ACMI and Film Victoria announce first 14 series for Series Mania Melbourne 2018

ACMI and Film Victoria are delighted to announce the first 14 series for Series Mania Melbourne 2018, Australia’s edition of the world’s premier festival of TV. The sister festival of Series Mania, a 10-day event in France lauded as the Cannes of the TV industry, Series Mania Melbourne returns to ACMI this July to deliver an array of industry events and free public screenings.

Presenting 11 TV series and 4 web series from around the world including 2 World premieres and 11 Australian premieres, with many more titles to be announced soon, Series Mania is an exciting format that premieres quality drama and comedy TV and web series from across the world never before seen by Australian audiences. The festival includes a dedicated industry day and a full public program of screenings and Q&A’s with key creators and cast.

The inaugural Series Mania Melbourne festival hosted sold-out screenings and world premieres of critically acclaimed series such as Sunshine, Tabula Rosa, Ozark and Get Krack!n, alongside in-depth discussions with Breaking Bad’s Vince Gilligan.

The 2018 festival builds on its success, with screening highlights including:

• American Woman (pilot episode), a drama series created by acclaimed show runner, producer and creator John Wells (ER, Third Watch, Shameless), starring Alicia Silverstone as an unconventional mother struggling to raise two kids after leaving her husband amid the rise of second-wave feminism in 1970s Los Angeles;
• Deep State (Fox Network, airing on SBS), an eight-episode, grounded espionage thriller starring Mark Strong, whose first four episodes are directed by Australian director and Series Mania special guest Robert Connolly (The Slap, Balibo, Three Dollars);
• Maman a Tort (France), a sophisticated adaptation of Michel Bussi’s popular book about a three-and-a-half-year-old boy who says his mother is not his real mummy, a claim that seems impossible but is then believed by the psychologist at his school,  
• Wrong Kind of Black (Australia), a four-part web series that moves between the crocs and cops of 1960s Queensland to Melbourne’s dance-floors at the height of the disco inferno, weaving a rich story about the experiences of Indigenous Australia, via the eyes of DJ Boori Monty Pryor.

On 20 July, the Series Mania Industry Day, Stories Without Borders, will look at key trends, challenges and opportunities for industry professionals looking to create premium television content for the global marketplace. Presented by Film Victoria and ACMI, the exclusive day-long program will draw on the expertise of local and international key speakers and decision makers. Guests and program details will be announced in the coming weeks.

ACMI CEO and Director Katrina Sedgwick said: “We are delighted to be partnering with Film Victoria to bring Series Mania back to Melbourne. Building on the success of the inaugural Series Mania Melbourne, ACMI will again host the latest in local and international series content. From BBC’s Deep State to the Australian web series Wrong Kind of Black; from industry panels to free public screenings, we give audiences a sneak peek at the latest trends and must-watch shows before they hit screens.”

Film Victoria CEO, Caroline Pitcher said: “Series Mania Melbourne taps into the knowledge of some of the best creators and executives in the TV biz, whilst highlighting the incredible capabilities of Victorian creatives and the depth of screen culture in our state. We look forward to working with ACMI to deliver another terrific festival.”

Further television series playing at Screen Media Melbourne:

• Autonomies (Israel), an alternate-reality drama set in a near-future Israel divided into two states – one secular, one Orthodox – wherein tensions are raised by the revelation that a midwife switched two babies at birth, seven years ago;
• An Ordinary Woman (Russia), a deliciously binge-able drama from Russia about a brothel-keeper named Marina (a knock-out Anna Mihalkova), who is trying desperately to conceive a third baby with her unfaithful husband in the hope of saving her family
• Harem (Israel,Reshet 13 / Endemol Shine Israel), a fabulist series inspired by real-life cults about a mystic healer who lives in Tel Aviv with twenty wives, who birthed him over forty children;
• Killing the Father (Spain), a four-part episodic drama spanning two decades in Barcelona, which follows an obsessive, authoritarian father bewildered to find that life is not turning out as he’d planned;
• Liberty (Denmark), a humorous and brutal portrait of expat life and colonial impact, following two Scandinavian families stationed in Tanzania in the 1980s;
• The Counted (Russia), a mysterious fantasy about two epidemiologists who are dispatched to a far-flung corner of Russia where a strange infection has killed several people, only to find the reality more unusual than anything they’d imagined;
• Oddlands (Australia), a darkly humorous 30-minute sci-fi from Back to Back, a professional theatre company with an ensemble of actors with disabilities at its core, about two members of a clean-up crew in a strange toxic wasteland who stumble upon what may be the last human survivor.

Further web series playing at Screen Media Melbourne:

• The Accidental Wolf (USA), a political web thriller about an unhappily married, New York housewife who receives a call one night that implicates her within a shady military cover-up;
• Fresh! (Australia), a dramedy by Melbourne’s Nikki Tran set in a local fresh food market where staff grapple with family, fickle customers and a shiny new supermarket across the road.

Series Mania runs at ACMI between 19–22 July.  Tickets to industry events on sale 13 June and tickets to all free public events available from 27 June.