For the first time, the international sales company True Colours was present at the Series Mania Festival and Forum with a dedicated line-up, a stand, and a series in the French Competition, Eldorado, winner, among other things, of the Best Actor award, which went to Karim Leklou.
Another title in their line-up was the Spanish series Millennial Mal, presented in the Coming Next from Spain showcase among the most promising upcoming productions from Spain, which recently had its premiere at the Malaga Festival.
It is a series of five 25-minute episodes about Judith, a forty-year-old who embarks on a ‘journey’ to transform herself into a perfect representative of GEN Z when she receives a letter from the university informing her that they have accepted her request for a scholarship… twenty years later! The only problem is that the requirement to obtain it is to be under thirty. However, Judith is in desperate need of money because she is suddenly unemployed and her beloved cat has had an accident. She therefore asks her roommate and two twenty-year-olds for help in building her new identity.
“It is a very pop series for the ‘old’ young adults, those who think they are still young but have already passed forty, just like the protagonist,” Elliot Gustin, COO of True Colours, told Cinema&Video International.
It is produced by Tornasol for the Spanish streaming platform Filmin (“which defines itself as the platform for outsiders,” commented journalist Irene Jiménez, who presented the showcase), and for the Portuguese RTP.
Eldorado is a series whose story is set in 1973, in the midst of the oil crisis, and tells of two engineers who invent a technology capable of detecting water bubbles in the desert. The two manage to convince an executive at Elf that it could also be used for oil exploration, giving rise to one of the greatest technological illusions in history and a major scandal.
It is directed by Louis Farge, created by Tarek Haoudy and Nacim Meta, and produced by TOP (The Original Production) for ARTE France, ARTE, and RTBF.
Another flagship title from True Colours under the ARTE brand is the six-part Swiss thriller The Palm Line, which intertwines the true story of one of the greatest art thefts—that of Caravaggio’s Nativity by the Sicilian Mafia—with the intimate portrait of love and defeat of a woman who discovers that her father’s death is connected to this crime.
Also presented at the last edition of the Series Mania Forum (in the Coming Next from Switzerland showcase), True Colours launched it at this year’s European Film Market.
It has generated a lot of interest, Gustin explains: “We have closed a deal with the United States and are closing with all the countries of the former Yugoslavia and Eastern Europe.” And he laments that he cannot say the same regarding Italy:
“It is a brilliant series, and I do not understand why no Italian broadcaster is interested in purchasing it. A crime series, which everyone is looking for today, of good quality, set in a location not often seen on TV like Lugano. It costs less than the price of a single episode in co-production or as an original, and it can be exploited across multiple windows, also considering the broadcasters’ streaming services. It is right to produce, but buying quality content at a good price is also a good idea: the notion that the audience won’t watch it because there are no big names in the cast is now outdated; viewers, even if those of Italian broadcasters are not the youngest, look for quality.”
The Palm Line was created by Mattia Lento, Thomas Ritter, and Maria Roselli, directed by Fulvio Bernasconi, and produced by Christof Neracher of hugofilm for RSI and ARTE, with executive production by Indiana Production for the Italian part. In addition to Lugano, filming also involved Palermo and Villa Erba on Lake Como.
From Portugal comes Broken Spies, created by Pandora da Cunha Telles, who is also the producer with her company Ukbar Filmes (in co-production with Poland). True Colours acquired it during the last edition of the European Film Market (within the Berlinale Series Market section), where this year the series was awarded the EUFCN Location Award (read here).
