EXCLUSIVE: Former Berlinale Series Head Julia Fidel has been snapped up by Frank Doelger’s The Swarm and Concordia producer Intaglio Films.
Fidel will start working for the Beta Film and ZDF Enterprises joint venture in October as a Producer. She will join a team that has worked on the likes of pan-European thriller The Swarm as co-producer, upcoming spy thriller Doing Good and Concordia, the futuristic AI drama for ZDF, France Télévisions and streamer Hulu Japan that will launch pre-sales at Mipcom.
Fidel shepherded the Berlinale Series – the Berlin Film Festival’s TV sibling – over four years. Under her watch, the Series grew, issuing its first Award last year, launching a market-skewing Series Market Selects strand, working with top talent and expanding to showcase content from regions such as Latin America and China. Shows in competition in recent years include HBO Max’s Lust, Netflix’s The Eddy and Jason Segel’s AMC series Dispatches From Elsewhere, while The Swarm played out of competition.
Last week, the Berlin Film Festival announced it would reduce the size of its 2024 program including cutting the Berlinale Series strand as an independent program. The TV-focused strand will instead be folded into the Berlinale Special Gala screenings and Berlinale Artistic Director Carlo Chatrian has taken over from Fidel.
Fidel is also a producer and choreographer, who has created dance scenes for Beta’s Babylon Berlin. Her new employer Intaglio was launched in 2018 by Game of Thrones EP Doelger to produce English-language drama for the international market. The company develops, finances and produces high-end drama series for German broadcasters and international networks, while Beta Film MD Moritz von Kruedener and Robert Franke, VP of Drama at ZDF, manage its business affairs.