LILLE & PARIS, FRANCE – July 10, 2019 – Having launched this past March during the Series Mania Forum, the teams from Series Mania, CNC, (France’s National Center for Cinema and Moving Image) and Israel’s Gesher Multicultural Film Fund, today announced its Call For Applications for the first edition of its Franco-Israeli “Co-Writing Residency for Drama Series.” This Co-Writing Residency project will enable 10 screenwriters - five French and five Israeli – to work in pairs and mutually discover the writing methods of the two countries and develop series projects with strong international ambitions. Two writing workshops will be organized in the coming months: the first will be held in Israel in the fall and the second in France in the spring of 2020. The projects developed in this framework will be presented next year during Series Mania set for March 20-28, 2020 with the Series Mania Forum set for March 25-27, 2020.
"This residence is a first step. The idea is to build a creative incubator between our two countries to give birth to high quality series for an international audience,” commented Frédérique Bredin, President of CNC.
"From the beginning, it's been part of Series Mania’s mission to strengthen creativity and international cooperation. This is a first initiative and we hope that there will be more in the future," added Laurence Herszberg, founder and general director of Series Mania.
Applicants have until 30 September inclusive to submit their project on the dedicated website: https://seriesmania.com/en/industry/drama-series-israel-france
The participants in the residency will be selected by an international jury. The results of this call for applications will be announced on November 6th.
ABOUT SERIES MANIA
Created by Laurence Herszberg in 2010 with artistic director Frederic Lavigne while both were at the Forum des images, the Series Mania festival brings the best international series to the big screen and offers audiences (over 55,000 spectators in 2018) the rare opportunity to meet and learn from renowned showrunners, directors and television talent. Series Mania has developed into a unique event with wide recognition, entirely dedicated to series, aimed at the general public and industry professionals. For the 2019 edition, from March 22 to 30, the Festival is held once again in the French city of Lille (Hauts-de-France). As usual, it includes a program of world premieres and series selected for competition, overseen by a prestigious international jury.
ABOUT SERIES MANIA FORUM
Launched in 2013, Series ManiaForum, the industry arm of Series Mania, has become the place to be for all those involved in the creation of series from around the world. In just a few years, Series Mania Forum has already seen many projects come to fruition, including Eden, Stella Blomkvist, Keeping Faith and Tabula Rasa, with many others currently in production. In 2018, the Forum launched the first edition of Lille Transatlantic Dialogues, a one-day summit bringing together high-level political, corporate, creative and economic players from the TV and culture sectors in Europe and North America. With more than 2,700 registered professionals in 2019, the Forum the event where industry talent and decision-makers meet to create the new generation of serial fiction.
