takes place at the Spanish training centre of the Apolo F.C., one of the best professional soccer clubs in the world.

There boys and girls from different social backgrounds fight for a shared dream which will inevitably create fiction between them: to make the first team and become the world’s next top players.

The young cast is led by new Spanish talent such as Ton Vieira, Marc Soler (“Upa Next”), Mia Sala-Patau...

This year, Spain has more titles at the Berlinale’s two TV showcases, Co-Pro Series and Berlinale Market Selects, than any other country in the world— a total of four shows, beating the U.S. with one, and even Germany, which has three.

On top of that, running Feb. 19-20 at the fest’s CinemaxX screening hub, the Spanish showcase at the Berlinale

Market Series highlights three more shows and features a panel, in what may be the big- gest national TV showcase at 2024’s Berlin Festival.

What this bullish presence says about the state of the state of Spanish TV production is an- other matter. Seven key takes:

Second-Phase Boom

Spain’s Berlin bonanza is only natural. Netflix scored its first global TV blockbuster with Spain’s “Money Heist” in 2018, and now the country is now riding a second wave as a strong supplier of the global streamer. In...

“The Catalan industry is healthy in the sense that we’re producing a lot,” says producer-director David Matamoros.

Led by Escac, “Society of the Snow” director J.A. Bayona’s alma mater, its film schools turn out top notch novel directors and technicians.

Produced by Barcelona’s Arcadia Motion Pictures, “Robot Dreams” has just scored an Academy Award nomination for best animated feature, while proving one of Neon’s first U.S. pick-ups announced at Cannes.

In 2022, the last year for which records are available, international shoots generated more investment in Catalonia, €77.8 million ($85.6 million), apart from the Canary Islands (€112.9 million: $120.8 million).

Catalonia’s government is also aiming for larger TV industry overseas impact, while firing up 3Cat, Catalonia’s public broadcaster, as an international player.

From 2023, every year, producers of up to five higher-end Catalan-language series, budgeted at over €4 million ($4.3 million), can receive a grant of €1.5 million ($1.6 million). 3Cat can add...

Over the last seven years, Catalonia has built a thriving film industry which has been the envy of other regions across Europe, boasting a thriving co-production scene, a burgeoning animation industry, a 2022 Berlin Golden Bear with Clara Simon’s “Alcarrás,” and a bevy of prizes at 2023’s Berlinale, thanks to “20,000 Species of Bees.”

Catalonia even brought down the flag with Simon’s “Summer 1993,” a 2017 Berlin Best First Feature Film winner, on what could be hailed as a first film movement in Spain in decades: Fiction films grounded in a large sense upon a specific place, but talking about big social or gender issues.

Now Catalonia is attempting to achieve the same impact with its TV industry. Its early results led by “This Is Not Sweden,” will play out at Content Americas and most especially Sweden Göteborg Festival’s TV strand, TV Drama Vision.

Bowing November in Spain on...

Passion and Perseverance, the two watchwords at this year’s TV Drama Vision in Göteborg will resonate across this year’s program where a record 700 delegates will take the pulse of what’s hot and upcoming from the Nordics and Europe.

Unfolding parallel to the Göteborg Film Festival, the Nordics’ biggest TV drama showcase and networking event will run Jan 30-31.

“This is what we need!” said TV Drama Vision honcho Cia Edström about the passion infused in the 60-plus series to be showcased – and about perseverance in the industry, to be debated by the 100 guest speakers – including U.S. streaming giants Netflix, Disney+– first time on-stage – Amazon and all key Nordic commissioners.

“Times are tough-not only in the Nordics but internationally. Our industry is going through profound changes,” she said, citing the microeconomic headwinds impacting drama investors’ coin, artificial intelligence, the halt in production-triggered among others by Hollywood strikes,...

Cannes — Televisió de Cataunya (Tvc), best known abroad for its biggest linear channel, TV3, will re-launch on Oct. 30 as 3Cat, the name also of its new AVOD platform, bowing as the driver of the most far-reaching digital makeover of any TV operator in Spain.

Also incorporating Catalunya Radio, the Catalan-language 3Cat reflects a larger pivot in Europe where broadcasters are starting to look at their VOD platforms as either SVOD profit centers, or at least as a very key part of their business. This is the case of state-owned networks as they seek to reach out to catch an ever larger part of the audience which doesn’t watch TV on TV, so still fulfilling their public service remit.

This trend can be seen in and outside Spain, with France Télevisions and the BBC moving their Ott offer front and enter when it comes to acquisitions.

No other operator in...

Spain’s TV market saw 82 new fiction series commissions over September 2022 to August 2023, 61% of them aimed at exclusive online release, compared to 52% the year before, according to TV research firm The Wit.

A few years ago, online was an afterthought. Now, to various degrees and in different ways, it is replacing linear as operators’ major concern.“Linear operators are refocusing their productions with the perspective of reaching a younger audience,” says the Wit’s Caroline Servy.

The clout of platforms within the industry has progressed very quickly.Atresplayer, the platform run by leading broadcaster Atresmedia, has increasingly become an energetic driver behind the local TV production sector since its 2013 launch. Public broadcaster Rtve is venturing into co-production as it has committed to provide exclusive and original content to its Rtve Play platform.

On Aug. 1, Movistar Plus, Telefónica’s pay TV/VOD operator, bowed a new souped-up version of its basic tier as a streaming service.

Spain’s TV fiction industry is exercising some caution after high-end Spanish-language series lifted off in 2018.

“We all wanted to launch so many projects, so many new platforms arrived that there was no time for analysis,” says Bambú co-founder Ramón Campos.

As streamers scale back on originals and sales cycles slow, the industry has time for larger re-calculation.

“We come from a spectacular moment, in terms of both quality and volume,” says Sonia Martínez, series editorial director at Buendía Estudios.

That groundbreaking moment, championed by series like “Money Heist” and “Elite,” propelled Spanish fiction production to historic heights of global popularity.

“There is a virtuous circle that began in 2018 and has been continuously regenerating. Spain’s talent base already interests international audiences,” says María Valenzuela, Movistar Plus Intl.’s general manager.

But the country’s TV production scene is still cycling through the fruits of the boom: the number of...

Toledo, Spain — At this month’s Annecy, France’s Canal+, France Télévisions and even Gulli delighted the business by unveiling new production slates which boasted some of the boldest projects being brought to market at the French festival.

At one and the same time, major European broadcasters, the BBC and France Télévisions again, were talking up their streaming services at Annecy.

These used to be treated as a complement to their linear offering. Now it’s increasingly the other way round.

Annecy, of course, is animation. But could the same market forces be at work in live action TV and in Spain?

More than a hint of a step-by-step revolution at work at Rtve, Spain’s public broadcaster, was sensed at an upbeat showcase on Wednesday.

Moderated by José Pastor, Rtve’s director of film and fiction, the show-case, Rtve Co-Productions on Board, featured three shows, “Allende, the Thousand Days,...

The 7th edition of Spain’s Conecta Fiction & Entertainment, the Europe-Latin America TV and networking forum, will dedicate this year its countries focus to Poland and Mexico.

For the first time ever, the event will also host a Spanish Content Showcase, integrating a series of activities to highlight the freshest and most attractive contents and formats from top Spanish distributors.

Conecta Fiction unspools June 26-29 for the second year running at the El Greco Palace of Congress in Toledo, the capital of Spain’s Castilla-La Mancha, just south of Madrid.

The 4th Rtve Showcase will run parallel to Conecta Fiction over June 27-28, bringing buyers from 30 countries and sparking synergies such as a showcase of Rtve’s ongoing international co-productions at a Conecta Fiction panel.

“We will offer an in-depth analysis of Mexico and Poland as focus countries; workshops to optimise budgets and develop new funding models; keynotes in which trends such as eSports,...

London-based sales outfit Taskovski Films has boarded Spanish documentary “Fauna,” soon to premiere at Visions du Réel and Hot Docs.

Pau Faus directs, while Sergi Camerón produces for Nanouk Films. Faus, Cameron and Julia R. Aymar are also credited as writers.

In the film, set on the outskirts of Barcelona, two realities collide as an old shepherd constantly finds himself in front of a high-tech laboratory for animal experimentation. Afflicted with a bone disease, he witnesses his profession disappearing, while the scientists are busier than ever researching a Covid vaccine.

“It’s a visionary, multi-layered look into contemporary life of humans in the confusing times of pandemic, which left us all lacking many essential answers. Told as a dreamy pastoral tale, the film is challenging the most actual questions of relation between humans and nature,” CEO Irena Taskovski told Variety.

“We have been collaborating with Nanouk Films in the past...

The battle for success on the new drama series scene is the battle for talent, led by screenwriters. Following, portraits of Spanish TV scribes or creators, sometimes writing teams, who’ve made an impact, or look set to do so:

Fran Araujo

2022 was Araujo’s year. He co-wrote Berlin Competition’s “One Night, One Day” and “Rapa,” Movistar+’s biggest 2022 bow. “Offworld,” a collective series he coordinated, was a Variety’s International TV Show of the Year. An iconoclast – “if I do the same thing, I get bored,” he says – who tears up the rule book.

Aina Clotet

Best known for acting, winning at Malaga for “The Wild Ones,” but a driving force as co-creator, director and star behind “This Is Not Sweden” a €1.5 million grant recipient and groundbreaking Spain-Scandinavia-Germany co-pro, turning on a couple who think they’ve found a model lifestyle. But “there are no guarantees,” says Clotet.

This year’s Berlinale Series Market kicks off Monday as Spanish series “The Snow Girl,” a missing girl suspense thriller produced by Spain’s Atípica Films, has attracted huge heat for Netflix, punching 101.7 million hours watched in its first three weeks. Doing so, it ranked as the streamer’s No. 1 non-English show in the world over Jan. 30 – Feb. 5.

In all, Spain has more shows and movies in Netflix’s all time non-English Top 10s than any other country in the world, seven to France’s two, for example.

Spain, it could be argued, has cracked online. But its drama series industry wants to ring more options.

As scripted commissions look to have dropped from second half 2022 in not only the U.S. but also Europe and Latin America, an energetic posse of Spanish producers and stars are rolling into Berlin to present new productions. These look set to explore an...

Over 2003-11, Catalonia’s regional film hub was the envy of Europe. Now, it’s enjoying the full flush of a second renaissance and growing its international impact in film and now TV. In 2022, three Catalan directors had titles in the main competition in Berlin and Cannes, more than Italy (two), Germany (one) or the U.K. (none). Helmer Carla Simon’s “Alcarràs” won Berlin’s top prize, the Golden Bear.

In 2023, five Catalan features have made Berlin’s fest cut, led by Estibaliz Urresola’s competition contender “20,000 Species of Bees,” Alvaro Gago’s “Matria” in Panorama and Carla Subirana’s “Sica,” a Generation 14plus player.

The most spectacular advance, however, comes in Catalonia’s Berlinale TV lineup. “The Chauffeur’s Son,” backed by “Elite” producer Zeta Studios and created by Isaki Lacuesta and Isa Campos, competes in Co-Pro Series. “This Is Not Sweden,” backed by Spain’s Rtve and Swedish pubcaster Svt,...