Seriesly Berlin Selects 18 International Projects for 2026 Pitch Line-Up
Seriesly Berlin has selected 18 international television projects for its 2026 Project Pitches, with names including Star Trek: Discovery writer Ted Sullivan and British author Robert Wilson among the creators taking the stage, according to Deadline.
The pitches happen on 15–16 September 2026 at the Fotografiska Berlin venue, where the selected creators will present their projects to industry attendees — a co-production market, meaning producers, broadcasters and financiers looking for projects to back.
For 2026, Seriesly Berlin has restructured its format into three strands. The Writers' Pitch introduces projects at a very early stage. The Co-Production Pitch showcases more advanced titles closer to production. And a new Vertical Drama strand — vertical dramas being short-form episodes shot for phone viewing — joins the line-up for the first time, reflecting a format that has exploded in markets from China to Latin America.
Seven titles contest the Co-Production Pitch. They span a wide geographic and tonal range. Have You Seen Sabine? (working title), an Australia-Germany co-production developed by Australian producer Susan Schmidt and Avenue Road Productions, dramatises writer Virginia Peters' seven-year investigation into the 2005 murder of a German backpacker in Australia. I Am God unites German director Hanna Doose with Mayana Films producers Zorana Mušikić and May Odeh for an ensemble dramedy set at a spiritual festival on the German-Polish border.
Journey to the West, a German-Czech-Slovak co-production from Czech-Vietnamese filmmaker Dužan Duong, draws on oral histories of the Vietnamese diaspora in the former Eastern Bloc, with a Czech broadcaster attached for co-development. Portugal's Small Death in Lisbon sees British author Robert Wilson adapting his own novel, developed at SPi — the company behind Netflix's Glória — with that show's creator Pedro Lopes among the writers.
Latvia's The Man Behind a Mask, produced by Serge Serpuhovs of Baltic Pine Films and developed through the Midpoint Series Launch programme, tells the story of surgeon Viktors Kalnbērzs, who performed the Soviet Union's first gender-affirming surgery in Riga in the early 1970s. Italy's Vamos, from Berlinale Talents 2026 participant Fabrizio Muscia, is a sports dramedy about an ageing tennis pro forced into padel. And Germany's The Fallen (working title), from writer Janett Lederer and director Sophia Bösch, follows female friendship inside a Catholic home for unmarried pregnant women in 1978.
The Writers' Pitch strand includes Ireland's Black Valley, pairing actor-writer Michael Patric with Sullivan and producer Mairtín de Barra of Tailored Films, about a friendship between a former Army Ranger and a refugee from Sierra Leone. Germany's The Verdict (Das Urteil), from Ali Hakim, Max König and Sandra Müller's Hakim + König Film with East Gate Filmproduction, follows a defence attorney in Chemnitz. The Baseball Bat Years (Baseballjägerjahre), from Venezuelan screenwriter Jorge Patiño, is a psychological thriller about a closeted man inside a neo-Nazi cell in post-reunification Germany. The UK's Bloody Bay, developed by London-based writer-producer Olga Rozanova, rounds out the announced Writers' Pitch titles.
The 2026 edition marks an expansion from Seriesly Berlin's previous format, which presented 16 projects across two strands in 2025, according to the festival's own site and TV Drama (World Screen). The addition of the Vertical Drama strand and the move to 18 projects gives more creators a slot — and a slot, as anyone in television knows, is the thing that decides whether a story reaches an audience at all.
