Writers Johan Fasting, Silje Storstein, and Kristin Grue are the recipients of the 2024 Nordisk Film & TV Fond Prize for their political drama Power Play (Makta).

The trio were awarded the prize Tuesday evening during a ceremony on the first day of the Göteborg Film Festival’s series focused sidebar TV Drama Vision.

As part of the award, they will share a Nok 200 000 (approx € 20 000) award, funded by the Nordisk Film & TV fund. This is the eighth year Göteborg has been the home of the Nordisk Film & TV Fond Prize. This year’s jury included Vinca Wiedemann, editor, producer, and screenwriter (Denmark); Joel Spira, actor, (Sweden); Kateryna Vyshnevska, producer (Ukraine); and Charlotte Winberg, journalist and critic (Finland).

Announcing this evening’s win, the jury said: “Choosing a winner from a diverse array of such high-quality drama has been both a privilege and a pleasure for us, the jury. The nominees have...

Finland’s industry is ready to appeal to the government as the future of a film and TV production incentive is under threat, with a 25% cash rebate levied on spend on foreign and Finnish shoots in the country conspicuously absent from a provisional budget for 2024, announced Monday.

“People have been hopeful, so they didn’t want to believe in what the government has been saying. For the whole autumn, we kept hearing they will cut the incentives altogether and that our budget at the Foundation will be cut by a few per cent. The final decision was made on Monday,” said Finnish Film Foundation CEO Lasse Saarinen.

“All these years when we had the incentives, we had opposition in the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Employment. These officials just didn’t like the idea,” he noted.

But the fight isn’t over just yet.

“I will speak to the Minister...

Norwegian writer-director Kenneth Karlstad has won the 2023 Nordisk Film & TV Fond Prize for his gritty coming-of-age series Kids in Crime.

Karlstad was awarded the prize Wednesday evening during a ceremony on the first day of the Göteborg Film Festival’s series focused sidebar TV Drama Vision.

As part of the award, Karlstad receives a Nok 200,000 cash prize, funded by Nordisk Film & TV Fond.

This is the seventh year Göteborg has been awarded the Nordisk Film & TV Fond Prize. This year’s jury comprised actor Amanda Collin, producer Nebojša Taraba, journalist Wanda Bendjelloul, and producer Leif Holst Jensen.

Announcing Karlstad’s win, the jury said: “We have based our evaluation on three main criteria: craft, relevance, and originality. The winner has it all. It’s based on a true universe from a certain time. The authenticity, honesty, brutality, and friendship drive the story and engage the audience. Accuracy, details,...

Seasoned Finnish producer Ilkka Matila of Mrp Matila Röhr has signed with Estonia’s Taska Film and locked early support from the Finnish Film Institute and local commercial channel MTV3 for the 2.7m film “Between the Hammer and the Sickle.” Nordisk Film holds Scandinavian rights.

To be pitched on Aug. 24 at the Nordic Co-Production Market in Haugesund, Norway, the title will be one of Matila’s most defining projects, a feature which he believes will stay, along the lines of the multi-awarded “Mother of Mine” or “The Eternal Road.”

“Between the Hammer and the Sickle” will be one of the first features ever to portray Finland’s illustrious former president Urho Kekkonen. Head of state for nearly 26 years, Kekkonen served as the longest-serving Finnish president from 1956 until 1981 and masterminded his country’s policy of neutrality, keeping at bay the threatening Soviet Union with which Finland shares 800 miles of border.

“I...

Mikko Pöllä and Roope Lehtinen, seasoned Finnish showrunners and co-founders of Fire Monkey, are bringing to market a handful of premium dramas in post and development.

Headlining their production slate under REinvent’s sales banner is the thriller “Enemy of the People,” from “Man in Room 301” helmer Mikko Kuparinen, currently in post.

Co-created by Lehtinen and Timo Varpio (“Easy Living”), the eight-part TV show boasts a stellar cast, including Kreeta Salminen, Mikko Nousiainen (“Peacemaker”), Tobias Zilliacus (“Beartown”), and Johannes Holopainen (“All the Sins”).

Co-penned by Varpio and Fire Monkey’s in-house writer Laura Suhonen, the thriller explores investigative reporting in an era of trolls and fake news. After writing a critical piece about the local town’s soccer star and biggest celebrity, involved in a dubious business scheme, reporter Katja Salonen finds herself drawn into a whirlpool of lies, deceit and abuse of power, in the middle of which...

Paris-based Apc (About Premium Content) has acquired world sales rights on the six-part Finnish thriller “A Good Family,” currently filming in Estonia before moving back to Finland.

The high-end drama about love, marriage and parenthood is based on Finnish author and screenwriter Petri Karra’s 2019 novel “The Dark Light” (“Musta Valo”). The creative team takes in creator/producer Minna Virtanen, creator/writer Antti Pesonen and helmer Pete Riski, behind the crime show “Bullets,” which won the MIPDrama Buyers’ Coup de Coeur award in 2018 and launched on Walter Presents in the U.K. in January.

Virtanen said she started collaborating with Karra on the TV show concept even before his novel was published. Then Pesonen’s screenplay was polished by script editors Matti Laine (“The Paradise”) and Charlotte Lesche.

Seasoned actor Maria Sid and actor/singer Samuli Edelmann are toplining the TV show as police officer Anna and her husband Henrick,...

Seasoned Finnish writer-director-producer Aku Louhimies is plotting multi-season TV drama “Conflict,” a near-future political action thriller that turns on a Finland threatened by an unknown military force.

Comparing the project to high-profile Norwegian TV show “Occupied,” the director said he had the idea for “Conflict” after his war epic “Unknown Soldier,” Finland’s record-breaking movie with over 1 million ticket sales. “I started thinking what if Finland was suddenly threatened by foreign forces. How would we react and how would that affect geopolitics in the Nordic region?” reflected Louhimies, who contemplates building the project as a major international TV drama.

The project is co-penned by actor Andrei Alén, novelist and officer in reserve Helena Immonen, and long-time writing partner Jari Olavi Rantala.

Set on Midsummer’s Eve, the story follows an unknown military unit, as it invades a peaceful sea-side town in Finland. All residents are taken hostage, and civilians, used...

First Look Media’s niche streaming service Topic has acquired U.S. and Canadian rights to the second season of the Nordic thriller “Arctic Circle,” which just started shooting in the icy wilderness of Lapland.

Lagardère Studios Distribution, which was recently acquired by Mediawan Group, is handling international sales on the series and participated in its financing. “Arctic Circle” was produced by Yellow Film & TV for Elisa, the leading Finnish streaming service.

The series’s second season will be filming until March and will launch on Elisa at the end of the year. Lagardere Studios previously sold season one of the show to Topic, as well as Polar+ (France), Rts (Switzerland), BeTV (Belgium), Videotron (Canada), Npo (The Netherlands), Ivi (Russia), Canal Plus (Poland), Rtp (Portugal), Cosmopolitan TV (Spain), Elisa (China) and Ftv Outre-mer 1e (France overseas), among others.

The show is headlined by Iina Kuustonen, Pihla Viitala, Mikko Leppilampi and Max Brückner.

Apc (About Premium Content) has scored key territories sales on “Man in Room 301,” the anticipated Finnish thriller drama which is playing in competition at Canneseries.

The gripping series, written by U.K. actor-turned-screenwriter Kate Ashfield (“Born to Kill”), opens in summer 2007 with the Kurtti family spending their holidays in cabin chalets in the land of a thousand lakes when their two-year old son, Tommi, is killed by a gunshot. Elias, a surly 12-year-old neighbor who has already committed minor acts of aggression against the family, is blamed for the death of the child. 12 years after the tragedy, the family is just about to go on holiday at a Greek resort when they receive a threatening anonymous letter. At the rest, they come across a man that looks like an adult Elias.

Commissioned by Finland’s leading streamer Elisa Viihde, the show was sold by Apc to Arte for France and Germany,...

Leading Finnish streaming company Elisa Viihde is partnering up with A+E Networks on a new original series, “Next of Kin,” a mystery drama set in the near future.

The eight-part series is scheduled to begin filming this week in Helsinki, Finland, and will be distributed worldwide by A+E Networks. “Next of Kin” will the first original drama to bow on Elisa Viihde Viaplay, the upcoming streaming service that will be jointly launched by Nordic Entertainment Group (Nent Group) and Elisa Viihde this fall.

“Next of Kin” takes place in Helsinki and poses some fundamental questions about humanity. The series follows Liv, who decides to discover what happened to her DNA sample when it was stolen from a biobank, but she unknowingly ends up being pursued.

“Next of Kin” is headlined by a strong Nordic cast, including Nika Savolainen (“Shadow Lines”) and Elmer Bäck (“Idiomatic”), as well as Matleena Kuusniemi...

Nordic Entertainment Group, the company behind Nordic streamer Viaplay, and Elisa Viihde Aitio are joining forces to combine their streaming services in Finland later this year.

The two companies will launch Elisa Viihde Viaplay in the fourth quarter of 2020, a single platform that will house the two services’ original series, movies and kid’s content.

Elisa Viihde Viaplay will have the power to better compete with global streamers, such as Netflix, which continues to make inroads into Nordic content after partnering with Denmark’s Dr in April to revive political drama Borgen.

Elisa Viihde Viaplay will be stocked with original shows including Arctic Circle, All the Sins and Shadow Lines, which was acquired by AMC streamer Sundance Now earlier this month.

Elisa CEO Veli-Matti Mattila said: “We expect viewers to embrace this innovative combined service that provides extensive content and represents excellent value for money. We look forward to working together.

Nordic Entertainment Group (Nent Group), a leading streaming company across the Nordics, and Finland’s top local streaming service Elisa Viihde have joined forces to launch a new service in Finland.

Named Elisa Viihde Viaplay, the new platform will combine Elisa Viihde Aitio’s content and the films and series package from Nent Group’s Viaplay, beginning from the last quarter of this year.

Set to launch June 30, Elisa Viihde Viaplay will boast a selection of local and Nordic original content, as well as international movies, classic series and kids’ content in Finland.

The alliance between the two services makes sense as Elisa Viihde Aitio (“Arctic Circle”) and Viaplay (“Love Me”) are among Finland’s most popular streaming services. By combining their strengths, they will be able to rival global services such as Netflix.

“By joining forces with Nent Group, we are able to offer Finnish customers an exciting combination...

Wild Bunch TV-sold “Albatros,” Turner Latin America’s banner title “Amarres” and REInvent Studios’ globe-trotting “Peacemaker” will feature at a 54 series-strong Buyers Showcase, which launches today March 25 as a backbone of Series Mania’s online Digital Forum, Europe’s first big festival experiment in a virtual marketplace.

Also featuring a powerful Co-Pro Pitching lineup, packed by pedigree producers and creatives, the Digital Forum’s industry audience, such as the number of accredited distributors, still has to be confirmed.

Some high-profile titles are missing: Opener “The Luminaries,” for example, from Fremantle and Working Title, and HBO closer “Run.” That said, the Buyer’s Showcase looks set to include five of Series Mania’s original 10 main competition entries and 13 of its 15 International Panorama titles, the festival’s two main sections.

Looking to the long-haul, as it also address urgent financial fall-out from Covid-19, the industry needs festival selection more than ever.

“Series...

Finland’s top streaming service Elisa Viihde has ordered “Summer of Sorrow,” a high-concept mystery thriller series that’s being produced by Rabbit Films and will be sold by Keshet Intl. around the world.

The 10-episode show, created Jani Volanen (“M/S Romantic”) and set in the early 1980s, takes place in an idyllic Finnish suburb of Munkkivuori where a small child disappears. With little support from the police, concerned parents take justice into their own hands and launch a desperate hunt for the child.

The events will be depicted from the perspective of the local children, who are eavesdropping on the adults, gossiping and drawing their own conclusions about what happened to the missing child.

“Summer of Sorrow” is expected to start shooting in May in Helsinki. Rabbit Films’ Minna Haapkylä and Olli

Suominen will be serving as executive producers.

“Finnish fiction is emerging as the hotbed for distinctive drama from the Nordic region,...

When the Nordic entertainment group, one of Scandinavia’s largest media groups, announced last month during the Goteborg Film Festival that it was pulling out of non-scripted content to focus on scripted drama, and film production and distribution, it underscored two market trends in the Nordics: Subscription-based services, whether local or global, are driving the region’s booming drama business, and going forward, the investment into content will be more evenly split between Scandinavia series and movies.

Since Scandinavia is one of the first overseas markets where Netflix and HBO Nordic launched as early as 2012, local streaming services such as Viaplay, CMore and Elisa Viihde reacted fast and stepped up their investment in drama in order to compete. It paid off: Today, unlike in other European regions where local Svod services have either shut down or struggled, the Nordics are home to several powerful local streaming services that are coexisting alongside Netflix and HBO Nordic.

GÖTEBORG, Sweden: “All the Sins”’ Finnish co-writers and creators Mika Ronkainen and Merja Aakko, winners of last year’s Nordisk Film & TV Fond Prize for outstanding Nordic screenplay, are developing for Mrk Matila Röhr Productions an adoption drama set between Finland and Guatemala.

Based on a true story, the six-part series “Act of Telling” (a working title) will examine child adoption through the story of a young Finnish couple and their Guatemala-born son. The respectable father has harbored a secret for seven years -a crime he committed when he travelled alone for the adoption. When a journalist friend starts to ask questions about the son’s biological parents, the mystery threatens to come to light.

Producer Ilkka Matilä said that Finnish public broadcaster Yle has ordered the concept from the writing duo. He’s now looking for a “potential co-production partner who could facilitate the Guatemala shoot.”

In early development,...

Madrid — Following on 2019 MipTV hit “Invisible Heroes,” set in 1973 Chile, “The Paradise” marks the second time in under 12 months that Finnish public broadcaster Yle has reached out to set – and co-produce – a primetime drama in the Spanish-speaking world.

Neither are commonplace dramas. Produced by Finland’s Mrp Matila Röhr Productions, behind “All the Sins,” winner of the 2019 Nordisk Film & TV Fond Prize, “The Paradise” begins with a softly-sung song, ·”Viento, viento de la montaña” and aerial shots of a caravan wending its way through low-wooded sierra to Fuengirola, an enclave on Spain’s sun-kissed Costa del Sol. “I’m so happy,” a young wife says in Finnish to her husband wo drives the caravan as they embrace, surveying Fuengirola below them.

Yet, in its first two episodes at least, “The Paradise” marks two other people’s story of renewal: Hilkka Mäntymäki, a crime detective in sub-Arctic city of Oulu,...

Elisa Viihde, the popular Finnish Svod service behind “All the Sins” and “Shadow Lines,” is developing “Bad Apples,” a daring psychological drama series, with Lagardere Studios Distribution.

The concept for “Bad Apples” was created by Marja Pyykkö who will also be directed the eight-part show. Fire Monkey Productions is producing the series with Mia Ylönen (“Moscow Noir”) on board to write.

“Bad Apples” is set in 1970’s Finland when women unwilling to conform to society were considered damaged and sent to an asylum on an islolated island for treatment. Away from the world, these women seemed to have found a way to be themselves until a strange rumour started spreading about a secret ward. The series will follow a student activist, Onerva, who is committed to an experimental psychiatric program for women at a 1970s sanatorium.

Anni Wessman, the head of international at Elisa, said “Bad Apples” will be headlined...

Exclusive: This year’s Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival in Estonia will include spotlights on two high-profile international series, Chernobyl and The Feed, as part of the event’s industry program.

Launched in 2018, the TV Beats Forum, running November 25 – 26 this year, explores case studies of international and regional series with a view to influencing and growing the local industry.

Three executives from the UK’s All3Media will travel to Tallinn to host a case study on Amazon series The Feed, the sci-fi drama about a man’s invention of a brain implant that allows people to share thoughts. David Thewlis and Michelle Fairley star in the show written by Channing Powell. It was produced by Amazon with the UK’s Liberty Global, Studio Lambert and All3Media. The latter company’s Executive Vice President of Emea & European Co-Productions Stephen Driscoll, Acquisitions Executive Laura White and Sales Manager Debra Bergg...

Kian Lawley, who was dropped from movie “The Hate U Give” last year after a video resurfaced of him that included racist comments, has landed a starring role alongside Katherine C. Hughes (“Blue Bloods”) in the Finnish comedy “Perfect Commando.” The series is the latest original for Elisa Viihde’s Aitio streaming service, and will be distributed internationally by Red Arrow Studios.

Lawley is a YouTube star with 3.4 million followers of his SuperKian13 YouTube channel. He also stars in AwesomenessTV series “Zac & Mia.” In the 10-part “Perfect Commando,” he will play Van, who has been living in California and makes a trip to his mother’s home country of Finland. With dual American-Finnish citizenship, he finds himself thrown into military service, setting up a fish-out-of-water comedy about a privileged kid from L.A. surviving life in the army barracks with a bunch of oddballs.

The English- and Finnish-language will be produced by Fire Monkey.

A Norwegian sleuth, a team of Chilean female investigators and the tribes of ancient Rome are headed to Cannes — by way of London.

Britain’s place in the world is the subject of debate and hand wringing in Blighty, with Brexit on the horizon. Amid the delays and confusion wrought by the U.K.’s exit from the European Union, its production and distribution powerhouses have embraced drama from the continent.

As production and distribution groups add non-English drama to their lineups or buy European shingles, the U.K., and specifically London, has become a hotspot for high-end scripted from around the world.

The U.K.-based boom in international fare stems from the consolidation that has seen the likes of Fremantle and ITV Studios assemble stables of production companies from across Europe. The growing appetite for foreign-language fare is another factor. On the distribution side, a factor is the...