Lili Reinhart has scooped the top acting prize at Series Mania for Hal & Harper, Cooper Raiff’s indie TV series in which she stars opposite Mark Ruffalo.
The Riverdale star won Best Actress, while Best Actor went to Italy’s Luca Marinelli, who plays Benito Mussolini in Sky’s Mussolini: Son of the Century. At a ceremony in Lille this evening, the Grand Prize was awarded to Spanish series Querer and Best Writing went to to Lionsgate and yes TV’s The German, which had its screening disrupted by protests earlier this week.
Reinhart is the second consecutive American woman to win the top Series Mania prize following Annette Bening, who took it home last year for Peacock’s Apples Never Fall. In Hal & Harper, she plays one of the titular characters opposite Raif, who try to preserve their childhood even though their single father, played by Ruffalo, forces them to grow up too fast. The series made a splash at the recent Sundance.
The winners were in competition alongside the likes of Amanda Seyfried-starrer Long Bright River, Kaboul from the New8 broadcasting alliance and Gaumont’s The Deal, the latter of which won the inaugural Series Mania Buyers Upfront and was given a special mention at the ceremony tonight in Lille. Eduard Sola’s Querer, which is about a woman who leaves home after 30 years of marriage and presses charges against her husband, took home the top prize.
Lionsgate’s The German has had a rocky Series Mania but the team behind the Oliver Masucci-starrer will have been delighted with a writing win for creators Moshe Zonder and Ronit Weiss Berkowitz. On Sunday night, The German’s screening was disrupted several times by pro-Palestine protests. The show is about a mission to bring down notorious Nazi Dr. Josef Mengele.
The jury was chaired by Hollywood star Pamela Adlon alongside Victor Le Masne (musical director of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games), Argentinian-American actor Ignacio Serricchio (El Recluso), British director Minkie Spiro (3 Body Problem) and French actress Karin Viard (In the Shadows).
Attendance at Series Mania this year was up by 10,000 to 108,000 spectators, according to the fest, while buyers rose 20%. The festival brought with it a serious dose of star power and is taking advantage of the death of the Cannes-based MIPTV, which has moved to London.
“We made a selection of works that were very open to the world, and we’re delighted that the prizes reflect these choices by rewarding, among others, an American independent series, an Israeli series, an Algerian series and an Iranian series,” said Series Mania director Laurence Herszberg. “The two major international prizes also confirm the prominent place of Spanish series in today’s serial landscape.”
