Public Enemy tops 1st MipDrama Screenings
MipTV at large this year
Belgian serial killer suspenser “Public Enemy,” one of a clutch of thrillers at the inaugural MipDrama Screenings, won its first Cri de Coeur Award, awarded Sunday on the eve of MipTV in Cannes.
Sold by Zodiak Rights, airing May on Belgian pubcaster RTBF, and the first TV production of Entre Chien et Loup and Playtime Films, the 10 onehour-seg “Public Enemy” charts the impact on a community of an ex-child killer’s release from prison. He is given shelter at the local monastery - just as a new wave of child murders breaks out. Some community members want to take justice into their own hands. The female cop on the case is equally conflicted, having had her own younger sister disappear when she was a small girl.
“The series asks: ‘What do you do with monsters like child killers? After a serial killer is released from prison, can we forgive him? writer-director Mathieu Frances said at the Screenings.
One of the few dramas which has been selected for Sunday’s MipDrama Screenings and for Series Mania, which unspools from mid-month in Paris, “Public Enemy” was also one of three thrillers selected for the 12-title Official Selection of the MipDrama Screenings, along with the Fisher King/Federation Ent. “Bordertown,” also one of the Screenings favorites, and “I Know Who You Are,” from Filmax’s Arca label in Spain.
Directed by Pau Freixas, a director/ writer on the Spanish original of the U.S-remade “The Red Band Society,” the Filmax Intl and Mediaset Salessold “I Know Who You Are” turns on a charismatic university lecturer suspected of murdering his own niece when she disappears after a car accident which leaves him claiming near total amnesia. Fast-paced, but intricately plotted, with each episode beginning with a flashback, “I Know Who You Are” — which talks about “justice, lawyers, power and how power interferes in relationships,” said Filmax’s Ivan Diaz — suggests the large cable-heft that the more sophisticated free-to-air dramas in Spain are now acquiring.
One large question for European drama is how long Nordic Noir, which has lent a dark edge to procedurals all over Europe, can exercise an appeal. It certainly doesn’t seem to be waning. But, symptomatically, presenting “Bordertown,” another Screenings fave, writer-director Mikko Oikkonen was quick to point his series’ originality: It is set on the Finnish-Russian border; bucking a dark vision of humanity, it features a family whose members actually love each other. Yet a serial killer’s crimes are connected in some way to this family.
Running all day Sunday, with producers and writers-directors delivering a quick presentation of extracts or a promo-reel of their new dramaa, the Screenings served, as no doubt MipTV at large this year, to underscore the ambitions of higher-end European drama.
Kicking off afternoon screenings, Europa-Corp TV’s Edouard de Vessine and star Pascal Greggory introduced “Section Zero,” a Canal Plus original series produced by Luc Besson’s Europ-Acorp and sold by Vivendi/Canal Plus’ Studiocanal, the first TV linkup between these three French powerhouses. Show-run by Olivier Marchal who created one of Canal Plus’ biggest TV drama hits, “Braquo,” it brings a film noir aesthetic and narrative to a post-Apocalypse class-cordoned urban dystopia, ruled by a bottom-line-obsessed corporation.
In another powerful combo, Frank Spotnitz (“The X-Files”) presented with Lux Vide’s Luca Bernabei a promo and three scenes from the first season of the Lux Vide lead-produced “Medici: Masters of Florence.”
Set over 1429-33, and starring Dustin Hoffman and Richard Madden, Rob Stark in “Game of Thrones,” as Giovanni and Cosimo de Medici, “Medici” combines star-power, narrative tension — the first season is structured as a murder mystery — and a chronicle of the dawn of the modern age, Spotnitz argued, as Giovanni, then son Cosimo, use banking to create a new middle-class in Florence, and for wealth to seep down to poorer people, at the cost of the established order.
Co-created by Spotnitz and Nicholas Meyer, “Medici’s” settings — often using the same places where the real events took place -are stunning, costumes sumptuous. Broadcaster RAI has already renewed for a second season.