"The Inheritance" Wins Sony Award at Rome's MIA Market — SkimNews
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- The Inheritance won the Sony Pictures Television Award for best drama project at the 12th MIA Market in Rome, which closed Friday; the Belgian series follows a wealthy widow's death and the ensuing battle over her estate and is being produced by Kristoffel Mertens and Kato Maes for Panenka.
- The MIA jury, including Sony Pictures' head of drama development Andrew Plotkin, said the show made "a lasting impression through its complex, charismatic female protagonist in a traditionally male-dominated setting" and that the family-inheritance theme gives it "authentic and distinctive resonance."
- MIA Market presented more than 100 projects from 43 countries across its Co-Production Market, Pitching Forum and additional showcases; the new-format market drew 2,800 professionals from 64 countries, on par with last year, across seven venues with Via Veneto and Piazza Barberini turned into an industry hub.
- Gaia Tridente, MIA's market chief, said the edition marks "an important step in the market's evolution" in an audiovisual industry "undergoing profound transformations" that are redefining content development, production, financing and distribution.
- Each of the four MIA Development Award categories carries a cash prize to support development: the animation series prize went to Dario Piana's Italy-Belgium-Spain co-production "Sophie, if You Are There Give Us a Sign!", the animated film prize to Ayce Kartal's "All the Softness in the World" and the documentary prize to "Loving Ika" on the ethics of human relationships with artificial intelligence.
- Day Traitors, the Danish drama winner produced by Nordisk Film Production's Deborah Bayer Marlow and Michael Bille Frandsen, follows intelligence agent Amir who "betrays his country to protect his family, only to destroy it"; "Bleaching Nemo", a U.S.-U.K. documentary on ocean environmental balances, took a special mention.
- Animal Instinct, Vittoria Rizzardi Peñalosa's debut feature about a 16-year-old who kidnaps the father who abandoned her, won the WIFTMI Award for the project with the greatest potential on gender inequality; the GEDI Visual, Screen International and new Mnemonica awards went to "The Decoy Artist", "Off-Season" and "Diatribe".
Why it matters: For Panenka, the Sony Pictures Television Award arrives at a market where 2,800 professionals from 64 countries met and more than 100 projects from 43 countries were pitched, giving a Belgian shingle an audience well beyond its home market. Each of the four development categories also carries a cash prize earmarked for development, so recognition arrives with funding attached.
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