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The European Writers Club announces the six projects set to join the Boosting Concepts sessions

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- The new series projects, developed by six writers together with six independent producers, have been selected by EWC’s European partner broadcasters

The European Writers Club announces the six projects set to join the Boosting Concepts sessions
Mona Masri, creator of the participating Swedish series The Building

The European Writers Club (EWC) has announced the six already-developed projects which will move on to the Boosting Concepts sessions, after a total of 12 were originally presented during the Boosting Ideas workshops held in Copenhagen and Tallinn last year.

Launched at Fontainebleau’s Série Series on 30 June 2022, the EWC is a new pilot project backed by the European Union, which aims to “empower and connect” European TV series writers to “boost original ideas for TV drama via fast-tracking the development process, and emphasising co-creation and international exchange”.

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The first of the six projects advancing to the next stage is The Umbrella Murderer (Denmark), created by Lars von Trier’s long-time editor Molly Malene Stensgaard, and staged by Miso Film and TV2 Denmark. The series is described as “a more or less true spy drama, set in a Europe that never left the Cold War”.

The other two Nordic projects on the slate are the Swedish series The Building, created by Mona Masri (Snabba Cash [+see also:
interview: Evin Ahmad
series profile
]
, Copenhagen Cowboy [+see also:
series review
trailer
interview: Nicolas Winding Refn
series profile
]
), produced by Zentropa with SVT; and the Norwegian series Holmlia Love, created by Mikael Diseth (the producer of Countrymen) for Monster and NRK. The first show revolves around a Swedish immigrant family of four who find their home being threatened with demolition, only to realise that the family itself is falling apart, whilst the second is billed as “a declaration of love to the community which emerged in Holmlia, Oslo, after the real-life racist murder of 15-year-old Benjamin Hermansen that took place on 26 January 2001”.

Up next is the French series Alpha, created by Louis Aubert and Matthieu Bernard for Les films du Cygne/Storia TV and France Télévisions. The story begins on the eve of a major economic forum organised by the four most polluting companies in Europe. There, a group of young European activists, the Alphas, kidnap the sons and daughters of the bosses of these firms to force them to change their environmental policies.

Meanwhile, the Dutch series Groningen HIV Case, created by Manju Reijmer for Lemming Film and Videoland, zooms in on the country’s controversial sexual abuse case where three men purposefully injected queer victims with HIV.

Finally, the last project is the Czech series Frontward, created by Lukas Sigmund for KFS Production and Czech Television. It follows a homicide detective who starts finding the body of the same person over and over again, and discovers connections between the cases and her own family.

Commenting on the results of this first session, the head of the project, Thomas Gammeltoft, said: “We initially invited 12 writers experienced in TV series, from 12 different European countries, to join our two one-week camps for the Boosting Ideas session, the first being in Copenhagen. We asked them to come along with nothing but the very first glimpse of an original idea they’d like to work on. At the end of the second boosting camp in Tallinn, they presented 12 fully fleshed-out ideas for TV series. All of them are stories told by original voices that can resonate throughout Europe. This is the result of exchange, sharing and collaboration amongst the writers and our attached broadcasters, who got involved in the process with them, as well as the tremendous work of our facilitators and tutors from Le Groupe Ouest.

“I must say that the result even surprised me: we reached way beyond our initial goal of seeing some projects realised. As of today, four of the projects are already with producers and have been commissioned for development by our broadcasters. We have managed to create a fast track for the creation of ideas by introducing new and innovative dynamics, and further to this, we see that the network we have built up between the writers and the broadcasters is alive and kicking,” he added.

The next training sessions, led by TorinoFilmLab’s SeriesLab programme, will take place in Cork from 11-16 April and in Galicia from 30 May-5 June. The goal is for the projects to end up with new international partners and to be ready for script commissioning. The EWC is backed by the European Union, Screen Ireland, Spain’s AGADIC, the Estonian Film Institute, the National Film School of Denmark, the Danish Film Institute, the Nordic Writers Associations, the Nordisk Film & TV Fond and Vision Denmark.

The full list of projects is as follows:

The Umbrella Murderer (Denmark)
Created by: Molly Malene Stensgaard
Producers: Miso Film, TV2 Denmark

The Building (Sweden)
Created by: Mona Masri
Producers: Zentropa, SVT

Holmlia Love (Norway)
Created by: Mikael Diseth
Producers: Monster, NRK

Alpha (France)
Created by: Louis Aubert, Matthieu Bernard
Producers: Les films du Cygne/Storia TV, France Télévisions

Groningen HIV Case (Netherlands)
Created by: Manju Reijmer
Producers: Lemming Film, Videoland

Frontward (Czech Republic)
Created by: Lukas Sigmund
Producers: KFS Production, Czech Television

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