{"id":12579,"date":"2020-01-15T13:00:58","date_gmt":"2020-01-15T18:00:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dev2.worldscreen.com\/tvdrama\/worldscreen.com\/"},"modified":"2020-01-15T13:15:02","modified_gmt":"2020-01-15T18:15:02","slug":"foreign-affairs-2020","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvdrama\/foreign-affairs-2020\/","title":{"rendered":"Foreign Affairs"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Kristin Brzoznowski explores the continued demand for non-English-language drama.<\/em><\/p>\n

From stark-white Nordic skies to the bustling backstreets of Madrid to the heart of historic Istanbul, many of the drama series making their way to audiences around the globe nowadays are set far away from the bright lights of Hollywood or the soaring skyline of New York City. And, for the most part, the characters are speaking in their mother tongue. It\u2019s not simply a case of buyers being less enamored with American shows (though, that\u2019s true to some degree); the engaging stories of scripted series from a slew of different markets and sophisticated viewer tastes have brought a new vibrancy to an already competitive drama landscape\u2014one where language isn\u2019t really an issue.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat buyers are looking for are really strong series, and language is a secondary consideration,\u201d says Caroline Torrance, head of scripted at Banijay Rights. \u201cThey want something that is really authentic. If it so happens that it\u2019s in French, Swedish or Danish, that\u2019s fine. Over the past few years, we\u2019ve seen that people are much more open to series wherever they come from and in whatever language.\u201d<\/p>\n

In general, she says, requests are for local stories that will work internationally and feel authentic. \u201cSomehow, it just doesn\u2019t feel authentic if you\u2019ve got people only speaking in English all of the time,\u201d Torrance adds.<\/p>\n

Sarah Doole, director of global drama at Fremantle, agrees: \u201cIf it\u2019s a good story, it doesn\u2019t matter to us what language it\u2019s in\u2014a good story is a good story.\u201d<\/p>\n

Currently, of the shows that Fremantle is taking out to the international market, around 50 percent of them are not in English, says Doole. \u201cWe don\u2019t even really distinguish now, because we\u2019re telling stories in Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Finnish, German, French, Italian, Spanish (all different kinds of Spanish too). It\u2019s really about finding characters that the audience will believe in and then working with the very best talent to make those stories authentic. That\u2019s the key! Whatever language it\u2019s in, the language has to feel like it\u2019s part of the story. Growing up in Britain, we\u2019d have German stories about the war with English actors speaking in a German accent. You would never get that now! Thank God those days are over.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve seen a ton of series that artificially imposed English storylines with zero contribution to the overall narrative quality of a series,\u201d adds Robert Franke, ZDF Enterprises\u2019 VP of ZDFE.drama. \u201cWe don\u2019t believe so much in the notion that this will increase the marketability of a series. It will give you a higher chance to sell into the English-speaking markets, but then again, we are not willing to sacrifice the integrity of a story just for an increased chance to sell into the U.S. or U.K. if it doesn\u2019t make sense organically for the storyline.\u201d<\/p>\n

BEING AUTHENTIC
\n<\/strong>Eccho Rights, which has long built its business on non-English-language fare, is among the distributors basking in the glow of the market\u2019s openness. \u201cThere\u2019s absolutely a growing appetite for non-English-language drama,\u201d affirms Fredrik af Malmborg, managing director. \u201cThe trend has been going on for quite some time, but it\u2019s continuing at full force. Local-language drama is becoming more and more important, but also non-English-language is traveling much more.\u201d<\/p>\n

He notes that Turkish series \u201chelped to break the ice, but now Nordic dramas are performing really well and we see the prices increasing. Russian drama has now started to sell more, too. We just sold Silver Spoon<\/em>, a Russian series that is a few years old now, to two clients in Spain for a major amount.\u201d The company also licensed the Russian-language Trotsky <\/em>to Netflix, which itself has been ramping up local-language programming efforts across the globe.<\/p>\n

Calinos Entertainment has also been breaking new markets with its slate of Turkish dramas, which now includes the catalog of FOX Turkey. \u201cThere has been a steady increase in the demand for foreign-language dramas around the world,\u201d agrees Firat Gulgen, Calinos\u2019s CEO. \u201cVOD platforms such as Netflix, for example, have been investing in foreign-language productions for a few years now, too. This trend demonstrates that great stories can come from anywhere and can travel everywhere. The notion of what feels foreign versus local has evolved as generations increasingly spend more and more time online, and it\u2019s playing out in how we consume media as a whole.\u201d<\/p>\n

TALES FROM TURKEY
\n<\/strong>In the last two years, Calinos has found international traction with the Turkish-language series Woman\u00a0<\/em>and Our Story<\/em>, and the company believes Forbidden Fruit <\/em>will travel to a wide variety of markets as well.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt the moment, we are conducting negotiations for co-productions in several countries,\u201d adds Gulgen, noting that the aim is to find common stories.<\/p>\n

A+E Networks International embarked on its first international co-production with the period crime drama Miss Scarlet and the Duke\u00a0<\/em>and has followed up this effort by taking on global distribution for the Spanish-language Hern\u00e1n<\/em>. Produced by Spain\u2019s Onza Entertainment and Dopamine, a unit of Mexico\u2019s Grupo Salinas, the scripted series chronicles the journey of the legendary 16th-century conquistador Hern\u00e1n Cort\u00e9s\u2014telling a story that resonates both locally and globally, according to Helen Jurado, senior director of content sales for Latin America and U.S. Hispanic at A+E Networks.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor a long time, we had been looking at Latin America specifically for something that was like our version of Planet Earth<\/em>,\u201d she explains. \u201cPlanet Earth <\/em>was such a big emblem for the BBC, and it was a piece of IP that sold well across all platforms\u2014digital, pay, educational, free to air\u2014and it never went out of style. We needed something that was really globally relevant, but that was also relevant for Latin America.\u201d<\/p>\n

With Hern\u00e1n<\/em>, A+E saw the potential not only for LatAm success but \u201cthere was already interest from Spain and some other European countries like France and Italy,\u201d says Jurado. \u201cIt made sense for us to invest in that IP, not just for those territories but also looking at other markets.\u201d The deal was heralded by the company as \u201ca watershed moment\u201d in expanding the scope of its international IP distribution business.<\/p>\n

Banijay Rights has been in expansion mode, too, bolstering and diversifying its international drama business. \u201cWhen I started at what was then Zodiak, it was at the very beginning of this non-English-language-program boom,\u201d recalls Torrance. \u201cWe had The Returned<\/em>, and that was one of the first series that broke out and showed that you could get really good ratings,\u201d as the French-language series was a hit in English-speaking markets such as the U.S. and Australia. \u201cThat was five years ago. Distribution companies would invest almost nothing in things that weren\u2019t English; there were really small advances, and they were lucky to get anything. It has definitely grown. Over five years, our investment in acquiring both English and non-English series has increased. There\u2019s a really buoyant market for drama around the world, and it\u2019s nice that that includes non-English-language as well.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fremantle\u2019s \u201chigh-end-drama journey\u201d also started about five years ago, according to Doole, with Deutschland 83<\/em>. The success of Deutschland<\/em>, which became the first German-language show to air on an American network (SundanceTV), proved to Fremantle that its risks in this space could pay off. \u201cAs we went on our journey, we searched for great talent who have a fresh vision of the world and want to tell a story outside their home territory\u2014to make local content go global,\u201d Doole continues. \u201cLook at some of our shows over the past three or four years: My Brilliant Friend <\/em>was the first-ever non-English co-production with HBO,\u201d and the Italian show was a hit stateside on the premium pay channel.<\/p>\n

CROSSING BORDERS
\n<\/strong>Doole says it\u2019s been \u201ca gradual process\u201d for foreign-language programming to break down borders, citing the U.K. as one of the markets that needed to be opened up. \u201cOur first foray into that was with some Scandi drama about ten years ago, starting with subtitles,\u201d she recalls. \u201cThe next country to conquer was America, and we sold Deutschland\u00a0<\/em>to Sundance, but the big breakthrough was My Brilliant Friend <\/em>on HBO, which has several levels of subtitling. It was subtitled into English for the American audience, and we had quite a sophisticated process for that because the subtitles have to be written in as clever a way as the dialogue is\u2014otherwise, the way you read it on-screen doesn\u2019t click. You almost have to write a second script for the subtitles because there might be something quite subtle being said in a phrase that, if you were to translate directly, wouldn\u2019t make any sense to an English-speaking audience. My Brilliant Friend <\/em>was fascinating because in Italy parts were subtitled into Italian because a lot of Italy doesn\u2019t understand the Neapolitan dialect. But initially, America was a market of resistance.\u201d<\/p>\n

Canada, too, has accepted subtitles now, Doole says. But the market she\u2019s \u201cmost proud\u201d to have cracked is Australia, where Fremantle signed an exclusive deal with SBS for a broad mix of dramas, including the Scandi series Face to Face <\/em>and\u00a0Seizure<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Latin America is firmly in Fremantle\u2019s sights, as it recently bought a stake in the Latinxproducer The Immigrant. Fremantle also has a first-look deal with Pablo and Juan de Dios Larra\u00edn\u2019s Fabula to develop a slate of original English and Spanish dramas. \u201cWe\u2019re looking at LatAm country by country and analyzing the talent we want to work with and who wants to work with us,\u201d says Doole. \u201cWe\u2019re not looking at quantity; we\u2019re looking at the quality of storytelling. Rather than [the strategy] being pan-Latin America, we\u2019re looking at it in a focused, country-by-country way, driven by the talent.\u201d<\/p>\n

DRAMATIC EXCHANGE
\n<\/strong>The LatAm market is also cited by Eccho Rights\u2019 af Malmborg as a key focus, given the region\u2019s appetite for Turkish dramas. \u201cWe are dubbing 1,000 hours [of Turkish series into Spanish] per year and have 20 hours a day on air in different Latin American countries,\u201d he says. \u201cIn Spain, in the last year, 20 Turkish series have been on air; we sold eight of them. They work very well.\u201d<\/p>\n

Calinos\u2019s Gulgen is hopeful that the success of Turkish drama series in Latin America will open more doors into the U.S. Hispanic market. He also lists Africa and Western Europe as markets that are \u201cin the process of discovering\u201d the potential of Turkish drama.<\/p>\n

ZDF Enterprises\u2019 Franke highlights the French- and German-language The\u00a0<\/em>Crimson Rivers\u00a0<\/em>and the upcoming series Freud<\/em>, co-produced with Austria\u2019s ORF and Netflix, as \u201cgood examples of top-tier drama series coming from Europe that strike a chord with international buyers. Placing these shows with top buyers would have been much harder a few years back than it is now.\u201d<\/p>\n

Looking ahead, he says that ZDF Enterprises is keeping its eye on what\u2019s coming out of Central and Eastern Europe and South Africa. \u201cA lot of creativity is coming from these territories [that have] affordable production costs and growing economies, so we are testing the waters on how much demand there is for storytelling from these regions.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fremantle\u2019s Doole is also on the lookout for fresh talent from these territories. \u201cThere are lots of areas of the world that I\u2019m really excited about, but Africa is my number one passion at the moment,\u201d she says. \u201cEastern Europe has a massive tradition of filmmaking and auteurs, so I\u2019m looking to Poland and the Czech Republic. Those audiences are really sophisticated and have a film culture, so you\u2019ve got great talent coming through.\u201d<\/p>\n

Filming recently wrapped on an ambitious new Middle Eastern war thriller, Fertile Crescent <\/em>(working title), that Fremantle will be taking out globally. Commissioned by ARTE and Hulu, the eight-part drama is shot in French, English and Kurdish.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe live in a time when the audience is the most sophisticated they\u2019ve ever been,\u201d Doole says. \u201cThey\u2019re watching television in 13-hour batches, binge-watching. Most of our viewers know more about television and storytelling than we do! [Laughs<\/em>] The challenge is on to be as authentic and genuine as possible when you\u2019re bringing stories to them. If they aren\u2019t authentic, the audience can sniff it out straight away and will turn off.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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