Industry

Laurence Herszberg, founder and general director of Series Mania (August 26 – September 2) announced today the launch of Eureka Series, an intensive 14-week, full-time training course for writers and producers of television drama series from all over Europe. Delivered in partnership with La Fémis, it is an initiative created by the Series Mania Institute to train professionals in the rapidly changing TV series industry. Call for Applications for Eureka Series opens today with a deadline of May 14 for submissions. The selected participants will be given the opportunity attend this year’s Series Mania Forum (August 30 – September 1) in Lille, France. To submit online, please go to:
https://seriesmania.com/institute/en/eureka-series/call-for-applications/

This training course will bring together 12 participants (6 writers and 6 producers) of various European nationalities. They will benefit from the support of international teachers and professionals, through partnerships with schools such as ECAM (Spain), the Lodz Film School (Poland), IFS (Germany), Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia (Italy) and Westerdals (Norway). The course culminates in a two-week residency, at the end of which projects will be pitched to a jury of broadcasters, including France Télévisions, RAI (Italy) and ZDF (Germany), who collectively form The Alliance.

Eureka Series, set to be held in Lille from September 6 – December 10, 2021, will include masterclasses with creators, showrunners, scriptwriters, directors, and producers of TV series from Europe and beyond, as well as case studies of European series in the company of the creators. The training course will also include theoretical and practical courses on the structure, financing and production of European series and group work on future co-production projects.

“Since announcing the Series Mania Institute last June, we have been working toward our mission to reinforce the training of European professionals in the field of series and audiovisual content. With today’s launch of Eureka Series, we are encouraging the emergence of new talent from a diversity of backgrounds and origins and bringing together multiple nationalities to benefit from the support of international teachers, industry professionals and our partner schools. We could not be prouder,” commented Herszberg.

Specific objectives of Eureka Series include: Develop a European creative network to encourage the sharing of knowledge and creative ideas across borders; remove barriers between TV professionals, uniting writers, directors, producers and broadcasters around a common work culture; and open up the industry to more diverse profiles, allowing more representation in the stories that are told and in who is telling them. Eureka Series is part of the Series Mania Institute, supported by the Hauts-de-France Region and the CNC.