The Berlinale Series Market will take place from February 24th to 26th within the context of the European Film Market. There, key professionals will meet and present networking opportunities, themed panels that analyze international trends, presentation sessions, and a carefully chosen selection of high-quality episodic content for acquisition, presale, and co-production.

The Series Market’s main guests will be five Chilean professionals representing our country’s contemporary series, who will participate in the Series Market Showcase, the section’s opening event to be co-hosted by CinemaChile and dedicated to the best serial content as of late. The production houses selected for this occasion are: Fabula with the series The Pack; Invercine&Wood with Dignity; Parox with Invisible Heroes; the Emmy-winning miniseries A Necessary Story; and Promocine with the project Berko, las armas de Pinochet.

About the Productions

These Chilean series have stood out for their effervescence, opening new doors and exhibition spaces. The Pack was made in 2019 by Fabula and presented as the first title of Amazon Prime’s service in Chile, following interest by several companies in obtaining the rights to this project. Divided into eight episodes, its narrative centers on a group of female high school students who occupy their school in protest over a sexual abuse scandal that implicates one of their teachers. During the occupation, Blanca Ibarra — the protest leader — disappears. Hours later, a video goes viral of a girl being raped by a group of masked men. The only clue that the police have is that all of the attackers belong to the same WhatsApp group known as “The Pack”. With Blanca’s destiny unknown, her rapists still free, and more and more public demonstrations against the crime, an investigative police team will face the most difficult case of their careers.

Dignity was produced along with German company Storyhouse and the National Television Council (CNTV) fund, created by María Elena Wood and Patricio Pereira and directed by Julio Jorquera. The fiction is loosely based on the lawyer who uncovered the case of Colonia Dignidad in 1997 and was shot in Villa Baviera. Among its cast members are German actor Götz Otto as Paul Schäfer, who is known for films such as Schindler’s List and Downfall (Der Untergang). The co-production — which will be shown in Chile on Mega — is the first international original series by Joyn, the German OTT of Discovery and ProSiebenSat. 1.

Invisible Heroes tells the story of dictator Augusto Pinochet, who took power in overthrowing President Salvador Allende. The populace wakes up in the middle of the night, and dissidents are murdered or taken to prison camps. Invisible Heroes tells the true story of Tapin Brotherus, a young Finnish businessman, who rescues more than 2,000 Chileans from imprisonment, torture, and execution. On the other hand, A Necessary Story is a production that tells the stories of victims of the Chilean Dictatorship, and in 2018, it won the Best Short Series category at the International Emmys, the most important television awards in the world.

Berko, las armas de Pinochet is about the romantic passion between a young escort from an exclusive nightclub and a journalist investigating a crime — the starting point of a dangerous investigation into the hidden world of international weapons trafficking. The illegal sale of weapons to Iraq and Croatia and the mysterious murder of Jonathan Moyle will be the backdrop for the story of Ricardo Berkowitz, a journalist that will follow enigmatic escort “Divina Day” through a labyrinth of crimes and betrayals.