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The Baltic States — Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania — are ready for a boom in local TV productions, and international partners are invited.

“It’s an intriguing environment — contemporary and innovative, but we carry tons of Soviet heritage,” says Toomas Ili, head of content at Elisa Estonia. “Our scenery and architecture has yet to be seen by the world, so Hollywood productions are looking into the Baltics. Then there’s our ability to do more with less.” His latest show, the Ukrainian-Estonian drama “My Dear Mother,” about a woman forced to deal with her mother’s tragic death, will premiere at Berlinale Series Market Selects.

“I was asked which series it resembles. The answer is none,” he says.

“Writer Raoul Suvi has delicately stitched together all the elements as the story unravels, keeping the viewer — and the characters — in the dark until the end.” When Elisa Estonia started producing dramas six years ago,...

With Baltic shows growing bigger and bolder and producers looking for more international collaborators, local creators reach for original stories and established IPs, delivering period dramas and timely satires. However, crime shows, whether contemporary – like this year’s Berlinale Series Market Selects “My Dear Mother” – or set in the 19th century, still take the crown. Or at least the top hat.

“Melchior the Apothecary”

Creators: Indrek Hargla, Elmo Nüganen, Olle Mirme

Director: Elmo Nüganen

Based on popular crime series books by Indrek Hargla – about an apothecary who heals the sick and solves mysteries – the show is set in medieval Tallinn. Shot as a trilogy, which was a box-office success in Estonia, it’s sold by Global Screen as a miniseries. It features Märten Metsaviir and Maarja Johanna Mägi, who was chosen as one of Berlinale’s Shooting Stars and will be next seen in the Finnish remake of “Cold Feet.

Welcome to Global Breakouts, Deadline’s strand in which, each fortnight, we shine a spotlight on the TV shows and films killing it in their local territories. The industry is as globalized as it’s ever been, but breakout hits are appearing in pockets of the world all the time and it can be hard to keep track. So we’re going to do the hard work for you.

Following last edition’s trip to the Czech Republic, we are staying in Europe this time round with Soviet Jeans, the buzziest show to come out of Latvia this decade. The series — part-love story, part absurdist comedy — follows a young rock fan who begins illegally producing American-style jeans after being sent to a mental asylum for political reasons. Though budgets in Latvia are minuscule compared with those in many other territories, its producers found a way to create an award-winning series...

Exclusive: The makers of Latvian breakout drama Soviet Jeans are ironing out the creases on a second season.

We understand that producer Tasse Film is moving ahead on a new season of the Series Mania favorite that will move the action on nearly a decade from the original 1979 setting, which was 12 years before Latvia was freed from communist rule.

Plot details are scarce, but we hear two episodes will unfold in Germany on either side of the Berlin Wall right before its collapse in 1989. The love story between lead character Renars (Karlis Arnolds Avots) and Tina (Aamu Milonoff) will once again trigger the plot and form its backbone.

Stanislavs Tokalovs and Teodora Markova are returning as writers and showrunners, and development is well underway. Baltic streamer Go3 is once again on board and funding from international partners is being sought, with the creative team looking to supersize Season 2 as an international co-production.

Our striking introduction to Kaloyan (Ognyan Pavlov) in Pavel G. Vesnakov’s potent and profound “Windless” is as an out-of-focus blur, smoking a cigarette in the foreground. Beyond him, trucks trundle down a highway, and bare trees throw their branches to the sky, while birds wheel and scatter against gray clouds.

It is the first of many eerily considered compositions, hemmed in by an audaciously claustrophobic 1:1 aspect ratio, to tell almost the film’s entire story in miniature. Kaloyan is a man at odds with his surroundings — the Bulgarian village where he grew up and to which he has returned after a long, self-directed exile. It is as though the adult he has become is fighting for focus with the ghost of who he once was, the unhappy child who called these bleak, unwelcoming landscapes home. The past is always a foreign country, even if it’s the one...

Titles from “Lupin” co-creator François Uzan, former Netflix top exec Erik Barmack, indie multinational Boat Rocker and Brendan Foley, writer of “Cold Courage,” will be pitched on Wednesday and Thursday at Spain’s Conecta Fiction & Entertainment. The pitch sessions form the industry centerpiece of the meet. Following, profiles of entries in four of the six categories: Copro, High-End, Docudramas and Feel Good:

CoPro Pitch

“Destape,” (Satisfaction Iberia, Spain)

The latest from Pablo Barrera, a co-creator of admired crime drama “Punta Escarlata,” a mystery drama turning on (the fictional) Rosa Burnett, a face of Spain’s ‘70s destape cinema, movies with tantalizing nudity. Now, thought dead, Burnett returns from gthe shadows to wreak her vengeance.

“Fin del Año,” (Têm Dênde Productions, Brazil)

A supernatural suspense drama from Vânia Lima at Salvador’s Têm Demdê Productions, behind Ruy Guerra’s “Time, Knifed,” presented at Ventana Sur. A bus transporting five people who...

It has been a while since “The Queen’s Gambit,” but as proven by “Rematch,” viewers’ love for chess is certainly not diminishing.

The show, dedicated to confrontation between famous chess player Garry Kasparov and Ibm’s supercomputer Deep Blue, was named the winner at Series Mania.

A somewhat lukewarm reception of “Apples Never Fall” didn’t stop Annette Bening from being crowned as best actress. The Peacock offering, also featuring Sam Neill and Alison Brie, is the latest adaptation of “Big Little Lies” and “Nine Perfect Strangers” scribe Liane Moriarty. Now showing a perfect family who, following its matriarch’s disappearance, needs to face some uncomfortable questions. Including this one: Did their beloved father have something to do with it?

Jury member Berenice Bejo read out a brief message of thanks from Bening who described the series as a “labor of love.”

Kamel El Basha, who plays the more progressive...

As the Berlinale Series Market celebrates its 10th anniversary, series continue to stand “side by side” with films at the German fest, observes EFM director Dennis Ruh.

“Bsm continues to be a beacon for all aspects of serialized content, even in years where space feels tighter with less films and series, giving selected titles more exposure,” he says, mentioning a “vibrant influx” of international professionals eager to showcase their shows.

Although the sidebar for series has been discontinued, they are present in Berlinale Special and Panorama sections. Apart from Netflix’s “Supersex” and “Dostoevskij” by Damiano and Fabio D’Innocenzo, Berlinale Series Market Selects will spotlight 15 new shows.

“We prioritize narratives that captivate with their originality, championing diversity in representation, genre and geography. The goal is to amplify these stories, ensuring they receive the global attention they deserve,” explains Ruh, pointing out another important trend: comedy. “This might be a reaction...

Beta Film has picked up international distribution rights to Latvia’s “Soviet Jeans.” Presented at Berlinale Series Market Selects, the show will premiere at Series Mania in March.

Set in Riga in the late 1970s and based on multiple true stories, it zooms in onto young rock fan Renars (Karlis Arnolds Avots), sent to a mental asylum for political reasons. Undeterred, he starts illegal production of counterfeit U.S. jeans with his inmates, flooding the black market.

“We wanted to make it international,” said Teodora Markova who showruns alongside Stanislavs Tokalovs. They wrote the script with Waldemar Kalinowski.

“We also decided to go for a completely different tone when depicting this period, which so often is shown in this harsh, gloomy way. People used to joke during communism too: Humor was their main survival mechanism. They still lived and loved and laughed. Most of them had to learn how to trick the system,...

Rome’s Mia Market for TV series, feature films, documentaries and factual content wrapped a watershed 7th edition on Sunday, having boosted its standing on the global calendar as a prominent emerging industry hub in Europe.

In a significant indicator of the Eternal City’s Oct. 13-17 event’s restart relevance Mia, organizers on the final day announced a total of 2,000 industry executives from 56 countries, all of whom attended the new-concept market in-person, while there were only 46 online attendees, mostly from Asia and Latin America due to coronavirus constraints that impeded travel to Italy from those countries.

While the Oct. 11-14 Mipcom market in Cannes suffered a reduced presence – and the AFM this year has gone entirely online – Mia reaped the benefits of being conceived more congenially to how the global content industry is evolving because it offered a wide range of product, plenty of which in early stages.

The...