Political Drama ‘Power Play’ Wins – Deadline

Writers Johan Fasting, Silje Storstein, and Kristin Grue are the recipients of the 2024 Nordisk Film & TV Fond Prize for their political drama Power Play (Makta).

The trio were awarded the prize Tuesday evening during a ceremony on the first day of the Göteborg Film Festival’s series focused sidebar TV Drama Vision.

As part of the award, they will share a NOK 200 000 (approx € 20 000) award, funded by the Nordisk Film & TV fund. This is the eighth year Göteborg has been the home of the Nordisk Film & TV Fond Prize. This year’s jury included Vinca Wiedemann, editor, producer, and screenwriter (Denmark); Joel Spira, actor, (Sweden); Kateryna Vyshnevska, producer (Ukraine); and Charlotte Winberg, journalist and critic (Finland).

Announcing this evening’s win, the jury said: “Choosing a winner from a diverse array of such high-quality drama has been both a privilege and a pleasure for us, the jury. The nominees have been diverse: from politics to human despair, from love for a mother to a tragic disaster at sea, from families to co-workers to friends and enemies. But the series that captured us the most was the one that managed to embrace seemingly dull historical facts with humor and playfulness, and that depicted an epoch of political history with all nuances of human idealism and flaws. Makta – Power Play stayed loyal to its essence of truth, lie, and poor memory.”

Power Play runs over six hour-long episodes. Broadcaster is NRK. Producers are Camilla Brusdal and Vilje Kathrine Hagen. REinvent is handling international sales. Series synopsis reads: The year is 1974. The setting is 2023. Power Play is a never before seen drama about a crucial turning point in political history based on truth, lies and bad memory. When the Labour Party is torn apart by a disastrous feud between the Chairman and the Prime Minister, the young idealist Gro Harlem Brundtland is unwillingly pulled into the tactics and scheming of modern politics. As the government implodes around her, Gro learns to play her own games of power, climbing the ranks until she is left the last woman standing in the ruins of Labour’s celebrated social democracy.

Previous winners of the coveted Nordisk Film & TV Fond Prize include Norway’s Kenneth Karlstad for the series Kids in Crime (2023), Iceland’s Gísli Örn Gardarsson, Björn Hlynur Haraldsson and Mikael Torfason for the crime series Blackport (2022), Denmark’s Maja Jul Larsen for the drama Cry Wolf (2021) Norway’s Sara Johnsen for the drama 22 July (2020), Finland’s Merja Aakko and Mika Ronkainen for the crime series All the Sins (2019), Denmark’s Adam Price for the drama Ride Upon the Storm (2018), and Norway’s Mette. M. Bølstad and Stephen Uhlander for the political drama Nobel (2017).