2024-2023 edition
The Canada-France Series Lab is a joint venture by Series Mania Forum, Telefilm Canada, and the CNC, in partnership with the French Embassy in Canada, the Embassy of Canada in France and the Canada Media Fund. Its main goal is to encourage and facilitate co-productions of audiovisual fiction series between Canadian and French producers. The Canada-France Series Lab offers them new meeting opportunities and fosters the development of projects with strong international potential in a competitive environment.
The 2024-2023 edition was initiated with Banff World Media Festival in collaboration with the Academy of Canadian Film and Television, the Alliance des producteurs francophone du Canada, the Canadian Media Producers Association, Creative BC, the Indigenous Screen Office and Ontario Creates.
The Canada-France Series Lab is a joint venture by
In partnership with
In collaboration with
projects selected
The four projects have been selected by a jury of five experienced Canadian and French industry professionals composed of:
- President: Emmanuelle Guilbart, Joint CEO & Founder, About Premium Content;
- Christine de Bourbon-Busset, Producer, Lincoln TV;
- Sydney Gallonde, CEO & Executive Producer, Make It Happen Studio;
- Christina Jennings, President & Chairman, Shaftesbury;
- Daniela Mujica, Executive Producer, Author, Productions Ocho.
“I was delighted to host this first edition of the Canada-France Series Lab with an outstanding jury of recognized French and Canadian professionals. We focused on selecting projects whose stories were organic, with ambitions and the potential to be sold to broadcasters. We will have succeeded if one or several series were to go into production. I hope that this first edition will serve as a springboard for the following ones.”
— Emmanuelle Guilbart, Joint CEO & Founder, About Premium Content and president of the jury
“Overall, I was very impressed with the caliber of the projects submitted. Several were based on true stories and are inherently perfect contenders for Canada/France co-productions.”
— Christina Jennings, President & Chairman, Shaftesbury and member of the jury
BRAVE
Genre: Crime, inspired by real events
Format: 6 x 60 min
Series created by: Michelle Allen and Katherine Dupont
Produced by: Tatiana Maksimenko for Effervescence Production and Marie- Hélène Lebeau-Taschereau and Louis-Philippe Drolet for KOTV
BRAVE tells the story of Emily, a 26-year old, wild and free-spirited Canadian woman. During a trip to Paris, she accuses four high-ranking French police officers of gang rape. Throughout the legal battle, Emily’s mental health is weaponized to destroy her credibility. Her whole life is shattered. In this contemporary psychological thriller, based on a true crime story, what will be Emily’s biggest combat : the one against the elite unit or the one to take control of her life ?
THE FOLEY
Genre : Drama, mystery
Format: 6 x 52 min
Series written and created by: Renée Blanchar & Annie-Claude Thériault
Produced by: Chantal Lafleur for Avenida, Renée Blanchar for Ça Tourne and Edyta Janczak- Hiriart for Kometa Films
A biologist lands on a small island in eastern Canada, where her recently deceased mother was born. Upsetting the islanders, she discovers secrets from her female lineage. Seeking to end a cycle of inherited violence, she tries to reconnect with her daughter, who lives in France with her father.
RADISSON
Genre: Drama
Format: 6 x 52 min
Series created by: Grégoire Bénabent & Denoal Rouaud
Produced by Jason Brennan for Nish Media and Hugo Brisbois for Oble
Québec City, 1651. Pierre-Esprit, a 13-year-old orphan, lands in New France, a fragile French colony besieged by the hostile Iroquois. After being captured, he is assimilated and becomes the first white man to live among the native people. Years later, during a prisoner exchange, Pierre-Esprit is forced back to the French settlement. But the orphan from Trois-Rivières has become an Iroquois warrior. Can one belong to two people at war, two worlds apart?
TEMPLE
Genre : Inspired by real events
Format: 7 x 60 min
Series created by: Stéphane Miquel and Vivien Desouches
Produced by: Marc Andreani and Vivien Desouches for L’Étoile Noire Production and Valérie d’Auteuil for Caramel Films
In the mid-1990s, in Quebec, France, and Switzerland, an immersion into the bloody drift of the Order of the Solar Temple through the high-risk investigation conducted jointly by a French infiltrator, Jean-Marc Larrieux, and a Quebecois criminologist, Vanessa Villeneuve.