Series
Mania Forum
Series Mania is Europe’s top festival for series. A place for serious series business, TV industry professionals gather in Lille, France for the Series Mania Forum and Lille Dialogues. Series Mania Forum brings together producers, distributors, directors, and screenwriters to exchange ideas and creative visions.
In 2021 and 2022 THE CATALYSTS were invited to elaborate and present Series Mania TV. Selected guests joined the intimate TV studio, to bring to the audience exclusive insights that go beyond what is presented on the main stages.
2022
The 2022 edition of Series Mania Forum placed local stories at the heart of a global business, and was the place to be for intense collaboration and creative exchange between different players of the industry. Over three days, AC hosted interviews and sessions with over 50 guests and guided the audience through a dense program, providing a 360° access of the conference to the remote audience - all from the TV studio in Lille’s Grand Palais.
Series Mania TV is part of the digital strategy of the Forum to make professional content accessible to worldwide audiences throughout the year.
Program Highlights
The program included daily guides to each day’s program panels, presentations of new series premieres and exclusive talks with selected guests. In 2022 the broadcast was also truffled with pre-produced content including focused interviews on the new talents to watch. Highlights also included panels such as “The French Touch in TV Series”, and a focus on co-producing with Taiwan. Producer of Babylon Berlin, Michael Polle, introduced audiences to his new project House of Promises. Laure Kniazeff, Founding Partner and Head Manager, Best Seller to Box Office and audio journalist Pierre Sérisier talked about the adaptation of books and podcasts to series. Laura Kaim and Marie Mingalon presented their agency The Singularist, dedicated to the representation of diversity in TV series. The topic was also raised in a talk with the Director of the European Film Market, Berlinale, Dennis Ruh.
Our personal highlight? An exclusive Series Mania TV interview with screenwriter and producer Michael Hirst, who was one of the headliners of these year’s program.
“I must say it’s been really good to be at this place now. Cannes is, you know… finished!”
2021
Series Mania 2021 gathered all the big names of the industry, with 2000+ professional delegates of the Forum present in Lille.
The program consisted of 80+ professional events, including pitching sessions, debates, presentations, professional announcements, writing residencies and high-level talks about the future of the European audiovisual industry in the frame of the Lille Dialogues. The premiered the event in a hybrid format, with an online platform including the web broadcast we hosted.
We created and hosted a three day program for Series Mania TV. Each day had hand-picked formats that provided sneak peeks behind closed doors and ended with daily wrap-ups. Prominent women in the industry, including Filippa Wallestam (EVP and Chief Content Officer at Nordic Entertainment Group), Superna Kalle (President, International Digital Networks at STARZ), and Christina Sulebakk (General Manager HBO Max EMEA), were invited to the studio and awarded as European Audiovisual Network Woman of the Year. The Series Mania Institute was successfully launched.
As part of a focus on Lille Dialogues, we had the honour to be joined by three Ministers of Culture.
Bénédicte Linard (Belgium, Wallonia), Anneli Ott (Estonie) and Graça Fonseca (Portugal) in a conversation guided by AC, discussed the future of European audiovisual industries and paths
for international collaborations.
Series Mania TV gave an opportunity to meet some of the brightest talents of the industry: it provided a possibility to dig deeper into some of this year’s pitched projects and to talk to the tutors and some writing residents. The Creative Bazaar is an absolutely central part of the Forum, however the talent usually do not take part to any panel sessions, so this was a great opportunity to enquire into what actually happens in a closed-shop residency.
We were finally delighted that producer Ankica Juric Tilic and director Dalibor Matanic joined us to present The Last Socialist Artefact - a compelling and warm Croatian social drama which was first pitched at the 2017 Series Mania Forum. The screening of the two first episodes was our highlight of the festival, and we were thrilled that the project was awarded Best Series in the International Panorama the next day. Will this production, coming from a small market, find its way to wider European and international audiences? We hope so, and undoubtedly Series Mania Forum offers new paths for very unique voices to be shared and heard - especially now, in a hybrid form combining physical and digital presence.
The program of the web TV included many more highlights, and for us, working on the three-day Series Mania TV programming was a track of intense learning, not only about the challenges but also about what a great asset such a broadcast can be for any event.
A big thank you to the entire Series Mania Team for this inspiring collaboration!