LOOKING BACK AT HELSINKI SCRIPT 2019 (SEPT 6TH, 2019)

Brave international scriptwriters, producers, commissioners and actors shared view on creating new concepts by mixing genres and on how real life events are turned into series that matter.  We discussed how to stay unique and smart at hot markets.  Among the guests: Celebrated Swedish stand-up artist and writer Jonas Gardell who has stunned the world with outstanding miniseries like “Don’t Ever Wipe Tears Without Gloves”,  Polish showrunner Dariusz Jablonsky, who co-produces all over and co-worked in his early days with Kieslowski.  French-American  Alex Berger , who produced the intelligent and successful spy series The Bureau” by mixing European and US writers room logic. “Lilyhammer” creator Anne Bjørnstad introduced her fresh Sci-Fi satire “Beforeigners”, which is the first Norwegian HBO. Belgian Sanne Nuyens who won the Cannes 2019 series award for the personal court drama,”The Twelve” having renewed the crime genre with “Hotel Beau Séjour” (2018) shared her working methods. Together with creators and decision makers we took a special look at Belgian drama going international in two languages and at the revival of the Estonian series culture, together with creators of the “The Bank” (2018) and others who have made Estonian series to travel to USA.  Creators behind Finnish series “All the Sins” (2019), winner of the 2019 Nordic Film & TV Fund Prize talked about their relationships to their troubled bible belt arena. The team behind the Finnish-Chilean  co-production “Invisible Heroes”  based on a real hero case, talked about creators from two continents co-working. We also took a look at fresh mobile and other short format series and felt hacked in a series about hacking.

The 2019 European Script Awards were announced.  The winner of the film category is:  System Crasher (Systemsprenger) – ZDF (Germany), written and directed by Nora Fingscheidt and in the series category The Break – Season 2 (La Trêve – Saison 2) – RTBF (Belgium), co-written by Stéphane Bergmans, Benjamin d’Aoust and Matthieu Donck.

In connection to Helsinki Script, the Serial Eyes alumni network SEAN arranged a pitch circus September 5th to find the most crazy ideas that you don’t see on ordinary market pitches. Together with our partner Schools (Aalto, Arcada, TAMK, Metropolia) we arranged a workshop for students and together with Finnish Audiovisual Producers Finland (APFI) a buiness masterclass for producers.

Click here for Helsinki Script 2019 video (1 min.)