Balkan TV drama scene booming | Features

When a police drama The silence sold to the German channel ZDF, to the French Arte, to the Belgian Lumière and more recently to HBO Europe, the Croatian producer Nebojsa Taraba of Drugi Plan, based in Zagreb, was surprised, even if several of his shows had traveled to the ‘international. These titles included a thriller The paperwhich was sold to Netflix in 2016, while the independent company went on to produce the first-ever HBO TV series Adria. Successdirected by Academy Award winner Danis Tanovic.

“We didn’t do The silence with the international market in mind, but (distributor) Beta Film recognized its potential,” suggests Taraba. The series is directed by Croatian director Dalibor Matanic (2015 Un Certain Regard jury prize for feature film). The high sun) and follows a journalist, played by Goran Bogdan, and two police officers as they uncover a sex trafficking ring stretching from Croatia to Ukraine.

Croatia is one of several Balkan countries, along with Serbia and Bulgaria, that are building a reputation as a rich source of distinctive new drama series for international buyers. “The silence is very important to us, because large international buyers like Netflix or HBO need to recognize that this region is not just a segmented market made up of small countries, but rather an area of ​​around 20 million people who speak a very similar language , travel and do business. together on a daily basis,” explains Taraba.

Beta Film already knows this: the Munich producer, financier and distributor acquired a majority stake in Drugi Plan last year. “The Southeast European region is growing rapidly as a creative market and we are excited to see the quality of its production increasing,” says Veronika Kovacova, Beta Film’s vice president of international sales and acquisitions for Eastern Europe and Turkey. “With her rich history and cultural diversity, combined with her great creative talent, she has all the ingredients for amazing stories.”

When asked to explain the growing international appeal of Balkan dramas, Gabor Krigler, head of studies at the Midpoint Series program, a workshop for Central and Eastern European creators, says they tend to offer strong and unique points of view, coming from a region with a recent tumultuous past. “In general, projects from the Balkan region display very raw emotions and hard-hitting honesty, something that shows from elsewhere have a harder time achieving,” he offers.

Extensive collaboration

Co-productions between countries in the region have been the modus operandi of the cinematic world for more than 15 years, and the same production companies now collaborate on high-end television content. The last socialist artifactwhich won the award for best series in the International Panorama section at Series Mania last year, is a perfect example: it was co-produced by the Croatian company Kinorama, the Serbian company Sense Production, the Slovenian company Perfo and the Finnish Citizen Jane, with the Croatian public channel HRT as broadcaster. main financier, and with the participation of the Serbian public channel RTS, which pre-purchased the show.

Also directed by Matanic and featuring regionally renowned talent from Croatia, Serbia and Slovenia, the six-episode miniseries addresses workers’ rights and the decline of local industry. “It’s not an obvious choice for international buyers who typically expect to find genre fare in our region,” says Ankica Juric Tilic, CEO and producer of Kinorama. “But viewers in France and Spain (where it was broadcast at Series Mania in Lille and at Serielizados in Barcelona) were immediately sensitive to the theme: the feeling of despair due to the loss (of jobs) is recognizable in all Europe.”

“I think the main reason for the success of the series is the time we took to develop the storyline, but also the demanding production,” says Milan Stojanovic, CEO of Sense Production. “In the region, deadlines are generally short and budgets tight, which means that the crucial writing process suffers. »

Even if this is the case, Boban Jevtic, head of content strategy and development at Firefly Productions, notes that the high volume of series produced in Serbia – around 30 in 2021 alone – makes a big difference in the market , citing busy and changed teams. viewing habits. Jevtic joined Firefly in 2019, after leading Film Center Serbia for four years. Firefly is directed by Ivana Mikovic, former deputy director of RTS. Both participated in the Berlinale Series at the EFM this year with Black weddinga dark horror thriller series set in eastern Serbia, a region known for its own dark magic.

Unlike most companies in the region, Firefly always develops several shows in parallel. “We have four projects ready to go into production,” says Jevtic. That’s why the company is building a studio near Belgrade, complete with three sound stages, a water tank and four hectares of backlot. Production services in Serbia have generated a lot of business, especially since the territory introduced a 20% tax incentive in 2016 (increasing it to 25% two years later), and the new studio will make the territory more competitive and will serve Firefly for its own productions. One of them is Frustrationco-developed with the Hungarian Joyrider, with Tanovic attached (see box).

Role of broadcasters

Funding from national broadcasters is crucial to producing high-end television programming in the region. Bad blood, a Serbian television series and prequel film (the latter recently sold to Netflix), is one example. Produced by Belgrade-based This and That Productions, Bad blood is a period piece set in 1850s Serbia, then part of the Ottoman Empire. It features talent from Serbia, Bosnia, Albania and Turkey, including popular Turkish actor Tim Seyfi.

“Netflix probably liked the casting, as well as the setting and production value, which can attract a much wider audience than the Serbian audience,” says producer Snezana van Houwelingen of This and That. “This kind of budget would be difficult to achieve without the participation of the RTS. »

Van Houwelingen is currently working on Saber with RTS as main financier and Drugi Plan as co-producer. A political crime drama about the 2003 assassination of Serbian Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic, the series won Best Pitch at the Sarajevo Film Festival’s CineLink Drama in 2019. Beta Film is on board for international sales.

Although Serbian RTS and Croatian HRT are public giants who may be reluctant to work together directly in light of the Balkan war in the 1990s, they too are waking up to the reality of the market. With The last socialist artifact Now broadcast on RTS in prime time, the time when the two companies could join forces to create a high-end program is not far away.

“We are open to collaboration with all public broadcasters, including RTS,” says Jasmina Bozinovska Zivalj, head of the fiction department at HRT. “Our countries share similar social, political and cultural experiences, which constitutes a good basis for producing attractive and quality content. »

Marko Novakovic, editor-in-chief of local drama content at RTS, agrees: “We are investing more and more in this type of content, and the first screening of The last socialist artifact on our channel proves that we are open to the production and placement of quality television series, wherever they come from.

Commercial broadcasters such as United Media also create premium content in the Balkans. His Serbian detective series Awakewith local star Ivana Vukovic playing against her usual brand of comedy, won the Audience Award at Canneseries last year.

Netflix’s growing interest in content from the region could even lead the streaming giant to invest in local production. HBO’s involvement ahead of its transformation into HBO Max (which launched this month across the former Yugoslavia and Bulgaria) could also signal its imminent return to Southeast Europe as a producer – giving the television content from the Balkans the impetus it needs to follow the production stages of the territories. like Spain and South Korea.