Seriesly has crowned its pitch competition winners with an apocalyptic animated sitcom, a cannibal comedy, a restaurant and relationships series, and a political drama all getting accolades.
Political comedy-drama The State Operetta won Seriesly’s SteinbrennerMüller Komunikation Award in the writers category and animated show The Last Family on Earth in the co-production section.
Out of Austria, The State Operetta follows the head of the Financial Prosecutor’s Office, a political puppet master who finds himself fighting for his job. The Last Family on Earth is a family drama that plays out against the backdrop of a global apocalypse. “The State Operetta takes us into the invisible second row of power where the real politics happens, not in parliament but in offices, back rooms, bars and cafes,” said Daniel Hoesl and Julia Niemann as they pitched their show.
Horror-sitcom The People We Eat scooped the Writers Pitch Award. If follows a family of cannibals whose daughter want attempts to stop eating human flesh. “She doesn’t want to eat people anymore, she wants to go vegetarian, but she is struggling to tell her cannibal family,” said the show’s creator Ilaria Fravolini when pitching the project to the Seriesly crowd. “Zombies and vampires already had comedic makeovers, think about Santa Clarita Diet or What We Do In The Shadows, so now we believe is the turn of cannibals.”
Announcing the winner, jury member and former Seriesly Pitch winner Michael Grießler said: “We chose a horror show that tackles the genre through a lens of absurdity. It tackles family [issues] in an unconventional way, and yet in way that we think many of us can understand.”
Angela Hawkins, representing pitch sponsor Leonine Studios on stage and announcing the winners, spoke about “an incredibly impressive selection of projects that made our work all the more difficult.” There was a special mention for All Our Fathers Are Dead, a drama about a group of adolescents grappling with what masculinity means in the modern world. “It is a project we found profoundly moving,” Hawkins said.
The Co-Pro Pitch Award went to Villa Hilda, a restaurant and relationships drama. It follows a former celebrity chef and a one-hit-wonder author who come together to run an eatery on an island off Sweden. Both are seeking refuge from professional and personal disappointments. The Last Family on Earth got a special mention in this section.
Check out the roster of winners below.
SteinbrennerMüller Komunikation Award
Writers Section: The State Operetta (Ula Okrojek, Daniel Hoesl, Julia Niemann)
Co-Pro Section: The Last Family On Earth (Elena Lyubarskaya)
Seriesly Berlin Writers Pitch Award
The People We Eat (Ilaria Fravolini)
Special mention: All Our Fathers Are Dead
Seriesly Berlin Co-Pro Pitch Award
Villa Hilda (Roosa Toivonen, Inka Hietala)
Special mention: The Last Family on Earth (Elena Lyubarskaya)
