Series Mania Awards: Lili Reinhart Takes Best Actress as Spain Scores Historic Double With ‘Querer,' ‘Celeste'
LILLE, France — Lili Reinhart scored best actress for 'Hal & Harper' at France's Series Mania, Europe's biggest TV festival, as its attendance figures went through the roof.
Meanwhile, Spain's Movistar Plus+ scored a historic double, winning the top Grand Prize in main competition for Alauda Ruiz de Azua's 'Querer' and best series for Diego San José's 'Celeste,' co-produced with The Mediapro Studio, in the fest's major sidebar.
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Further top honors in main competition recognised a second series from a major female talent, Quebec's Florence Longpré whose 'Empathy' won Series Mania's prestigious Audience Award.
Presided by Pamela Adlon, the main competition jury recognized most of the competition favourites also prizing veteran Israeli writers Moshe Zonder and Ronit Weiss Berkowitz for the screenplay of 'The German' and Luca Marinelli for his tearaway performance as Benito Mussolini Joe Wright's 'M: Son Of The Century.'
Festival attendance spiked 10,000 to already over 108,000 spectators by Friday afternoon. That can be put down to the recognition of the quality of series selected in sections and the galaxy of stars and luminary speakers at the this year's edition, led by Amanda Seyfried, Christina Hendricks, Charlie Brooker, Miguel Bernardeau and Edvin Ryding.
Delegates at the Series Mania Forum, its industry zone housed in Lille's Grand Palais, surged a spectacular 19% to 5,000 participants, way beyond the organizer's estimates even just a week out, confirming that Series Mania is emerging as Europe's not only premier co-production forum but also biggest TV market.
Reinhart has already won acclaim for her performance in 'Hal & Harper,' an arrested development dramedy, featuring two doting siblings, Hal (director Cooper Raiff), a senior at college, and Harper, (Reinhart), an entry level administrative assistant, who are locked in a cocoon of past trauma and co-dependency, 15 years after their mother's suicide sent their dad (Mark Ruffalo) into tail-spin depression. Reinhart pulls off he achievement of playing convincingly both her adult self and nine-year old former self, forced to grow too fast.
A courtroom thriller and family drama, charting a 50-ish woman's separation from and prosecution of her abuse husband after 30 years of sexual assault, 'Querer' marks the first TV series from the Basque Country's Alauda Ruiz de Azua whose feature, 2023's 'Lullaby,' was endorsed by Pedro Almodóvar as 'undoubtedly the best Spanish debut for years.' The series has been hailed for its across.-the-board performances, control, psychological percipience and tempo, building to a truly moving climax.
Mixing laugh-out-loud comedy and drama, 'Empathy' has creator Dupré also leading the cast playing a psychologist at a Montreal psychiatric institute, herself attempting to recover from ghastly loss. Capturing the epic tragic emotional battles with self of the mentally disturbed, 'Empathy's' Series Mani win looks set to consecrate Dupré, after winning acclaim and awards with 'Audrey's Back' and 'Last Summer of Raspberries.'
From Lionsgate Television, 'The German,' set in 1970, turns on Uri, once a brutal Auschwitz guard – if a flashback is not misleading, has found some sort of redemption as an Israeli war hero living a perfect marriage on a kibbutz. He's then embroiled in a Mossad mission to infiltrate an SS veteran cell in order to trap Nazi war criminal Josef Mengele. Series Mania winners Moshe Zonder, writer of 'Fauda' Season 1 and 'The Girl From Oslo' co-creator Ronit Weiss-Berkowitz, turn in a typically taut, suspense laden, twist-sluiced screenplay of waht looks like the story of a man's search for redemption.
Marinelli was always the front-runner for the best actor award at Series Mania, turning in a towering, tearaway performance capturing Mussolini's gesticulating buffoonery, vacuousness – fascism is 'a synthesis of all affirmations and negations,' he shouts – but uncanny ability to exploit ordinary people's resentments. Which may sounds familiar.
'We made a selection of works that were very open to the world, and we're delighted that the prizes reflect these choices by rewarding, among others, an American independent series, an Israeli series, an Algerian series and an Iranian series. The two major international prizes also confirm the prominent place of Spanish series in today's serial landscape', commented Laurence Herszberg, founder and general manager of Series Mania.
The festival also confirmed its 2026 dates of March 20-27 with the Forum taking place March 24-26.
SERIES MANIA PRIZES:
Audience Award
'Empathy,' (CRAVE (BELL Medias), Canada)
INTERNATIONAL COMPETITION
Grand Prize
'Querer,' (Spain, Movistar Plus)
Best Writing
Moshe Zonder, Ronit Weiss Berkowitz ('The German,' Israel, U.S.)
Special Mention
'The Deal,'(RTS – Radio Télévision Suisse, Switzerland, France, Belgium, Luxembourg)
Best Actress
Lili Reinhart, ('Hal & Harper,U.S)
Best Actor
Luca MarinellI, ('Mussolini: Son of The Century,' France, Italy)
FRENCH COMPETITION
Series
'37 Seconds,' (ARTE, France, Germany)
Best Actress
Elsa Guedj, ('Reformed')
Best Actor
Arthur Dupont, ('The Rose Family')
Best Original Score
Anthony D'Amario, Edouard RIGAUDIÈRE, ('Log Out')
INTERNATIONAL PANORAMA
Best Series
'Celeste,' (Spain, Movistar Plus+)
Special Mention
'Putain,' (Belgium, Streamz)
Best Directing
Ida Panahandeh, ('At the End of The Night,' Iran)
Best Actress
Carmen Machi, ('Celeste,' Spain)
Best Actor
Matthew Gurney, ('Reunion,' U.K.)
Student Jury Prize
'Requiem for Selina,' (Norway, NRK)
SHORT FORMS COMPETITION
Best Series
'One of us is Trembling,' (Denmark)
Special Mention
'El'Sardines,' (Algeria, France)
Student Jury Prize
'Wingspan,'(Germany)
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