List of series 2020

Jury of the best series from the Central and Eastern Europe (2020)

Main Competition: In the competition section of the Serial Killer festival, as always, you will find the best of the drama series of Central and Eastern Europe that have been created in the last year. Even in our region a gradual departure from ordinary detective stories can be seen. The Estonian Traitor is another elegant spy thriller after last year’s The Sleepers of the Czech HBO, which takes place in the zero years, but it also says a lot about the present. The Russian detective drama A Good Man is partly a reconstruction of the search for the real Angarsk maniac, and is thus a kind of response to the current popularity of true crime. Another Russian representative in the Competition, The Flight, is a genre mix about six characters who fortunately did not fly on a plane together. The Balkan series remind us of the specific non-negotiability of local stories and Tuff Money the ingenuity of Romanian filmmakers, including Cristian Mungiu, whose company produced the series.

Focus: Great Britain: The program section dedicated to British series focuses on the presentation of some of the most significant current trends in UK. The traditionally popular British female comedians used to act most often in sitcoms and sketches, today they write a little more ambitious comedy dramas for themselves. Serial Killer features two of them – Daisy Haggard as Miranda in Back to Life and Roisin Conaty as Marcella in GameFace. The social-realistic point of view of the local film school is being heard in the Nest by screenwriter Nicole Taylor, who perceives the class tensions in Britain as the basis for a dramatic thriller. Jack Thorne loves today’s workers’ Britain, which he is showing at the moment of the crisis – in The Accident. The Salisbury Poisonings and White House Farm are the local contributions to the true crime genre. The reconstructions of two real crimes, which have their chapters in British history, show the 1980s and the present.

International panorama: The International Panorama program section is traditionally a collection of the best of contemporary European series, whose trends in the field of dramatic series are still set especially in Scandinavia. After the departure from dark detective stories the producers focus on ambitious political dramas and thrillers, often related to local efforts to make way for progressive politics. However, true crime is still in great demand, which until recently was the domain of podcasts and documentaries. Series reconstructions of crimes that actually happened combine the appeal of traditional detective stories with the complexity of social or psychological dramas.

Web series: A selection of the worldwide production of web series, which, in contrast to the content created for typical broadcasting, excel in the diversity of topics, author’s freedom, speed of production and also up-to-dateness. In each case you will have the possibility to watch one episode of web series from countries such as France, Japan or Finland.

Special screening: An exclusive premiere screening of Belgian catastrophic thriller Blackout.