Russia Film and TV Advocacy Org Roskino Barred From France’s Series Mania Festival

Marta Balaga Returning barely six months after its 2021 edition, which wrapped in September, French TV festival Series Mania welcomed Jury President Julia Sinkevych,who arrived in Lille from war-torn Ukraine.“I didn’t know if I would be lucky enough to be here tonight,” said Sinkevych to a standing ovation, with Laurence Herszberg, Series Mania general director, observing that culture cannot be insensitive to what is happening.“The whole world is now admiring our resistance, the resistance of the Ukrainian people. But there is another battlefield, which is culture, and I want us to be noticed, recognized and admired on the cultural battlefield, too,” added Sinkevych.“This [conflict] has been going on for a long time and there have been many episodes in this TV series.

Series Mania boasts a plethora of riches, including, just for starters, the latest series from “The Wire’s” David Simon, and “Vikings’” Michael Hirst and “The Responder,” starring Martin Freeman, which is already being talked up as the European series of the year. And it bowed on BBC One in January. The following selection may well not rep the best 10 titles at this year’s Series Mania. Some of those will only be revealed in a final jury verdict, if then.

Marta Balaga Thanks to fresh takes on established genres and highlighting local elements, Finnish drama is commanding attention from international buyers. A Series Mania Focus on Finland will teasing more series to come, from “Nordic blue” to horror for kids and a Christmas fairytale crime story.

Tim Dams It may only be six months since 2021’s pandemic-delayed edition of Series Mania took place, but the annual Lille, France-based drama festival returns once again but this time in its traditional slot of March 18-25.It’s been “challenging” for the Series Mania team to pull together 2022’s program so soon after last year’s event, says general director Laurence Herszberg.However, it hasn’t been hard to attract projects to the festival. In a reflection of both Series Mania’s growing stature and the buoyant state of the scripted TV market, the event had 331 submissions from 46 different countries to the competition program.

Marta Balaga Ukrainian producer Julia Sinkevych, named main jury president at French TV festival Series Mania, is still hoping to come to Lille this week despite the ongoing war.“Last night, there was bombing not far from Lviv, so you never know. [Producer] Dariusz Jabłoński and the Polish Film Academy are helping out Ukrainian filmmakers and they will pick me up when I am in Poland,” she tells Variety during a conversation interrupted by a siren.“Usually, it means you have to hide.

Peter Debruge Chief Film CriticBack together in person after two years of going virtual during the pandemic, the Austin-based SXSW Film Festival has announced its juried prizes. As in previous editions, the awards show happened at the midpoint of the nine-day event, before SXSW’s music events suck much of the attention away from film screenings.The top prize in narrative feature competition went to “I Love My Dad,” written and directed by James Morosini, who also stars as a younger version of himself in this uncomfortable retelling of how he was catfished by his father (played by Patton Oswalt).“Morosini displays massive empathy as a filmmaker to get into the mind of the father he feels betrayed by, and also as an actor portraying the impact of that betrayal,” said the jury, who also gave special jury prizes to the cast and crew of “It Is in Us All” and Elizaveta Yankovskaya, star of the Russian film “Nika.” Best documentary feature honors went to director Rosa Ruth Boesten’s “Master of Light,” a portrait of once-incarcerated painter George Anthony Morton’s steps to rebuild his life after prison, which impressed its jury for its empathy as well.“With astonishing intimacy, the film’s visuals build an artful bridge between two- and three-dimensional realms that are deeply rooted and utterly transcendent,” the jury explained.

Emiliano De Pablos Spain’s TV industry will make history at Series Mania Forum 2022, with its biggest panel and sneak peek series presentation presence ever at a major TV market. The Spanish conference attendance – alongside Finland’s panel spread – also weighs in as the biggest from any single country at the upcoming edition of the most important co-production event for scripted TV series in Europe.Series Mania Forum runs on-site over March 22-24 in Lille, northern France, under the larger Series Mania Festival umbrella.Organized by ICEX Spain Trade & Investment, the country’s export and inward investment board, the Spanish pavilion at the Lille Grand Palais will host a record-breaking delegation for Spain of around 20 companies and more than 50 executives. That’s a sign of just how much Series Mania has grown as an industry forum in the last few years, and of Spain’s ambition to ramp up exports of Spanish movies and TV content via a Spain AVS Hub plan whose total investment through 2025 is tabbed at $1.8 billion in state incentives and government-engineered financing.

Naman Ramachandran Seven senior figures of the Ukrainian film industry, including 84-year-old doyenne Ada Rogovtseva, have spoken out against the Russian invasion of their country and have joined the numerous calls for a boycott of Russian culture. Ada Rogovtseva, actor (“Taras Bulba”), professor at the National University of Culture. Remains in Ukraine.I volunteer at home.

Marta Balaga Dutch Features has acquired international rights to Finnish streaming service Elisa Viihde’s crime series “Evilside,” a six-hour Archipelago thriller set in the Oulu region of northern Finland.Filming took place from Dec. 2021 through Feb.

Todd Spangler NY Digital EditorSpotify has suspended premium service in Russia after the country launched its war on Ukraine — a move that the audio streaming powerhouse expects to result in a loss of about 1.5 million paying customers in the first quarter of 2022.That’s according to Spotify CFO Paul Vogel, who spoke at Morgan Stanley’s 2022 Technology, Media and Telecom Conference on Wednesday. According to a Spotify spokesperson, the loss of its business in Russia is not material: The country represents less than 1% of total revenue.Vogel also alluded to the recent controversy over podcaster Joe Rogan, which has spurred calls to boycott the streamer (but Vogel didn’t identify Rogan by name).Prior to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, according to Vogel, Spotify was trending ahead of its Q1 guidance of adding a net 8 million total users, including 3 million paying customers.

Holly Jones An idyllic private island retreat sees a set of estranged, longtime companions reunite after nearly 30 years of jobs and distance pulling them in opposite directions. Amidst the celebration, nefarious footage of a transgression against a female friend mysteriously resurfaces.

Nick Vivarelli International CorrespondentMo Abudu, CEO of Nigeria’s The EbonyLife Group, will be celebrated by France’s upcoming Series Mania festival with its Women in Series Award. The prize, given in tandem with the European Women’s Audiovisual Network (EWA Network) and advocacy group Pour Les Femmes Dans Les Médias (PFDM), honors a remarkable woman from the audiovisual industry for her vision and leadership.

Naman Ramachandran Ukrainian film producer and co-founder of the Ukrainian Film Academy Julia Sinkevych (“Heat Singers”) has been selected as jury president for this year’s Series Mania Festival and its international competition. “She has always been committed to supporting Ukrainian artists and the culture of her country from Kyiv, where she lives,” the festival said in a statement.

The Co-Founder of the Ukrainian Film Academy has been named Jury President for this year’s Series Mania.

Naman Ramachandran The European Film Academy (EFA) has issued an unequivocal condemnation of President Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and excluded Russia from the European Film Awards.In a statement released on Tuesday, the EFA said: “The Academy strongly condemns the war started by Russia – Ukraine’s sovereignty and territory must be respected. Putin’s actions are atrocious and totally unacceptable, and we strongly condemn them.”“What concerns us most is the fate of the Ukrainians, and our hearts are with the Ukrainian filmmaking community. We are fully aware that several of our members are fighting with arms against the aggressor.

Naman Ramachandran The European Film Academy (EFA) has issued an unequivocal condemnation of President Putin’s invasion of Ukraine after Ukrainian filmmaker Sergei Loznitsa expressed his dissatisfaction with their earlier statement and resigned his EFA membership.On Feb. 24, after Russia invaded Ukraine, the EFA had issued a statement pledging their support to the Ukrainian filmmaking community.

Ukraine, the German city's mayor said Tuesday.Munich Mayor Dieter Reiter announced the decision after Gergiev didn't respond to Reiter's demand that the 68-year-old Russian conductor change course.“I had expected him to rethink and revise his very positive assessment of the Russian leader,” Reiter said. “After this didn’t occur, the only option is the immediate severance of ties."Gergiev has been Munich’s chief conductor since the 2015-16 season.A day earlier, the Verbier Festival said Gergiev resigned as music director at its request.Gergiev, a friend and supporter of Putin, is the music director of the Mariinsky Theatre in St.

Nick Vivarelli International CorrespondentDue to the invasion of Ukraine, the Russian pavilion at the upcoming Biennale arts exhibition in Venice has been scrapped, as the Venice Film Festival continues to mull its response to calls for a boycott of Russian movies at the event’s 77th edition.Meanwhile, the Locarno Film Festival said on Monday that it will certainly be showing Russian films at its upcoming edition in August.Kicking off in April, the Venice Biennale, which is the multidisciplinary arts organization behind the Venice Film Festival, expressed solidarity with Russian visual artists Alexandra Sukhareva and Kirill Savchenkov and the exhibition’s curator Raimundas Malašauskas, who on Sunday announced they were pulling out of the art show on their own initiative because “this war is politically and humanly intolerable,” as Malašauskas put it in a statement.

Russian film and TV organization Roskino has been banned from next month’s Series Mania and Millennium Media exec Yariv Lerner has issued a call to help Ukrainian film professionals, as the media world continues to react to the conflict.