This was the first year that we’ve attended Series Mania with Serial Eyes. This year’s edition in Lille was a great success by all accounts. Prior to the event, our participants had the assignment to reach out to producers and commissioning editors and set up individual meetings. All in all, this worked very well. The spacious meeting floor at the Grand Palais in Lille was incredibly conducive to these types of meet-ups. The participants came away from the event with a rolodex full of new contacts and a new-found swagger.
Alumni were also represented in full force. Juan Ortiz (SE 2016–2017) and Laura Grace (SE 2015–2016) were part of the Writers’ Campus. Jana Burbach (SE 2014–2015) and Alexander Lindh (SE 2013–2014) led three writers’ rooms that exposed festival attendees to the dynamics of a real-life writers’ room. Jana and Sullivan Le Postec (SE 2013–2014) were part of the panel “My First TV show”, discussing their respective shows Just Push Abuba and Les Engagés. On the “Film Schools” panel, Alexander Lindh talked about Serial Eyes and Harry Ayiotis (SE 2017–2018) presented Midpoint TV Launch. First Love, the digital series Dean Movshovitz (SE 2017–2018) had developed as part of a writers’ room before his time at Serial Eyes, won in the Short Form Series Competition.
We’d like to thank Lorraine Sullivan, Frederic Lavigne, Francesco Capurro and the entire team at Series Mania for their incredible support, and we wish them all the best for the next edition in 2019!