Beta Film, ZDF/Arte and Antitalent Team Up for Croatian Crime Drama 'Red Water'

A six-hour Croatian crime drama based on a novel that landed on both the Financial Times and Sunday Times top-10 books of 2025 lists is moving into production, backed by a three-way co-production deal.

Beta Film has partnered with German broadcasters ZDF/Arte and Croatian production company Antitalent to bring Red Water to television, according to Variety. The series adapts Jurica Pavičić's bestselling novel of the same name. Beta Film will handle international sales.

Red Water is set in 1989 at the Croatian seaside, where a 17-year-old girl vanishes from a small coastal town. When the police inquiry comes up empty, her family launches its own search. Over the following two decades, the girl's dark secrets surface and tear the community apart, per the project's listing on the CineLink Industry Days platform.

The creative team carries serious festival credentials. Antoneta Alamat Kusijanović directs; her feature film Murina won the Caméra d'Or for best first feature at the Cannes Film Festival. The scripts come from Ljubica Luković, a Canneseries-winning writer credited as the series creator. Academy Award-nominated producer Danijel Pek produces through Antitalent.

The project already has recognition behind it. Red Water won the 2025 Council of Europe Series Co-Production Development Award at the Sarajevo Film Festival's CineLink Industry Days, a prize worth €50,000, as reported by the Council of Europe and confirmed by the Hollywood Reporter. Pavičić was also noted as the first Croatian crime author featured at the festival's CineLink Books platform, which connects regional literary works to screen adaptation (Sarajevo Film Festival).

Red Water continues a partnership between Beta Film and ZDF/Arte in Central and Eastern Europe that has already produced The Silence and Operation Sabre. Shooting is scheduled for 2027.

For viewers, the series joins a growing roster of European crime dramas finding international audiences through co-production, a model where multiple broadcasters and distributors share costs and broadcast rights across territories. The format lets a story rooted in one country's landscape reach screens far beyond it.