Ride Upon The Storm Wins TV Drama Writing Prize
Adam Price, creator of Borgen and Ride Upon the Storm (Herrens veje), was awarded the Nordisk Film & TV Fond Prize and SEK 200,000 during the TV Drama Vision conference at the Göteborg Film Festival on Wednesday.
The Nordisk Film & TV Fond Prize recognises outstanding writing in television drama and is decided between five regional contenders. This year the nominees were: Ride Upon The Storm from Denmark, Deadwind from Finland, Stella Blómkvist from Iceland, Borderliner from Norway and The Lawyer from Sweden.
The jury consisted of Swedish actress Sofia Helin (The Bridge), TV executive and curator Walter Iuzzolino (Walter Presents), and Finnish entertainment journalist Kirpi Uimonen Ballesteros. They said in in their deliberation:
“The first time the three of us met for lunch and sat down to discuss the selected programmes, each one of us had a clear winner in mind. The problem was – were we talking about the same show? Five hours later, we discovered we were.”
“All the nominated programmes are exceptional examples of Scandinavian storytelling at its best, showing breadth and scope but also superb crafting. But the winner stood out for a very simple reason – it is unlike any Scandinavian show we had ever seen before.”
“TV drama at its best is an art form as magnificent and dignified as a Caravaggio or a Rembrandt. Some artists are fashionable, others are Masters. One thousand years from now, in an imaginary Museum of TV Masterpieces, this programme will come to represent what it was like to live in Scandinavia in 2018.”
Ride Upon The Storm premiered on DR1 in autumn 2017 with 10 episodes, and will return in autumn 2018 to conclude with a further 10 episodes.