Marco Bellocchio Sweeps as Italian Global Series Festival Wraps
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- Italian Global Series Festival wrapped July 11 in Rimini's Teatro Galli, with Marco Bellocchio's HBO Venice-showcased 'Portobello' sweeping three Italian fiction awards — Best Miniseries, Best Director for Bellocchio, and Best Miniseries Screenplay.
- Sally Wainwright took double honors for 'Riot Women' in the International Comedy competition, winning Best Creator/Director and seeing the series take Best Comedy Series, with Joanna Scanlan named Best Lead Actress.
- Richard Gadd ('Half Man') received the Breakthrough Storyteller Award and Natasha Lyonne ('Poker Face,' 'Russian Doll') the Maximo Excellence Award, both picked up in person at the Rimini ceremonies.
- 'Star Trek' was celebrated for its 60th anniversary with Anson Mount, Rebecca Romijn, Celia Rose Gooding, and Nicholas Meyer among the cast and creatives receiving Maximo Celebration Prizes, capped by a preview screening of 'Star Trek: Strange New Worlds' Season 4.
- Carlton Cuse, 'Lost' co-showrunner, received a Maximo Excellence Award and told Variety that Fellini and Antonioni shaped the show's 'cinema of the subconscious' — a mood-driven visual language that ran against network TV's 'make the subtext text' notes.
- David W. Zucker (Scott Free) warned at an industry-crisis panel that streamers 'fundamentally changed' content production, chasing monthly subscriptions over long-term character relationships, while co-panelist Steve Stark (Toluca Pictures) flagged over-reliance on audience data as steering how TV is optioned.
- Turkish dizi stars Özge Gürel and Serkan Çayoğlu headlined one of the festival's most popular panels on the international success of Turkish series, joined by prizes for Irish-UK's 'Leonard and Hungry Paul,' France's 'Laura's Treatment,' Chile's 'Raza Brava,' and Sweden's 'Burden of Justice.'
Why it matters: The festival's dual signals matter: awards celebrated a Star Trek-era vision of long-form character storytelling (Cuse, Wainwright, the 'Strange New Worlds' panel), while the industry-crisis panel from Scott Free's Zucker and Toluca's Stark argued streamers now chase monthly retention over character relationships. For non-English creators winning here — from Turkish dizi to Sweden's 'Burden of Justice' — that tension defines whether streamers help or hollow out their future.
