Italy’s Groenlandia, the Banijay-owned and Rome-based company headed by directors and producers Matteo Rovere and Sydney Sibilia, is on a roll with three shows launching this month respectively on Disney+, Sky Italia and Netflix. They include crime drama “This Is Not Hollywood,” which bows Friday at the Rome Film Festival.
The four-part crime series is based on the true story of a 15-year-old named Sarah Scazzi, whose body was thrown into a well after she was strangled in the a small Southern Italian town of Avetrana. A massive media storm ensued over the 42 days it took to find her body. The show, directed by Pippo Mezzapesa (“Burning Hearts”), will premiere Oct. 25 on Disney+ in Italy and across European, Middle East and Africa territories, plus some other countries, and also on Hulu in the U.S.
Rovere says the show’s catchy title refers to the fact that “during that tragic time” in 2010 when Avetrana became a media circus, someone wrote “This Is Not Hollywood” on a town wall.
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The Groenlandia chief points out that a distinctive aspect of their current slate is that it’s “based on innovative ways of telling stories that are rooted in Italy’s [recent] past told with a fresh, present-day vision.” This contemporary take stems largely from the fact that the writing teams and directors fostering the TV content and movies that the group is making are all aged “under 50,” as he puts it.
At Mipcom, Banijay Rights will be launching international sales on Groenlandia series “Accidentally Famous” that’s been sparking positive notice locally since its Oct. 11 launch on Sky Italia. The eight-episode show, lead-directed by Sydney Sibilia (“Rose Island,” “Mixed by Erry”), is the tale of how cult Italian pop band 883 was formed in 1980s in the small town of Pavia. Steeped in ’80s and ’90s global pop culture, the show is “basically about two friends who meet in high school and manage to become probably Italy’s biggest band of the 90s,” says Rovere. He has high hopes that the post-punk and “pre-cellphones” world of “Accidentally Famous,” in which “these two underdogs decide to pursue their dreams,” can resonate outside Italy. This show “will be an important test for us,” he says, in terms of their ability to make something local that can travel.
Ready to drop globally on Netflix on Oct. 30 is Season 2 of Groenlandia’s “The Law According to Lidia Poët,” the period show lead-directed by Rovere about Italy’s first female lawyer, played by Matilda De Angelis, that got a speedy renewal following its successful bow last year.
Also in the Groenlandia pipeline is “Maschi Veri” — the Italian adaptation of hit Spanish comedy series “Machos Alfa” — about four middle-aged friends experiencing midlife crises in parallel as they attempt to adapt to modern sensibilities regarding masculinity, directed by Matteo Oleotto and Letizia Lamartire.
On the film side, there is Giulia Steigerwalt’s Venice title “Diva Futura,” the true tale of a Rome porn outfit founded in the 1980s by impresario Riccardo Schicchi and porn-star-turned politician Ilona Staller (aka Cicciolina). The movie will release in Italian theaters in February and is being sold internationally by PiperFilm, which is in advanced talks for a U.S. deal.
“Our collaboration with Banijay over the past two years [since they were acquired] has been crucial in prompting us to develop IP based on Italy’s rich historical heritage that can have international appeal,” Rovere says.
