ENERGACAMERIMAGE 2018 FIRST LOOK – TV PILOTS COMPETITION LINE-UP

Thursday October 18th, 2018

We present the line-up of our this year's First Look - TV Pilots Competition. Cinematographers of ten television projects will compete for the festival's prize.

Competition under the patronage of Jakbyniepaczeć

Cacciatore - The Hunter

The setting is Sicily, in the 1990s. There’s a resurgence of the mafia wars, which took thousands of lives throughout previous decades. Enter the scene an ambitious young prosecutor with a head full of wild ideas, a will of iron, and an awareness that to achieve results, he’ll have to get his hands dirty on more than one occasion. His actions will reverberate for years to come and lead to even more bloodshed. This is a world in which angry boys become furious men – and cannon fodder at the same time. Initially, the prosecutor battles aggressively with his surroundings and the Italian government for his piece of the pie, but ultimately the man becomes a true fighter for justice who wants the world to be a little bit safer. This is not yet another television series about a superhero in the guise of a moral crusader who faces numerous obstacles and fights the archetypical bad guys – no, this is a story based on real events, and it explores the ever-changing definition of what is right and what is wrong.

Original title: Il Cacciatore: Nel Bosco
Polish title: Il Cacciatore: Polowanie na mafię
Director: Stefano Lodovichi
Cinematographer: Benjamin Maier
Produced by: Cross Productions
Distributor: Beta Film GmbH
Polish distributor: Platforma nc+
Country and year: Italy, 2018

Dark: Secrets

Our story centres around a small German town that would look exactly like dozens of other small German towns, situated near a vast forest, if it wasn’t for the imposing nuclear power plant that seems to stretch beyond the horizon. The plant holds a mystery of such magnitude that it has permeated through everything and everyone in town, poisoning the minds of both the generation who remember what it was all about, and their descendants – who were raised in a completely different world. The series tells the story of four influential families whose members will have to face not only physical obstacles and threats, but also their inner demons, hidden beneath masks of normalcy. Adults commit suicide, children go missing, massacred cadavers appear out of nowhere, and there are unnerving lights and sounds in a mysterious forest cave leading to god knows where. The past intertwines with the present and marks the future; while time, whimsical as always, waits for no man. No one will leave the town unharmed.

Original title: Dark: Geheimnisse
Polish title: Dark: Tajemnice
Director: Baran bo Odar
Cinematographer: Nikolaus Summerer
Produced by: Wiedemann & Berg Television GmbH & Co. KG
Distributor: Netflix
Polish distributor: Netflix
Country and year: Germany, 2017

Miniaturist, The

In the 16th century, the Netherlands was a place of social, religious and political upheaval that made resourceful people rich and the less industrious fall from grace. Petronella is a young woman who agrees to marry a wealthy merchant to pay off the family debt. Little does she know that this decision will affect all the people around her. The problems begin when she travels to Amsterdam to live in her husband’s impressive house only to find that she will be sharing it with the man’s enigmatic sister. In addition, as a wedding gift, Petronella receives a doll’s house designed as a miniature of the very house she lives in, fully furnished, together with replicas of the members of the household. It also appears that the gift has some rather unsettling characteristics, well beyond what may be considered rational, and it becomes a symbolic representation of the many mysteries surrounding Petronella’s new life. The girl devotes herself to better understanding this distressing and exciting world she has entered.

Polish title: Miniaturzystka
Director: Guillem Morales
Cinematographer: Gavin Finney
Produced by: British Broadcasting Corporation, The Forge Entertainment
Distributor: all3media international
Polish distributor: Platforma nc+
Country and year: UK, 2017

Mystery Road

A mysterious event in the small town of Patterson in Western Australia – two young men go missing in somewhat unusual circumstances – makes the strained relations between the white inhabitants and the Aboriginal community even more tense. The investigation is led by a white local cop Emma James but she chooses to use the experience of the veteran detective Jay Swan, an Aborigine whose decision to join the police force made him open to a different kind of ostracism from his native community. Two extremely different worlds collide while both protagonists follow the trail that will eventually lead them to question the existing fragile status quo, born out of some traumatic events of the town’s distant past, as well as to revalue their priorities in life. All the characters are surrounded by the wild and uncompromising, yet poetically beautiful land which has throughout the years become a silent witness to many more similar tragedies of the flawed human beings.

Director: Rachel Perkins
Cinematographer: Mark Wareham
Produced by: Bunya Productions
Distributor: all3media international
Country and year: Australia, 2017

Patrick Melrose: Bad News

Patrick Melrose was born into wealth and privilege, but his childhood was definitely not a happy one, and as an adult he became addicted to alcohol and drugs. However, now he wants to purify himself and start a new chapter of his life. As it happens, his proud and cruel father, who abused and manipulated young Patrick, died recently overseas. This is, of course, a good opportunity to get wasted and reminisce about the bad old days. But Patrick wants to stop drinking and taking drugs. He abandons his everyday Sisyphean struggle with booze, needles and mobile numbers of friendly dealers, and he flies to New York to recover his father’s ashes. Although the city that never sleeps tries to tempt him, Patrick really wants to change … something … somewhere. Even if only to stop thinking all the time that something needs to change. Will he succeed in turning his life around?

Polish title: Patrick Melrose: Złe wieści
Director: Edward Berger
Cinematographer: James Friend
Produced by: Sky Vision, Two Cities Television
Distributor: Home Box Office, Inc.
Polish distributor: HBO Polska Sp. z o.o.
Country and year: UK, 2018

Plague, The

Sixteenth century Spain under the Habsburgs was still a global empire to be envied, but the country was suffocating from internal problems, raging corruption and the growing disproportion between rich and poor. When the famous city of Sevilla, known as the gateway to the New World, sees the return of the Black Death, many influential people try to hide this fact and continue making money from ships returning from the Americas. Mateo, a man hiding a dark past, arrives at the increasingly chaotic city to pay off his debts. He’ll be released from them if he can find a certain boy, but his actions alert the Inquisition, with which he once had a bone to pick. While trying to accomplish his mission without getting caught, Mateo plunges into the city’s dark underbelly, where the plague is only one of the many things to fear. Time is running out, and history will be written by those who know how to survive long enough.

Original title: La Peste: La Palabra
Polish title: Zaraza: Słowo
Director: Alberto Rodríguez
Cinematographer: Pau Esteve Birba
Produced by: Atipica Films, MOVISTAR +
Distributor: MOVISTAR +
Polish distributor: Epic Drama
Country and year: Spain, 2018

Rojst

The story is set in Poland, in the 1980s. A double homicide committed in a nearby forest arouses intense emotions and leads people to come up with wild theories as to what may have happened. A well-known and influential Communist Party member was found murdered together with a local prostitute. The police force of the People’s Republic of Poland acts swiftly and decisively and captures the murderer before anyone can even properly analyse the crime. But not all of the citizens rest assured. A young reporter who has just started working at the local newspaper does not trust the official investigation and starts his own. He is reluctantly assisted by an older colleague, a veteran reporter who has seen everything and knows that crossing the police may cause them to turn on you. This is only the beginning of a series of gruesome events that will help the two realise the state of moral decay the world they know is in. Will journalistic ethos win over self-preservation?

Director: Jan Holoubek
Cinematographer: Bartłomiej Kaczmarek
Produced by: Showmax Polska
Polish distributor: Showmax Polska
Country and year: Poland, 2018

Terror, The: Go For Broke

In 1845, two splendidly equipped Royal Navy ships, HMS Terror and HMS Erebus, ventured into the inhospitable Arctic waters to discover what lies beneath the infamous and impenetrable Northwest Passage. A group of whalers witnessed the ships entering the treacherous, icy labyrinth, but this is where facts give way to assumption, supposition and legend, for not a single member of either crew came back alive. The series tells the story of the hardships experienced by the sailors, based on notes and various other findings made throughout the next century and a half. It’s the story of brave adventurers reaching their physical and mental limits, of starvation warping their behaviour, as nature annihilates the intruders one by one. Or maybe – just maybe – the Englishmen encountered something far more sinister, something straight out of the creepiest of nightmares ...

Polish title: Terror
Director: Edward Berger
Cinematographer: Florian Hoffmeister
Produced by: EMJAG Productions, AMC Studios, Entertainment 360, Scott Free Productions
Distributor: AMC Studios
Polish distributor: AMC Studios
Country and year: USA, 2018

When Heroes Fly

Set in Israel in modern times, this is the story of four men – once confident, active members of the special forces who are now war veterans unable to deal with the traumatic memories of the failed mission they all were a part of eleven years ago. Four brothers in arms who were ready to die for one another, nowadays cannot even have a normal conversation without bursting out in anger. Four bittersweet stories, about to reach a poignant conclusion, turn with an unexpected twist of fate that makes the concept of a second chance more real than ever before. Will having a common objective help the former buddies restore the friendship that supported them throughout the hell of war? Will these people, who spent many years hurting themselves and their loved ones, ever be able to heal and feel whole once more? Can you cure a man’s soul without tending to the demons that preoccupy his mind?

Director: Omri Givon
Cinematographer: Nitai Netzer
Produced by: Spiro Films
Distributor: Menemsha Films, Keshet International
Country and year: Israel, 2017

Yellowstone: Daybreak

For six generations, the Duttons have owned an enormous ranch in Montana USA stretching well beyond the horizon. Throughout that time, they have come to symbolise what is best and worst in the history of the white man in America and his development of land belonging to the indigenous peoples: the quest for progress, breeding violence; traditions paid for with the blood of the innocent; and a defiant attitude against big-city mass culture at the expense of cultural diversity. However, the head of the Dutton clan, John, an old-school rancher more prone to an Old Testament vendetta than listening to the politically correct voices of modernity, will have to face a joint invasion upon his family’s core values. On one hand, John is pressured by an influential land developer who wishes to turn part of the Duttons’ land into a business and tourist attraction, and on the other, a wealthy casino owner is fighting for a brighter future for the indigenous Americans. As if this weren’t enough, the Duttons begin to clash with each other…

Director: Taylor Sheridan
Cinematographer: Ben Richardson
Produced by: Linson Entertainment, Paramount Network, Treehouse Films
Distributor: Paramount Network, Viacom International Media Networks
Country and year: USA, 2018