The Seriesly Berlin Project Pitches has selected 18 international projects from the likes of Star Trek: Discovery writer Ted Sullivan and British author Robert Wilson.

Participants will take to the stage at the Seriesly Berlin Conference on September 15-16 at the Fotografiska Berlin in a new-look format that divides the projects in three – with the Writers’ Pitch introducing projects at a very early stage and the Co-Production Pitch showcasing more advanced projects. A new Vertical Drama strand has also been added to the program.

Among the seven titles contesting The Co-Pro Pitch is Have You Seen Sabine? (working title), an Australia-Germany title developed by Australian producer Susan Schmidt and Avenue Road Productions about writer Virginia Peters’ seven-year investigation into the 2005 murder of a German backpacker in Australia.

I Am God brings German director Hanna Doose (Dust On Our Hearts) together with Mayana Films producers Zorana Muơikić and May Odeh (Cannes Critics’ Week Grand Prize winner A Useful Ghost). The story seems a spiritual festival on the German-Polish border become an ensemble dramedy about healing and reinvention.

Journey to the West – a German, Czech and Slovakian co-pro – is from Czech-Vietnamese filmmaker DuĆŸan Duong (Summer School) and is based on oral histories of the Vietnamese diaspora in the former Eastern Bloc. A Czech broadcaster is attached for co-development.

Portugal’s Small Death in Lisbon comes from British author Robert Wilson, who adapts his own novel. It’s in developed at SPi, the company behind Glória, Netflix’s first Portuguese original series, with that show’s creator, Pedro Lopes, among the writers.

Another from Germany, The Fallen (working title) unites writer Janett Lederer with Milk teeth director Sophia Bösch and Oksuperdanke producers Linda Hartogs and Dominik Eder for a story of female friendship in a Catholic home for unmarried pregnant women in 1978.

The Man Behind a Mask comes from Latvia, and has Anna KalniƆa and producer Serge Serpuhovs from Baltic Pine Films attached. It was developed through the Midpoint Series Launch and is a Cold War thriller about the career of Latvian surgeon Viktors Kalnbērzs, who performed the Soviet Union’s first gender-affirming surgery in Riga in the early 1970s.

Finally, Vamos from Italy is a sports dramedy from Berlinale Talents 2026 participant and American Film Institute alumnus Fabrizio Muscia. It explores the rise of padel through an ageing tennis pro forced into the one sport he despises.

The Writers’ Picth will be contested by Ireland’s Black Valley, which pairs Irish actor-writer Michael Patric (The Quiet Girl) with U.S. writer-producer Sullivan (Star Trek: Discovery, Riverdale) and producer Mairtín de Barra of Tailored Films for the story of an unlikely friendship between a traumatised former Army Ranger and a refugee from Sierra Leone.

Two projects explore Germany’s far right: The Verdict (Das Urteil), from Ali Hakim, Max König and Sandra MĂŒller, pairs their Hakim + König Film together with East Gate Filmproduction, ndF’s new Halle-based subsidiary. It follows a defence attorney in Chemnitz taking on a case a whole city has already decided about who is guilty.

The Baseball Bat Years (BaseballjĂ€gerjahre) is also out of Germany but comes from Venezuelan screenwriter Jorge Patiño. It depicts far-right and racist violence in Germany’s post-reunification years, and is billed as a “psychological thriller about a closeted man in a neo-Nazi cell who fathers a son through rape [and] draws a line from the neo-Nazi violence of 1992 to online radicalisation in 2022.”

Bloody Bay is from the UK and was developed by London-based writer-producer Olga Rozanova (Hope) and sees four fifty-somethings, a new baby and one explosive secret trapped aboard a 48-foot boat.

Italy’s Doggy Style is a multilingual mockumentary from German director, writer and photographer Marlon RĂŒberg about eight dog parents, one threatened park and a revolution nobody is qualified to lead, while Good Godmother from Serbia sees Belgrade-based animation creators Nick Strutinski and Kirill Semiletov sends a former Fairy Godmother become a therapist to fairytale characters. Hands Up, out of the U.S., is from Neta Weiner, Samira Saraya and Israeli showrunner Michal Cooper Keren. It’s a Berlin-set musical drama about an Israeli rapper and a Palestinian singer under growing political pressure.

The new Vertical Drama Pitch will see in competition Serial Eyes alumna Madeleine FĂ©ret-Fleury and CĂ©driane Fossat’s Deep Fake from France, a 30-part romcom thriller about a French-Korean influencer whose #30DatesIn30Days challenge turns sinister when a fake account takes over her identity; and Germany’s Just Do It (Einfach Ma Machen) – from Annekathrin Bach, Sophia Hein and Mirko Muhshoff – about an overconfident influencer who goes into local politics across 20 fast-paced 100-second episodes.

Also out of Germany is What We See from Berlin-based journalist and former TV news executive producer Kate Mar. The 50-part social thriller follows what happens when the public reaches a verdict on a suspicious death long before investigators do. Finally, Worth to Know – an Argentinian, German and Spanish co-pro – is from Berlin-based Argentinian Elda Broglio and Luz Orlando Brennan. It turns the awkward questions of two new stepsisters 20 years apart in age into 28 four-minute episodes.

The juries comprise among others writer Anna Winger (Unorthodo, director Mattie Do (The Long Walk), agent Silke Bacher from Homebase KĂŒnstleragentur and producer Fleur Winter (The Crash).

Through a new partnership with Cine Chromatix, the winning project presented in the Co-Production Pitch Selection will receive an in-kind post-production award worth €25,000 ($30,000) for colour grading services. The pitching programme is organised in partnership with the European Writers Desk and Creative Europe MEDIA Desk.

Elsewhere, the SteinbrennerMĂŒller Award will again honour one German-language project from the Co-Production Pitch and the Writers’ Pitch that, in the opinion of the jury, has the greatest potential to be successful with audiences. This will receive a communications concept from Berlin-based PR agency SteinbrennerMĂŒller worth €2,000 each.

“With more than 250 submissions, making this year’s selection was anything but easy,” says Dennis Ruh, Festival Director of Seriesly Berlin. “What stood out was how strongly many of the projects engage with the world we are living in right now. Creators are responding to political and social realities, but they are doing so through deeply personal stories. At the same time, there is plenty of humour and optimism in the selection. These are very different stories, but many of them have the potential to resonate far beyond the places they come from.”

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