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Ten projects have been selected for the second edition of Seriesmakers, Series Mania’s development lab for feature film directors sidestepping into series production.

The lab is run in collaboration with Beta, and this year features projects helmed by directors including Kaouther Ben Hania, who directed the Oscar-nominated doc Four Daughters, and Kevin Macdonald, best known for The Mauritanian.

Ben Hania’s project is titled Freedom Academy and is produced by Nadim Cheikhrouha. The synopsis reads: In the competitive world of television, a cunning producer and his optimistic wife battle for control of a daring reality TV show set in a high-security prison, hoping to capture the intense competition among incarcerated radicals all while the jury grapples with their divergent opinions on prisoners’ rehabilitation.

Macdonald’s series is titled George Blake and is produced by Femke Wolting. Synopsis reads: What makes a person turn against everything they ever stood for?...

Seriesmakers, a joint initiative of Series Mania, Europe’s biggest TV festival, and European film-tv powerhouse Beta Group, has revealed the 10 top-notch project lineup of the second edition of its novel and high-powered mentoring program for filmmakers making their TV creator debut.

This year’s Seriesmakers features in development drama series from Oscar winner Kevin Macdonald (“George Blake”), behind “The Last King Of Scotland,” and from Finnish director Mikko Myllylahti, who burst onto the scene co-writing with Juho Kuosmanen the latter’s “The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Makki,” a 2016 Cannes Un Certain Regard winner.

Also in the mix is the highly courted Kaouther Ben Hania, a double Oscar nominee for the “compelling, ambitious hybrid” “Four Daughters,” said Variety, in the doc category and the “The Man Who Sold His Skin” (2020), Tunisia’s entry in international feature.

In all, however, nine of the ten directors winning berths this...

Layla M, the Dutch film entry for Academy Award Nomination in the Best Foreign Language Film Category is directed by Mijke de Jong and co-written by Mijke and her husband Jan Eilander. It features a compelling young Moroccan actress, (Nora El Koussour) who brings fire and passion to her role as an integrated 18 year old Dutch-Moroccan in Amsterdam who becomes increasingly radicalized along with her new husband, Abdel played by Ilias Addab.

‘Layla M. had its world premiere at Toronto Film Fest 2016 Platform. International sales are by Beta

As soon as the film opens, you understand that Layla is a tough girl in her neighborhood as she fights the football referee on his call and does not back down. She is also fighting for her rights as a Muslim woman wearing a burka and uses social media as only one in her generation knows how. She lives in an assimilated,...

“Layla M”, a Dutch film directed by Mijke de Jong and written by Mijke and her husband Jan Eilander, features a compelling young Moroccan…

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Yorgos Lanthimos’s The Lobster, Peter Greenaway’s Eisenstein In Guanajuato and Alex van Warmerdam’s Schneider vs. Bax among those to receive a share of €8.5m ($11.4m) from the new Netherlands Film Production Incentive.Scroll down for full list of projects

A total of 34 film projects have received funding totaling €8.5m ($11.4m) from the budget of the new Netherlands Film Production Incentive.

It is anticipated that these projects will generate €47.9m ($64.6m) in Netherlands-based production expenditure.

Some 21 of the 34 successful applicants were international co-productions of feature films and documentaries, in which a Dutch producer has a majority or minority stake.

Productions include The Night Of A Thousand Hours by screenwriter/director Virgil Widrich, a co-production between Austria (Amour Fou Vienna), Luxembourg (Amour Fou Luxembourg) and The Netherlands (KeyFilm); The Lobster by director/screenwriter Yorgos Lanthimos, a co-production between Ireland (Element Pictures), France (Haut et Court), Greece (Faliro House), UK (Scarlet Films) and The Netherlands (Lemming Film); and...

Rudolf van den Berg’s feature stars Tygo Gernandt [pictured] as the notorious art forger Han van Meegeren.

Leading Dutch production outfit Rinkel Film has revealed further details of its new feature about notorious art forger Han van Meegeren.

A Real Van Meegeren, as the project is called, will be directed by Rudolf van den Berg (Tirza, Süskind), who has cowritten the screenplay with Jan Eilander.

It is being produced by Rinkel Film (through Reinier Selen) together with Fu Works (San Fu Maltha) and Cadenza Films (Jeroen Koolbergen). The other partners are, in Luxembourg, Tarantula Luxembourg (Donato Rotunno), and, in Croatia, Nukleus Film Croatia (Sinisa Juricic).

Cineart will release in Benelux.

Van Meegeren is often called “one of the greatest art forgers of the Twentieth Century”. He was renowned for his fake Vermeers and for his forgeries of work by Seventeenth Century Dutch masters.

Among the clients he managed to hoodwink in his shady but illustrious career was leading...

Amsterdam -- Romantic comedy "Love Is All" took home the Golden Calf for best Dutch feature Friday night as the Dutch Film Festival in Utrecht came to a close. Its helmer, Joram Lursen, received the award for best director.

"Love," a romantic comedy similar to the U.K.'s "Love Actually," stars Carice van Houten and, with 1.3 million admissions, is the biggest boxoffice hit in the Netherlands in recent years.

The festival jury, headed by former banker and film financier Frans Afman, was very critical of the quality of most of the Dutch features in competition, stating that many productions had not deserved financial support.

One of the highlights of the festival was opening night. While career achievement winner Rutger Hauer was not in town to receive his award, he sent along a short film in which he rides a bicycle through Amsterdam with Dutch Culture Minister Ronald Plasterk as his passenger.