Arte Francethe high-end French public broadcaster, has made the Nordic region one of the biggest shopping destinations for TV drama along with the UK, since the Danish series “The Killing” (2010) and “Borgen” (2012).
Occupier, the futuristic Norwegian political thriller was another notable offering and in 2015 the channel’s project began co-producing the event with European partners. Today, the prestigious broadcaster has expanded its series acquisitions and co-productions to include the rest of Europe, but the Nordic region remains central to its overall drama programming, which boasts a budget of €33 million ($34.3 million) across co-pros and takeovers for 2025.
On the eve of a major dramatic encounter between French and Nordic professionals, the Franco-Northern Contact Series takes place in Gothenburg Watch TV drama Show (January 28-29), Arte France’s Vice President of Drama, Alexandre Bell, unveils his latest Scandinavian drama and co-production, scheduled for 2025.
“Liv,” produced by genre specialist Shuuto for the Scandi Altibox platform, is a Norwegian hospital drama about family dynamics and tangled secrets starring Jesper Malm (“Ragnarok”) and Charlotte Grundt (“July 22”).
Alongside this platform-based show are the event series “Carmen Curlers” (Seasons 1 and 2) from DR Drama in Denmark and “Mobile 101” from Rabbit Films in Finland, which respectively chart the rise and fall of popular national brands: electric cars. Carmen curlers and Nokia phones. Another attractive offering is the multi-award winning and hugely successful film “Pørni”, created by Norwegian star Henriette Steenstrup for Monster and TV2 Norway.
Returning hit crime shows will include the Danish-Swedish series “Bron” (“The Bridge”), which will be watched over four seasons, and “Sandhamn Murders,” one of the Swedish broadcaster’s most important brands, and slow-burning series. Burning Danish “DNA”, co-produced by Arte France and TV2 Danish.
Meanwhile, the latest of three Nordic co-productions by Arte France, Thomas Alfredson “kafir,” It will be displayed in the Nordic Light section in Gothenburg, “Value of life” Set against the Bosnian conflict of the 1990s, high-concept crime set in Iceland “Reykjavik Fusion” (both listed as TV dramas in progress) is scheduled for release in late 2025/early 2026 in France.
“Diversity is key for us; we don’t want to be locked into one genre,” says Bell. “We program our series so our audiences are surprised and inspired. Our editorial strategy is to be open and build bridges so our audiences can jump from one program to another, and from one country to another.
We provide engaging and thought-provoking content, about the nuances and problems of an increasingly polarized world. “Our inherent spirit of democracy and humanity defines our identity.”
For Bell, those values that are at the heart of the European Culture Channel’s values are shared with the Nordic public broadcasters, and regular co-production partners, such as Denmark’s TV2 on “DNA”, Norway’s NRK on “Countrymen”, and Iceland’s RÚV on “Blackport”. “. And the Swedish SVT on “infidel.”
The new spirit of co-production
Delving deeper into Arte France’s co-production strategy, Bell, who heads the foreign drama department and co-runs the French slate with drama head Agnès Ollier, says his aim is to feed both the linear channel on Thursday primetime and the digital platform. arte.tv Which – combined with Arte’s own social media services – jumped 20% in 2024 from 2023 to reach 2.7 billion views. A small production of just seven co-productions a year means that “each project is strongly selected and evaluated. It also allows us to be bold, risk-taking and meaningful in how we present content to our viewers to create something diverse but cohesive at the same time.”
Projects with foreign partners are either co-produced or equally produced or initiated, with Arte France investments covering up to 25% for premium shows, such as “Faithless” or “A Life’s Worth”.
“Faithless,” from the Swedish director of “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy,” is a typical signature offering from A-list talent, similar to Arte France’s collaborations with Rodrigo Sorogoyen In “The New Years” commissioned by the Spanish company Movistar Plus+, or with Marco Bellocchio in his gallery in Cannes, the screening of “Exterior Night” and the upcoming series “Portobello”, which is currently being filmed.
“We came early, to the pitch for ‘Faithless,’ and joined forces with Miso Film and SVT, with whom we had a seamless collaboration,” Bell says. “Given Alfredsson’s talent, and his vision to revisit Ingmar Bergman’s original screenplay [for Liv Ullmann’s 2000 film of the same name]And the project’s contribution to European culture, it made perfect sense for me to be a part of it.
Regarding “A Life’s Worth,” the series produced by Banjay Nordic’s Yellow Bird and started by Arte France, Bell says he joined early in 2019, when he was approached by Swedish TV executive and former Yellow Bird head of business affairs Stefan Baron with The project is inspired by the novel of the same name by Magnus Ernström.
The story of a group of young Swedish UN soldiers and their commander as they struggled with the complexities of war in the Balkans in the 1990s immediately caught his attention, as he was keen to highlight a new project about Europe’s recent shared history. , such as Bellocchio’s position on the kidnapping and assassination of former Italian Prime Minister Aldo Moro in 1978 in the film “The Outer Night.”
Headlined by Edvin Ryding (“Young Royals”), Maxwell Cunningham (“Top Dog”) and Eric Ng (“Tigers”), the six-part series is currently in post-production and is co-produced by Viaplay Content Distribution, which deals globally. sales.
As for “Reykjavik Fusion,” which ACT4 produced for Síminn in Iceland, the crime show about an ex-convict turned chef was an opportunity, Bell says, “to work again with creative, committed and fun Icelandic partners,” after his fruitful collaboration on fishing. . ‘Blackport’ stakes drama with Westport.
confirmation Arte France International Batch Gradually moving away from insular French/foreign language threads, Bell admits that this understanding and acceptance of letting stories and visions of talent – not nationality or language – drive the production, was a process that took some time. Arte France’s experience in the last three years of working on groundbreaking, globally oriented projects, such as the second season of No Man’s Land led by Rotem Shamir or Jan England’s chess thriller Remake, has been essential to arriving at what he calls “the new spirit of Arte”, which is both inherently and truly European. .
Another example of this is Hagai Levy’s upcoming biopic “Etty”, the story of a young woman during the German occupation of the Netherlands, who learns how to deal with adversity and embrace life. “It is filmed in Amsterdam, mainly in German and Dutch, with our partners SWR in Germany and NPO in the Netherlands, but the show is entirely French in terms of investment alone,” Bill points out about the series produced by French company Les Films du Poisson. The Dutch company Topkapi Films, the German company KomplizenFilm, and the Italian company Quiddity.
When asked about Arte France’s creative involvement during development and production, the French executive said his drama department’s input is about investigation, not interference: “We are like gatekeepers, allowing the project to develop organically and interrogating the producers for the artistic interest of the project.”
Going forward, Bell says: “We hope our next step will be joint development with broadcast partners, including the Nordics. There have been musical chairs in the region and in our strong, trust-based industry, and that has disrupted our business a little bit. But we have strong relationships.” And long-term in the Nordics, we will of course continue to nurture our players through broadcasters and platforms, and start new conversations.
