After SERIESLY Berlin’s First Season Finale: A Call for Exchange for Season 2

Berlin, September 19, 2024 – The first edition of the new SERIESLY Berlin festival came to a successful close yesterday evening with the German premiere of the Spanish drama series Dressed in Blue. For two days, more than 300 international industry guests discussed under the heading “Let's talk Seriesly!” at the panels, talks, workshops, and master classes of the SERIESLY Berlin Conference at Fotografiska in Berlin-Mitte. Ten international series projects competed for the €2,500 prize as part of the SERIESLY Pitches. The SERIESLY Berlin Screenings showcased six new international series from Monday to Wednesday, all before their German TV or streaming premiere. The screenings opened in the packed Hackesche Höfe cinema with the first German vampire comedy Der Upir starring Jerks star Fahri Yardim and indie icon Rocko Schamoni, in the presence of the film crew.

“We are delighted with the successful first edition of SERIESLY Berlin,” says Eike Faecks, one of the founders and director of the festival. “The combination of the conference at Fotografiska and cinema screenings was very well received. Our visitors took advantage of the numerous opportunities for fruitful exchange and discussion, even with a compact program. We would like to thank all speakers, talents, guests, participants, and our team. We already have numerous ideas for the further development of the format and Season 02 in 2025!”

After an initial round of feedback at the end of the conference block, the SERIESLY Berlin team is now explicitly inviting creatives and the series industry to further exchange ideas on development, in line with one of the essential findings of the panel Breaking the Cycle: Innovating Conference Programming, namely that direct and permanent contact with stakeholders is essential for innovation and the creation of added value as well as meeting needs.

Helge Jürgens, Managing Director New Media Funding Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg: “A successful premiere of SERIESLY Berlin! By supporting the festival, we wanted to establish a new, attractive event for the national and international industry to exchange creative ideas. With panels on genre as a Trojan horse or the interfaces to gaming and social media, through to the position of female characters, program perspectives of Prime Video or personal rights: The program provided a good overview and you could tell that everyone shares a passion for serial storytelling. Thanks to the Seriesly team for their commitment, we are looking forward to the next edition!” Seriesly Berlin is funded by Medienboard.

“Existence” wins SERIESLY Pitches
At the SERIESLY Pitches, 10 international series projects competed for the €2,500 prize, which was awarded by an international jury of experts consisting of Josie Cyrus (The Ink Factory), Isaure Pisani-Ferry (Creator and Head Writer of Becoming Karl Lagerfeld), and producer Solmaz Azizi (Studio Zentral). The award went to Existence by Michael Griessler, “a project that dreams big with a powerful scope in imagination,” said the jury. “We hope by rewarding this project, we will encourage the writer to dare to feed his imaginative world directly with his very own pains and joys and hopes.” In addition, the project Medium by Emre Mirza, “that aims to talk about community and deep complicated fears we all have in today’s world,” was recognized with a Special Mention from the jury.

Among the international and national speakers at the conference were Emmy winner Jenji Kohan (Orange is the New Black, Weeds), creative consultant Tatjana Samopjan (Fractal Volcano, Stockholm), who gave the opening keynote under the heading Real Imagination, Christian Beetz (beetz brothers film production), Francesco Capurro (Series Mania Forum), the Emmy-nominated Spanish author Alvaro Carmona (Show Yourself), TikTok influencer Theo Carow, Mel Eslyn (Duplass Brothers Productions), Olivier Fox (Nu, Osmosis), Henning Kamm (Real Film), Nataly Kudiabor (UFA Fiction), Marge Liiske (Industry@Tallinn & Baltic Event), Marc Lorber (The Art of Coproduction), Ljubica Lukovic (Awake), Jorgo Narjes (X Filme Creative Pool), Lucas Ochoa (American Honey, The Witch, Gangs of London), Caroline Rosales (Miki Unchained), Christoph Schneider (Prime Video), Anna Rohde-Seyfried (Beta Film, Munich), Gaia Tridente (MIA - Mercato Internazionale Audiovisivo), Maša Marković (Sarajevo Film Festival) and many more. Masters of Ceremony were Yolanda Rother (The Impact Company) and the Ukrainian stand-up comedian Pavlo Voytovych.

SERIESLY Berlin is funded by the Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg and has won the sponsorship prize in the "innovative event formats" competition of Project Future at Berlin’s Senate Department for Economic Affairs, Energy, and Public Enterprises. Media partner is SPOT media & film.