Blackport Wins Grand Prize at Series Mania 2021

Series Mania Festival has unveiled a roster of award winners, with Blackport, The Last Socialist Artefact and Germinal scoring nods.

Out of eight series in the international competition, Blackport (Iceland), originally pitched at Series Mania Forum’s Co-Pro Pitching Sessions, won the grand prize. The Best Actress award was given to Marie Reuther for Kamikaze (Denmark) and Best Actor was given as an ensemble prize to Itamar Rotschild, Orr Amrami and Schmuel Vilozni for The Echo of your Voice (Israel).

In the first international panorama, The Last Socialist Artefact (Croatia), also originally pitched at Series Mania Forum’s Co-Pro Pitching Sessions, won Best Series out of the 15 presented. Vida de Colores (Colombia) was awarded the Special Jury Prize. The Best Series—Student Award was given to We Are Lady Parts (U.K.).

The French competition awarded Jeune et Golri Best Series. Best Actress went to Ariane Labed for L’Opéra and Best Actor went to Daniel Njo Lobé for The Code. Pierre Leroux (Pierre III) won Best Music for his work in Jeune et Golri.

The Australian series Fisk won Best Series in the comedy competition, and the Canadian series Something Undone won Best Series in the short forms competition.

Finally, the Audience Award, given to the audience’s favorite series, was awarded to the French series Germinal, based on the eponymous Émile Zola novel.

“Given the fantastic response we have received the last few days, we can say with certainty Series Mania was a tremendous success and far exceeded our expectations,” said Laurence Herszberg, founder and general director of Series Mania.

Herszberg continued, “We are delighted to announce that two of our big winners tonight, Blackport and The Last Socialist Artefact, were originally pitched at our Forum’s Co-Pro Pitching Sessions, once again reinforcing the fact that Series Mania is the place where series begin.”