Series Match, Berlinale Series Market: Titles, Highlights and Trends
New series from “City of God” director Fernando Meirelles and DP Cesar Charlone, plus Angela Chaves, creator of Netflix’s Spanish-language megahit “Desperate Lies,” and “Sissi” co-head writer Robert Krause feature in a powerful first Series Match, bringing together German, Latin American and Spanish producers.
Series Match: Germany and Ibero-America, organized by Iberseries & Platino Industria y Berlinale Series Market, and taking place on February 16, hosts series with undisputed ambitions of often ambitious companies. After adapting Spain’s “Poquita Fe” for Germany, Berlin-based SKP is expanding into premium, genre-driven limited series with international ambition and event-scale storytelling. “’Monika’ is built as a premium international event series,” says Zeitsprung producer Gala Souvignier.
These are often genre series, but they are substantive series, thought through on an industry and thematic level.
“’Assassins in Paradise’ plays with the idea that you can escape geography, but not yourself,” says producer Paula Taborda dos Guaranys.
“Through the lens of a psychological thriller, we explore how inherited myths shape identity and how the past persists in contemporary Europe and Latin America. ‘Scorched Earth’ seeks to combine genre tension with emotional and historical depth,” say director-producer Juan Ignacio Sabatini and producer Juan Pablo Sallato in Villano, Chile.
A closer look at most titles:
“El Abuso,” (Alterna Media, Federation Spain, Ojo Films)
“City” of God” DP Cesar Charlone and co-director Fernando Meirelles team up again for the true story of the dramatic 1971 prison escape of 101 political prisoners from the Tupamaros, a legendary urban guerrilla group, including Pepe Mújica, who later became president of Uruguay. Written by L.A.-based Mariana Santangelo, based at Ojo Films, star of “In This Tricky Life,” winner of the Platino Award. “Society of the Snow” actor Enzo Vogrincic and “Abuso” will be presented by Alterna Media from Uruguay during Series Match, led by Maria Laura Berch, co-director of “La Noche Sin Mí” with Natalia Oreiro and Joaquín Romero Vercellino (“Punta Blanca”).
“Murderers in Paradise” (Movioca, Ginga stories)
A married couple of German hitmen reach Bahia for one last job. A spiritual awakening and tropical paradise tempt them to reinvent themselves as restaurant owners. But their instincts, as the local police close their doors, pull them back to the life they are escaping. “A sun-drenched action thriller, seasoned with humor, spirituality and the unmistakable flavor of Bahia,” says creator Bruno Bloch (“BO”). Produced by Brazil’s Movioca, behind the flagship format export hit “Drag Me as a Queen,” co-produced with NBC Universal for E! and Barcelona’s Ginga Stories, a premium co-pro specialist in Europe and Latin America.
“Call back,” (cable car films, left tackle films)
The second project at the Berlinale Series Market from Funicular Films (“This Is Not Zweden”), where “Robbery, Beating and Death” was also pitched during the Co-Pro Series. Here it collaborates with the recently launched Left Tackle, led by Esther Cabrero and Albert Quintela, on a project by Joana and Mireia Vilapuig who broke out as creators with the semi-autobiographical ‘Selftape’. In ‘Callback’, at a European film festival, just before the premiere of her feature debut, 30-year-old director Fran publicly accuses her producer and leading actor of abuse. “We question the purpose of public shaming and cancellation when the purpose is to build a fairer, more equal world,” the Vailapuig sisters note.
“Monika – Victory and Death,” (Zeitsprung Pictures, Mariawood Producciones, Fine Time Film Production)
The extraordinarily dramatized true story of the life and death of Monika Ertl, daughter of Leni Riefenstahl’s lover, who, converted into a guerrilla avenger, shoots Che Guevara’s murderer in a political and personal vendetta and tries to kidnap Klaus Barbie. A robust production and talent package with Cologne-based Zeitsprung Pictures, Beta Film’s Peter Lohner co-founded Fine Time, Verónica Triana, co-creator of Netflix’s ‘Delirium’, María Elena Wood, creator and producer of ‘News of a Kidnapping’, and ‘Sissi’ co-head writer Robert Krause.
“The Runaway,” (SKP Ent.)
Led by Josef Rusnak, behind the science fiction thriller ‘The Thirteenth Floor’, from Roland Emmerich’s Centropolis, the true story of Detlef Kowalewski, a 1980s German heavy metal guitarist who became a prison escape artist and eventually fled to Brazil. “I’ve always been drawn to great adventure stories. But when I read Josef’s take on Detlef Kowalewski’s memoirs – especially the prison dialogues and the way he builds loyalty from within – I realized that this wasn’t just a prison escape story,” says producer Alexander Keil. “It’s about a man who makes himself a legend and the price of believing his own myth. That’s when I knew I was in.”
“Scorched Earth” (Villano)
From the Chilean Villano, which has ‘The Red Hanger’ on the prestigious Perspectives beach in Berlin. “A young photographer travels to southern Chile to investigate the origins of her family’s fortune, built through German colonization. As she confronts the legendary crime of her great-aunt, known as ‘The Nero Woman,’ long-buried violence begins to resurface,” the synopsis reads. “’Scorched Earth’ is a psychological noir drama that explores how private family myths conceal collective historical trauma,” it adds. Created by Paula del Fierro and Enrique Videla, important writers of ‘La Jauría’. The project has a completed first draft of the pilot and an expanded series bible.
‘Seven women’, (Boutique films, Brazil)
Uniting creator Angela Chaves whose ‘Desperate Lies’ was Netflix’s non-English global No. 1 in 2024, and Boutique, behind 2016’s ‘3%’, Netflix’s first major non-English international breakthrough. A reinterpretation of Letícia Wierzchowski’s 2002 novel, which inspired Globo’s ‘A Casa das Sete Mulheres’, sold to more than 80 countries and continues to turn against the female relatives of rebel leader Bento Gonçalves, who was sent to the family farm during Brazil’s 1835-45 Ragamuffin Revolution. But they will be viewed from a “contemporary perspective that highlights the voices of the female protagonists as well as their journeys to freedom,” says Boutique’s Mariana Coelho.
