Seriesly Berlin Crowns 'Hands Up' Israeli-Palestinian Drama — SkimNews
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- Hands Up, a music drama pitch about Israeli musician Geva and Palestinian singer Manal joining Berlin's hip-hop scene, won the Writers' Pitch Award at Seriesly Berlin — a unanimous jury pick that drew wild cheers from the audience.
- Created by Neta Weiner, Samira Saraya and Michal Cooper Keren, Hands Up beat pitches from Ireland, Germany, Serbia and the UK to claim the €1,000 ($1,150) prize; Weiner and Saraya were previously in a Palestinian-Jewish hip-hop group and co-founded a cultural-education initiative.
- The Man Behind a Mask (Cilvēks Maskā), Anna Kalnina's Latvian drama about a Soviet reconstructive surgeon who performs the USSR's first sex reassignment surgery before being blackmailed into KGB espionage, won the Co-Pro Pitch Award and a €25,000 post-production services prize.
- I Am God (Ich Bin Gott), Hannah Doose's show about eight middle-aged attendees at a cacao-ceremony-and-breathwork festival on the German-Polish border facing an approaching tornado warning, won the SteinbrennerMüller Award for the German show with best audience potential.
- The Seriesly Berlin jury praised Hands Up as a "hyper local premise that can serve as a metaphor," with conflict, characters and music that could touch audiences worldwide.
Why it matters: Three pitches took Seriesly Berlin's top honors with combined prize support of €26,000, but the real signal is what TV creators are betting on right now: cross-cultural collaboration, true Cold War medical intrigue, and spiritual-festival satire — all pitched as globally resonant despite hyper-specific local settings. Buyers scouting the conference slate now have three concrete projects positioned for international financing.
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