Each year in March, the capital of Flanders is covered with purple. Impossible to miss the Séries Mania festival: its posters are plastered throughout the city, the cinemas are requisitioned for dozens of projections and masterclass, the stars of the small screen parade on the purple carpet unrolled near the new century room … All events – or almost – are accessible for free to the general public, the festival remaining faithful to the initial promise to create a popular event, foot of the belfry.
There is however a place where fans of TV series never enter: the Séries Mania forum, organized in Lille Grand Palais, where all professionals in the sector meet. They were more than 4,800 in 2025, from 74 different countries. A frequentation record: there were three times less during the first Lille edition in 2018. This is where partnerships are formed between young screenwriters looking for funding, producers, distributors and buyers from around the world. For Francesco Capurro, which has run the forum since its creation in Paris in the early 2010s, “there is a readjustment of the sector after ten years of very, very high demand for audiovisual production.” Loving co -production partnerships then becomes essential to share financial risks and continuing to produce ambitious series.
At the heart of this great raout (held from March 25 to 27 this year), an event attracts all the curious: these are the sessions of “Pitch”. There, in front of an audience of pumps in the sector, about fifteen pairs selected with caution – the festival received more than 400 applications – are led to present their serial project in 6 minutes 30. Not one more. “Each word counts, there is no room for the slightest banality,” warns Agathe Berman, a self -proclaimed “pitchologist” that accompanies the selected pairs upon the announcement of their appointment, a few weeks before the festival. For this exercise specialist, “to understand the originality of a story without detailing the plot is a demanding exercise. A single sentence or image often sufficient.”
“It can make the difference”
The game is worth the candle: the winner wins a check for 50,000 euros. Not enough to finance the entire project “but it can really help in the periods of writing and pre-production, underlines Francesco Capurro, and make the difference, while today, many projects never see the light of day for lack of time and sufficient funding.”
On this scene, beautiful stories have established themselves. Among the recent examples are the Swiss series Off-season which had been presented in Lille in 2019 before landing on France 3 in 2022. The Icelandic series Blackport As for her, was presented there in 2018 before being co -produced by Arte and returning to Mania series five years later, this time in international competition. She then won the prize for the best scenario. From the forum to the purple velvet carpet, there are sometimes only a few steps.