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“Blindspot Berlin,” a TIFF standout starring “All Quiet on the Western Front” lead Albrecht Schuch, swept Best Fiction Series, Screenplay and an Audience Award at the 4th edition of Cadiz’s South International Series Festival
on Wednesday night.
Its triple whammy was announced at a SISF prize gala whose other awards recognized many of the buzziest titles at this year’s carefully curated lineup: Danish docuseries “The Oligarch and the Art Dealer,” Isabel Coixet’s “Someone Should Ban Sunday Afternoons,” “Patagonia,,” created by Chile’s Patricio Pereira and María Elena Wood, Norway’s “Still Breathing” and Mediaset España’s non-fiction “The Dirty Years: Where is Nani?”
Sold by Beta Film and backed by Germany’s ARD, Europe’s biggest public broadcaster, as well as rbb, NDR, and HR, true-crime thriller “Blindspot Berlin” charts German police efforts to prevent Berlin’s Dec. 19 2016 Christmas market terror attack which killed 13 and injured dozens.Yet their efforts are undermined by the very German institutions meant to support them.
From co-creator, co-writer and director David Nawrath (“Your Honor,” “Atlas”),“Blindspot Berlin” was praised by a SISF jury for its “extraordinary narrative force, an experience of suspense and dramatic tension which traps viewers until the end, even if they knew how things finally played out.”
Part of that tension comes from the rationing of information, the jury observes. It also derives from the constant creation of narrative knots of tension, such as in Episode 1 when Detective Lieutenant Frank Laudlin (Schuch) and Iraq-born rookie police officer Isra Al-Husseini (Bayan Layla, “Elaha”) are racing not to stop a terrorist attack but a German-soil-based recruitment for the Islamic State.
SISF’s three prizes adds to selection for the Toronto Film Festival’s prestigious Primetime section, where “Blindspot Berlin” was one of the only two European series to make the cut, and a Filmin pick-up for Spain, announced on the first day of SISF.
Other Big Prizes
Elsewhere, “The Oligarch and the Art Dealer,” an Arte series co-created, written and directed by Andreas Dalsgaard, scored Best Non-Fiction Series, having proved a Sundance, CPH-DOX and Canneseries highlight.
Isabel Coixet scooped the Cadiz City Prize for “Someone Should Ban Sunday Afternoons,” an Arte series produced by ”The Bureau” showrunner Eric Rochant’s Maui Entertainment in France. Tim Robbins makes guest appearances in a drama comedy miniseries where three twenty-something film buff flatmates in Paris spend Sunday afternoons watching the saddest films they can find, while navigating existential qualms. The award prized the series “refinement, for being a perfect visual gift and a contemporary generational portrait which needs to be heard,” a Cadiz jury said.
In terms of new series, a Special Mention in Fiction Series went to an anticipated SISF world premiere, “Patagonia,” an echo thriller/family drama set in southern Chile’s dazzling millennial-old larch tree forests also distinguished by an empathy-inducing central performance by Itziar Ituño (“Money Heist,” “Intimacy”).
Best Fiction Cast was won by Norwegian agenda-driven medical drama “Still Breathing,” billed as Norway’s answer to “The Pitt.” and whose debut this April gave Norwegian public broadcaster NRK its biggest-ever opening for a drama outside of the pubcaster’s Christmas shows.
The SISF jury praised the series’ “extraordinary capacity to construct, through a choral cast the portrait of a diverse and complex society. The naturalness, coherence and solidity of the performances, both leads and secondary, configure a credible human universe full of nuance.”
The series’ creator is “Occupied” writer Karianne Lund, “Safe House’s” Erik Svensson directs. “Still Breathing” is produced by “Beforeigners” Rubicon TV, a Banijay company,
Of Spanish series, beyond “Patagonia,” a pioneering Spain-Chile co-production, the biggest winner proved to be another buzz title, “The Dirty Years: Where is Nani?” from Mediaset España, which used talking heads and archive footage to reconstruct the case of El Nani, a young small time criminal who disappeared in police custody in 1983. The subsequent court case involving the Francoist throwback police culprits became a show trial for Spain’s young democracy.
South Boost Awards
South Boost, a six-project competition for Andalusian TV producers, was won by Odeón Studios’ “Los extranjeros,” created by Julio Blez and Hugo Baena, set in an Andalusian mining town in the late 1980s and mixing murder mystery and sci-fi.
A Special Mention went to Enciende TV’s six-episode “Folklóricas,” created by Fany de la Chica and Miguel Ángel Parra and reuniting four faded copla stars for a TV documentary in 1991, reigniting old rivalries.
