At a glamorous gala event yesterday night NEM Zagreb announced the winners of this year's coveted NEM Awards.

The Best Finished TV Series in CEE accolade went to Voyo's spy series Exctractors which competed against a total of 37 projects submitted. TVN WBD’s The Thaw placed second, while TVP’s The Bay of Spies came up third.

Lenka Szántó, Creative Producer, TVNova/Voyo and also the co-creator and producer of the series, commented exclusively for CEETV: "The production value is one of the elements that makes the series stand out, we filmed half of the series abroad, in Eastern Turkey, we don't do this every day in Eastern Europe and also it is a true story, very authentic, we tried really hard to keep the authenticity in it. There is a consultant who is a former spy, there are various other consultants, the languages that some of the characters speak in the series are really Urdu, Pashto, this authenticity imprinted into the series and makes it believable.

When Czech Voyo started producing Voyo Originals, we were given the task to do some genre series. We really wanted to do a spy project and I and producer Adam Dvorak from Movie s.r.o. decided to ask investigative journalist Jaroslav Kmenta and he had a pocket full of spy stories and we developed the series. Keshet International is distributing it internationally and I hope that after the award it will travel to many other countries, we are shooting the second season very soon, in the spring so there is going to be more of Extractors.

We will offer more Voyo Originals to international viewers, we have The Markovič Method: Hojer and The King of Šumava both distributed by ZDF Studios internationally and also The Golden Swan which was picked up by Onza Distribution. We have just started."

The Council of Europe Series Co-Production Development Award went to Hungarian prodco Joyrider's Imperial Vampire Committee which was chosen amongst 68 projects submitted. The premise of the series project: in 1750, a committee of four specialists – a doctor, a priest, an ethnologist, and a soldier – travels the Austro-Hungarian Empire to handle public health crises - by covering them with local superstitions. The main prize is 50.000€ non-reimbursable.

The winners in the Best Pre-Development Project Award Powered by HAVC category, which saw a total of 159 projects submitted, were:

For Scripted Series - The Last Divorce of Communism by Teodora Markova and Stanislavs Tokalovs

For Scripted Feature-lenght Film - Mileva: Frau Einstein by Selena Stankovic

For Documentary Series/Feature-Lenght Film - Underneath the Waves by Timea Huszar and Daniel Washington

For Entertainment Format - The Right Question by Djordje Stankovic


The prizes include various networking options and workshops with market exchanges, worth up to 5.000€ for three international markets and festivals.