News

REinvent International Sales has inked a raft of deals across its slate of high-concept series, including “Transport” (pictured) and “Enemy of the People,” rolling off of MipTV.

The company has sold both “Transport,” which is penned by Auli Mantila (“Silver Stars”), and the Icelandic comedy series “Ordinary People” to AMC Networks Southern Europe for Spain and Portugal.

“Transport” is an eight-part TV show following a young journalist investigating a chip found in baby food. She crosses paths with an insurance investigator and a bank manager who are both connected to the case. The series stars Emmi Parviainen (“Shadow Lines”), Maria Heiskanen (“Everlasting Moments”), Pirkko Hämäläinen (“Devil’s Bride”) and Geert van Rampelberg (“De Infiltrant”). Miia Haavisto (“Tom of Finland”) and Tia Talli (“Nurses”) at Tekele are producing “Transport.”

“Ordinary People,” which is produced by Glassriver, follows the ups and downs of a friendship between two young women entering adulthood and...

“You’re a horse person?” a Belgian stable owner asks Johanna, a young Finnish journalist delving into the discovery of a microchip in a baby’s meat patty at a Helsinki daycare center. Only creator-director Auli Mantila’s own horse affiliations as a qualified farrier may explain in part one of the most singular of entries at this year’s Nordisk Film & TV Fond Prize: “Transport.”

This is Scandinavian crime drama, but “ordi-noir,” Mantila told the Nordisk Film & TV Fond newsletter, in that it “happens in broad daylight, involves people with no special talent or trauma, and takes place in locations anyone could just walk in.”

It also addresses a massive but little explored subject, turning on pan-European food fraud which embroils three women: Marianne, a by-the-book bank loans exec forced to money launder earnings of a sinister food import company; an insurance investigator checking the disappearance of a...

After two weeks of filming in Belgium in September, principal photography for the new eight-episode series is continuing in and around Helsinki. A new 8x50 Finnish-Belgian TV series is now in the making. The project, entitled Transport, is written and directed by showrunner and filmmaker Auli Mantila, best known for having directed The Collector (Finland’s bid for Best Foreign Language Film at the 1997 Academy Awards), The Geography of Fear (2000) and My Friend Henry (2004). The news was first reported by Variety. Transport revolves around the world of food trading, money laundering and the illegal transport of horses along the roads and wires of Europe. In particular, the story follows Johann (played by young actress Emmi Parviainen), a journalist who is investigating the origin of a microchip found in baby food. Alongside Parviainen are veterans Maria Heskanen (playing an insurance investigator), Pirkko Hämäläinen (a bank manager), Ville Virtanen and...

The Berlin Festival’s Finnish Shooting Star 2015 Emmi Parviainen (“Shadow Lines”), seasoned actor Maria Heiskanen (“Everlasting Moments”), Pirkko Hämäläinen (“Devil’s Bride”) and Belgian actor Geert van Rampelberg (“De Infiltrant”) are headlining the eight-part TV show “Transport.” Prix Europa winner Auli Mantila will serve as its showrunner.

Lensing the show is veteran DoP J-p Passi, multi-awarded for the film “The Happiest Day in the Life of Olly Mäki” and second unit DoP on “Chernobyl.”

Veteran producer Miia Haavisto (“Tom of Finland”) and Tia Talli (“Nurses”) of Tekele are producing for Finnish pubcaster Yle. Belgium’s Philippe de Schepper (“Black-Out”) and Jonnydepony’S Helen Perquy, an executive producer on “Tabula Rasa,” are co-producing. Nordic global distributor REinvent Studios picked up the show in February.

Producer Haavisto said “Transport” stands out as a crime drama set in the food trade. “It’s the tale of ordinary people under immense pressure, all of...