Sam Spiegel Series Lab 2nd edition comes to Jerusalem, continues Netflix collab

The second edition of the Sam Spiegel Series Lab opened this week in Jerusalem and its collaboration with Netflix continues.

One exceptional project will receive the Netflix Series Development Award and as part of Netflix’s support for the Lab, producer and screenwriter Joe Peracchio (The Flash) will lead workshops on script development and will mentor the participants.

The Lab was established last year by the Jerusalem Sam Spiegel Film School with the support of Netflix and with the artistic collaboration of Hagai Levi (Scenes from a Marriage; In Therapy). Its first edition wrapped in September 2022 at the Netflix offices in Los Angeles with the collaboration of Scripted Israel, powered by the Foreign Affairs office.

New partners and collaborators

This year, the Lab welcomes several new partners including the Jerusalem Municipality. The other partners are New Mandate Films, United King Films and the Jerusalem Film and Television Fund.

The New Mandate Films production company – which recently produced Barry Levinson’s The Survivor, starring Ben Foster – develops global film and TV projects around Jewish and Israeli themes. 

Israeli entertainment content company United King Films – which owns cinema megaplexes and several TV channels and produces a huge number of Israeli movies – has co-produced and invested in leading television series in the last few years, such as Valley of Tears, which was sold to HBO MAX, and You’ll Never Walk Alone in co-production with Netflix.

Finally, the Jerusalem Film and Television Fund – the first municipal film fund in Israel – provides grants and rebates for film and TV series that take place in Jerusalem. It has supported films such as Ari Folman’s Where is Anna Frank, Joseph Cedar’s Norman and Natalie Portman’s A Tale of Love and Darkness.

A total of eight Israeli projects  – out of 100 submissions – have been selected for the Lab. All eight are headed by first-time lead writers, and six are female-led. Among the writers is Orit Fouks Rotem, director of Cinema Sabaya, Israel’s entry for best international feature at the Academy Awards. Another writer selected is Guy Raz, director of photography of the successful feature, Rabies, and the Israeli series broadcast on HBO MAX, On the Spectrum. Actress Nur Fibak (Ahed’s Knee) also made the cut.

In addition to Peracchio, the participants will be mentored by Scenes of a Marriage associate producer Ossi Nishri, who joins the Lab as a script editor, together with Ronit Weiss-Berkowitz (The Girl From Oslo; A Touch Away), Fauda’s head writer Noah Stollman (Our Boys) and creator of the series, The Malevolent Bride; and Dror Mishani (The Missing File; A Body That Works). 

The projects will also go through the process of creating a graphic pitch deck with the professional guidance of Ananey-Paramount Creative Studio.

At the opening, Dana Blankstein Cohen, the executive director of the Sam Spiegel Film and Television School said that it was “a great privilege” for the Sam Spiegel Film and Television School to be a major player in the Israeli television industry and “to provide a platform to ground-breaking creators who bring local stories to viewers in Israel and around the world.” 

Cohen expressed her gratitude “to Netflix for their continued support and partnership, and to our new partners New Mandate Films, United King, The Jerusalem Film and TV Fund and The Jerusalem Municipality,” and welcomed Lab director Mor Eldar.

The Sam Spiegel Series Lab is patterned after the Jerusalem Sam Spiegel Film Lab, in which emerging directorsF/screenwriters from Israel and around the world are paired with mentors to create film scripts. The Film Lab just celebrated its 10th anniversary.