Interest for Polish Content Is Constantly Increasing
TVP is back to NATPE Budapest with a slate of new titles in various genres which were added to its catalog this spring. As Aleksandra Kazmieruk, Head of Inernational Sales of Films and TV Series, TVP, tells TVBIZZ Magazine, the interest for Polish content is constantly increasing and even though CEE remains the biggest market for TVP, there is great potential for growth in territories like Spain, North and Latin America.
Filip
Aleksandra, TVP has an extensive catalog of ready- made shows and formats. Please, tell us more about the genres of content you are offer- ing to international clients and how many hours of content TVP produces and sells each year?
TVP indeed has a huge catalog where one can find almost all genres and formats. TVP is the biggest Polish producer and naturally to satisfy the local needs of TVP’s channels - main and thematic ones - we create a lot of content. After a thorough selection, many titles find their place in the international catalog. These are theatrical and TV movies, TV series, documentaries of various topics – history, current affairs, social issues, or culture - and last but not least kids programming. Every year, TVP, like any other public broadcaster, produces an enormous amount of content. It is difficult to quote an exact number of hours because we would have to include all the productions created by 16 regional channels, news, and studio recordings. Therefore, I will concentrate here on the number of hours which we add to our international catalog annually, it is a minimum of 60-70 hours of valuable and engaging content.
If it comes to the hours sold by International Sales Department, again before I provide the number, I would like to share some details of our everyday activity. Apart from the sale of ready-made programs and formats abroad, we also export all the elements of the audiovisual works such as footage from our vast, 70-year-old archives, language versions, or trademarks. We conduct theatrical distribution outside of Poland and help organize commercial and non-commercial screenings all over the world. The scope and scale of our licensing activity is much bigger than it might look at first sight and we are, in fact, the biggest Polish content sales agency. And if you still want to hear the number of hours of ready-made programs sold then I would say that depending on the year it is from 100 to 250 hours annually.
TVP formats have been getting recognition and have been traveling to other territories in the past few years, i.e. Sanatorium of Love winning the PITCH & PLAY LIVE! award at NATPE Budapest and I’ll Be Fine being adapted in CEE countries recently. To what do you attribute this success and increased interest in TVP content?
Indeed, we are seeing an increasing interest in content from Poland and the CEE region. It makes me very happy because it turns out that we can break through with our productions to foreign buyers and viewers. Polish television production is in great shape, viewers appreciate us for the high quality of production, interesting topics, and creative approach to their presentation.
I think that also our persistence in presenting TVP content at the most important film and TV markets significantly contributed to the wider recognition of the Polish audiovisual industry. We are visible and I see buyers coming back for new titles. In 2023 our best-selling title is the feature film Filip by Michał Kwieciński which has already been sold to multiple territories, and not only in the CEE region. For this year’s edition of PITCH & PLAY LIVE! we submitted Camper - our new reality show. I hope it will be as successful as Sanatorium of Love, which by now has already seen 5 seasons.
What have been the latest additions to TVP’s catalog?
In the Spring/Summer catalog, our buyers can find great new titles such as our best-seller Filip by Michał Kwieciński, The Perfect Number by internationally recognized director Krzysztof Zanussi or Prophet by Michał Konrad, the new TV series Moth Hunting by Michał Rogalski, the historical period drama The Jagiellonians by Krzysztof Łukaszewicz about the most famous Polish dynasty, or the drama series Two Eagles House by Waldemar Krzystek. We also have the new reality show Camper, in which five pairs of well-known influencers go on a camper tour through the wilderness in different parts of Poland, and the wonderful travel series Fall in Love with Poland.
In the documentary section, we added around 10 new titles covering history, social, and cultural topics. As you can see, TVP’s offer is very diverse and we are observing a high interest in these titles from many countries already.
TVP’s President Mateusz Matyszkowicz announced recently that TVP plans to shoot more original series for its flagship channels TVP1 and TVP2 and plans to replace international acquisitions with local content starting next year. How many more hours does TVP Sales expect to represent from 2024?
TVP is working currently on new original series but TVP has always been creating in-house productions or commissioned TV series for general and thematic channels, and now for VOD.TVP.PL - TVP’s streaming platform, which plays a very important role in TVP’s channel portfolio. We will have in the year 2024 at least three new titles – Matylda, a costume drama set in XIX century Poland, in which the main motifs are love, emancipation, and the fight for rights and honor; Niepewność (working title: Uncertainty) about the life of our poet young Adam Mickewicz and Dewajtis, an adaptation of one of the most famous books from positivism times. Hence, if we add the following seasons of the productions from 2022 or 2023 we might have in 2024 50-60 hours of TV series production.
What are your best-selling titles in CEE? Are you negotiating similar deals like the one for I’ll Be Fine?
Last year our best-selling title was the documentary Zelensky – Servant of the People by Barbara Włodarczyk. Because of the war in Ukraine, this film reached the highest interest not only in CEE but in other regions as well. Besides that, the buyers loved the feature film March 1968 by Krzysztof Lang, the triptych about Poles saving Jewish people Hitler’s Aunt, Brothers, and Musicians, the war drama series Wartime Girls, the family saga Our Century and the costume period drama The Crown of the Kings. We can’t forget about the classics of Polish cinematography – the films by Andrzej Wajda and Krzysztof Kieślowski are our evergreens. They are being licensed for more than 20 years now, and the broadcasters or distributors desire to acquire these gems of cinematography all the time. The beginning of 2023 showed that Filip will be our best-seller in the up-coming 24 months.
What about the rest of the world, which are your most-important markets?
Without a doubt, the CEE region has always been our best market. We share the culture and history and it seems we communicate audiovisually in a similar way, if I may put it this way. However, our appetite to spread TVP’s content does not end in CEE. We see with satisfaction that such markets as Spain, Latin America, or North America appreciate our content more and more. This appreciation is reflected in the numbers and we will be able to share great news soon about two major deals in Spain and the Americas.
Does TVP also sell co-productions with broadcasters/producers from other countries and do you plan to add more such titles?
For now, it is true we are focusing only on titles we financed or co-financed, however, this approach might change soon. We are constantly growing and I think we are ready to be a sales agent for “outside of TVP” productions. I hope that in a year, I will be able to share more information about it.
But today, I can only say that we are analyzing all the projects which are submitted to our sales department and if we find titles that suit our line-up we definitely won’t let them go.
Recently GoQuest announced that it has acquired two crime series from TVP - Erinyes and Crusade. Please, tell us more about this deal and do you have any other similar agreements with other distributors?
We are very happy we started this cooperation with GoQuest. Their team fell in love with these series as much as we did. We appreciate a lot how GoQuest work with Erinyes and Crusade and believe that thanks to this deal these two amazing series will travel even further. We are always open to various models of cooperation if only they might make individual titles successful in foreign markets. For instance, we like working with local distributors from select territories where they can reach all possible buy- ers and they’ve got long-term business relations. As I said, each title is treated individually, and we always try to find the best distribution model for it.
TVP indeed has a huge catalog where one can find almost all genres and formats. TVP is the biggest Polish producer and naturally to satisfy the local needs of TVP’s channels - main and thematic ones - we create a lot of content. After a thorough selection, many titles find their place in the international catalog. These are theatrical and TV movies, TV series, documentaries of various topics – history, current affairs, social issues, or culture - and last but not least kids programming. Every year, TVP, like any other public broadcaster, produces an enormous amount of content. It is difficult to quote an exact number of hours because we would have to include all the productions created by 16 regional channels, news, and studio recordings. Therefore, I will concentrate here on the number of hours which we add to our international catalog annually, it is a minimum of 60-70 hours of valuable and engaging content.
If it comes to the hours sold by International Sales Department, again before I provide the number, I would like to share some details of our everyday activity. Apart from the sale of ready-made programs and formats abroad, we also export all the elements of the audiovisual works such as footage from our vast, 70-year-old archives, language versions, or trademarks. We conduct theatrical distribution outside of Poland and help organize commercial and non-commercial screenings all over the world. The scope and scale of our licensing activity is much bigger than it might look at first sight and we are, in fact, the biggest Polish content sales agency. And if you still want to hear the number of hours of ready-made programs sold then I would say that depending on the year it is from 100 to 250 hours annually.
TVP formats have been getting recognition and have been traveling to other territories in the past few years, i.e. Sanatorium of Love winning the PITCH & PLAY LIVE! award at NATPE Budapest and I’ll Be Fine being adapted in CEE countries recently. To what do you attribute this success and increased interest in TVP content?
Indeed, we are seeing an increasing interest in content from Poland and the CEE region. It makes me very happy because it turns out that we can break through with our productions to foreign buyers and viewers. Polish television production is in great shape, viewers appreciate us for the high quality of production, interesting topics, and creative approach to their presentation.
I think that also our persistence in presenting TVP content at the most important film and TV markets significantly contributed to the wider recognition of the Polish audiovisual industry. We are visible and I see buyers coming back for new titles. In 2023 our best-selling title is the feature film Filip by Michał Kwieciński which has already been sold to multiple territories, and not only in the CEE region. For this year’s edition of PITCH & PLAY LIVE! we submitted Camper - our new reality show. I hope it will be as successful as Sanatorium of Love, which by now has already seen 5 seasons.
What have been the latest additions to TVP’s catalog?
In the Spring/Summer catalog, our buyers can find great new titles such as our best-seller Filip by Michał Kwieciński, The Perfect Number by internationally recognized director Krzysztof Zanussi or Prophet by Michał Konrad, the new TV series Moth Hunting by Michał Rogalski, the historical period drama The Jagiellonians by Krzysztof Łukaszewicz about the most famous Polish dynasty, or the drama series Two Eagles House by Waldemar Krzystek. We also have the new reality show Camper, in which five pairs of well-known influencers go on a camper tour through the wilderness in different parts of Poland, and the wonderful travel series Fall in Love with Poland.
In the documentary section, we added around 10 new titles covering history, social, and cultural topics. As you can see, TVP’s offer is very diverse and we are observing a high interest in these titles from many countries already.
Moth Hunting
TVP’s President Mateusz Matyszkowicz announced recently that TVP plans to shoot more original series for its flagship channels TVP1 and TVP2 and plans to replace international acquisitions with local content starting next year. How many more hours does TVP Sales expect to represent from 2024?
TVP is working currently on new original series but TVP has always been creating in-house productions or commissioned TV series for general and thematic channels, and now for VOD.TVP.PL - TVP’s streaming platform, which plays a very important role in TVP’s channel portfolio. We will have in the year 2024 at least three new titles – Matylda, a costume drama set in XIX century Poland, in which the main motifs are love, emancipation, and the fight for rights and honor; Niepewność (working title: Uncertainty) about the life of our poet young Adam Mickewicz and Dewajtis, an adaptation of one of the most famous books from positivism times. Hence, if we add the following seasons of the productions from 2022 or 2023 we might have in 2024 50-60 hours of TV series production.
What are your best-selling titles in CEE? Are you negotiating similar deals like the one for I’ll Be Fine?
Last year our best-selling title was the documentary Zelensky – Servant of the People by Barbara Włodarczyk. Because of the war in Ukraine, this film reached the highest interest not only in CEE but in other regions as well. Besides that, the buyers loved the feature film March 1968 by Krzysztof Lang, the triptych about Poles saving Jewish people Hitler’s Aunt, Brothers, and Musicians, the war drama series Wartime Girls, the family saga Our Century and the costume period drama The Crown of the Kings. We can’t forget about the classics of Polish cinematography – the films by Andrzej Wajda and Krzysztof Kieślowski are our evergreens. They are being licensed for more than 20 years now, and the broadcasters or distributors desire to acquire these gems of cinematography all the time. The beginning of 2023 showed that Filip will be our best-seller in the up-coming 24 months.
What about the rest of the world, which are your most-important markets?
Without a doubt, the CEE region has always been our best market. We share the culture and history and it seems we communicate audiovisually in a similar way, if I may put it this way. However, our appetite to spread TVP’s content does not end in CEE. We see with satisfaction that such markets as Spain, Latin America, or North America appreciate our content more and more. This appreciation is reflected in the numbers and we will be able to share great news soon about two major deals in Spain and the Americas.
Does TVP also sell co-productions with broadcasters/producers from other countries and do you plan to add more such titles?
For now, it is true we are focusing only on titles we financed or co-financed, however, this approach might change soon. We are constantly growing and I think we are ready to be a sales agent for “outside of TVP” productions. I hope that in a year, I will be able to share more information about it.
But today, I can only say that we are analyzing all the projects which are submitted to our sales department and if we find titles that suit our line-up we definitely won’t let them go.
Recently GoQuest announced that it has acquired two crime series from TVP - Erinyes and Crusade. Please, tell us more about this deal and do you have any other similar agreements with other distributors?
We are very happy we started this cooperation with GoQuest. Their team fell in love with these series as much as we did. We appreciate a lot how GoQuest work with Erinyes and Crusade and believe that thanks to this deal these two amazing series will travel even further. We are always open to various models of cooperation if only they might make individual titles successful in foreign markets. For instance, we like working with local distributors from select territories where they can reach all possible buy- ers and they’ve got long-term business relations. As I said, each title is treated individually, and we always try to find the best distribution model for it.
