This year’s TV Drama Vision event (January 29-30) at the Goteborg Film Festival, which in 2020 will present 40 new series, has finalised its line-up. The sold-out showcase, which has grown in international prominence in recent years, will host attendees from CAA, Curtis Brown, Gersh, WIIP and the local Salomonsson agency, as well as buyers from the likes of Entertainment One, Banjay Rights, HBO Europe, and Beta Film. It will also welcome Caroline Benjo and Carole Scotta, co-founders of French outfit Haut et Court, as keynote speakers to discuss working between cinema and episodic. During the two-day event, there will be a panel on the future of the European model of high-end TV production, an overview of cash rebate opportunities in the Nordic region, and a competition of five Nordic drama series, which will be up for a $22,000 (€20,000) prize. The nominated series are: 22 July, Caliphate, When The Dust Settles, Happily Never After, and The Paradise.
Newly-established streaming service BritBox has struck its first deal with distribution and production outfit DRG, picking up four shows from the latter. The SVOD, run by BBC and ITV, has bought three series of comedy Detectorists (19 x 30), which launch immediately, The Cry (4 x 60), which lands January 23, three series of Tracey Ullman’s Show (19 x 30), and Babylon (1 x 90 & 6 x 60), both of which will go online in early 2020. Elin Thomas, DRG’s EVP of sales was responsible for the deal with BritBox. She said: “DRG has a terrific catalogue of great British content, created by some of the UK’s premier producers, so naturally we are enthusiastic supporters of BritBox and thrilled to have some of our titles join the line-up so soon after launch.”
This year’s Sheffield Doc/Fest is the first under new head Cíntia Gil, who joined the highly-regarded docs event from Portuguese festival DocLisboa last year, and she has laid out the vision for her debut event. “Doc/Fest will prioritise free artistic ventures over the transformation of film into entertainment product for profit,” Gil said in a statement; the event runs both a large film program and an industry-focused wing consisting of a market and various initiatives for doc execs. She also added, in a nod to the UK’s Brexit grapple, “We will prioritise education and internationalism over any kind of nationalism. We will prefer films and artworks made politically over political propaganda offering easy conclusions.” This year’s program strands, alongside the typical international and UK competitions and a retrospective, will be titled ‘Into the World’, ‘Rebellions’, ‘Ghost and Apparitions’, ‘Rhyme and Rhythm’. The festival, which runs June 4-9, will unveil its full program roughly at the end of April.