Disney+ show The Testaments to open festival, with Forum focus also unveiled
French TV festival Series Mania is to open with Disney+ show The Testaments as part of a program that will include more than 20 world premieres for its 2026 edition.
This year’s festival runs from 20-27 in Lille and will feature 51 series, including 24 world premieres and 10 international premieres from 16 countries.
Dystopian drama series The Testaments is the sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale. Both were created by Bruce Miller, who will host a masterclass at Series Mania and attend the series’ premiere alongside the creative team, including stars Ann Dowd, Chase Infiniti and Lucy Halliday.
Nine series have been selected for the international competition section: AMC Network’s Silicon Valley-set The Audacity from Jonathan Glatzer; Channel 4’s UK series Major Players produced by A24 and directed by Molly Manning Walker; the BBC’s prison-set Waiting For The Out; Australian murder mystery Dustfall; HBO Max France’s Paolo; HBO Max Poland’s Love Is Enough; Disney+ Latin American entry Dear Killer Nannies; Movistar’s Spanish series The Anatomy Of A Moment; and Nordic co-production My Brother.
Introducing the selection, the festival’s managing director Laurence Herszberg and artistic director Frederic Lavigne noted “an undeniable contraction in the sector with fewer series submitted, shorter formats, and seasons with fewer episodes”.
But Herszberg also highlighted a silver lining: “Today’s series creation seems to be less about scale and more about accuracy… in the face of fascism, series are joining the resistance.”
She pointed to several projects in this year’s selection inspired by geopolitical events, including Belgian series Breendonk, Spanish series The Anatomy Of A Moment, and Hagai Levy’s Etty about the Nazi occupation in Amsterdam. The latter made its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival last year.
Other titles set for premieres at the event include Disney+ and France Televisions’ Lucky Luke, based on the popular comics franchise, an out-of-competition screening of Peaky Blinders film The Immortal Man set to launch on Netflix, and the closing night series from Quebec, The Glass House.
“Europe is asserting itself as a nerve centre of creativity,” said Herszberg and Lavigne. “Cross-border production synergies and the arrival of American platforms producing locally offer new means for creators to tell stories rooted in their territories.”
That theme will take centre stage at the industry-focused Forum from March 24-26. The theme of this year’s Lille Dialogues is ’The New Alliances’ and will bring together industry professionals and European politicians for a series of talks, including an opening address by the Council of Europe’s Alain Berset and discussions about the Agora EU programme.
“In a world marked by tension, caught between political polarisation and technological disruption, the audiovisual sector – and fiction in particular – is undergoing profound change,” said Series Mania Forum director Francesco Capurro. “[It’s] a moment of opportunity to reinvent itself within an expanded ecosystem. This is the time for new alliances.”
A version of this article first appeared on Broadcast International sister site Screen.
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