'Blindspot Berlin' Sweeps Three Prizes at South International Series Festival

Albrecht Schuch-starrer "Blindspot Berlin" won Best Fiction Series, Screenplay and an Audience Award at the 4th edition of Cadiz's South International Series Festival on Wednesday night. The true-crime thriller, sold by Beta Film, beat a curated lineup to take the festival's biggest haul.

The series is backed by Germany's ARD, Europe's biggest public broadcaster, plus rbb, NDR and HR. It charts German police efforts to prevent the Dec. 19, 2016 Berlin Christmas market attack, which killed 13 and injured dozens. The catch: the very German institutions meant to support the investigators undermine them.

Co-creator, co-writer and director David Nawrath ("Your Honor," "Atlas") built the tension deliberately. The SISF jury praised the series' "extraordinary narrative force, an experience of suspense and dramatic tension which traps viewers until the end, even if they knew how things finally played out." Part of that, the jury observed, comes from rationing information and from narrative knots of tension — Episode 1 has Detective Lieutenant Frank Laudlin (Schuch) and Iraq-born rookie officer Isra Al-Husseini (Bayan Layla, "Elaha") racing to stop not an attack but an Islamic State recruitment operation on German soil.

The triple win adds to a strong run. "Blindspot Berlin" screened in the Toronto Film Festival's Primetime section, one of only two European series to make the cut. Filmin picked it up for Spain, with the deal announced on the first day of SISF.

What else won at Cadiz?

• Best Non-Fiction Series: "The Oligarch and the Art Dealer," an Arte series co-created, written and directed by Andreas Dalsgaard, previously a Sundance, CPH:DOX and Canneseries highlight.
• Cadiz City Prize: Isabel Coixet's "Someone Should Ban Sunday Afternoons," an Arte series produced by "The Bureau" showrunner Eric Rochant's Maui Entertainment in France. Tim Robbins guest-stars in the comedy-drama about three twenty-something film-buff flatmates in Paris who watch the saddest films they can find. The jury prized its "refinement, for being a perfect visual gift and a contemporary generational portrait which needs to be heard."
• Special Mention in Fiction Series: "Patagonia," created by Chile's Patricio Pereira and María Elena Wood, an eco thriller/family drama set in southern Chile's millennial-old larch forests, with an empathy-inducing central performance by Itziar Ituño ("Money Heist," "Intimacy"). It's a pioneering Spain-Chile co-production.
• Best Fiction Cast: Norway's medical drama "Still Breathing," billed as Norway's answer to "The Pitt." Its April debut gave NRK the biggest-ever drama opening outside the pubcaster's Christmas shows. The jury praised its "extraordinary capacity to construct, through a choral cast the portrait of a diverse and complex society." Karianne Lund ("Occupied") created it; Erik Svensson ("Safe House") directs; Rubicon TV produces.
• Spanish buzz title: Mediaset España's "The Dirty Years: Where is Nani?" reconstructed, via talking heads and archive footage, the case of El Nani, a small-time criminal who disappeared in police custody in 1983. The court case against Francoist throwback police culprits became a show trial for Spain's young democracy.

What about Andalusian producers?

South Boost, a six-project competition for Andalusian TV producers, went to Odeón Studios' "Los extranjeros," created by Julio Blez and Hugo Baena. Set in an Andalusian mining town in the late 1980s, it mixes murder mystery and sci-fi. A Special Mention went to Enciende TV's six-episode "Folklóricas," created by Fany de la Chica and Miguel Ángel Parra, which reunites four faded copla (Spanish popular song) stars for a 1991 TV documentary, reigniting old rivalries.

For "Blindspot Berlin," the sweep confirms a European series that premièred in Toronto now has festival momentum on the Continent — and a Spanish platform waiting when it arrives.