Israelis won top prizes in the Best Actress and Best Actor categories at the prestigious French television competition, Series Mania, which announced its awards on Saturday night in Lille, France.
Two actresses, Rotem Sela and Gal Malka, shared the Best Actress Award in the International Panorama competition for their performances in A Body that Works, a series currently airing on Keshet in Israel. Sela plays a woman with fertility problems and Malka is the surrogate who carries her child.
Yehuda Levi and Lior Raz also appear in the show, the final parts of which air on Channel 12 on March 26 and March 28. It was created by Shira Hadad and Dror Mishani (both of whom collaborated on the series, Wisdom of the Crowd) and Shay Capon (Dumb), who also directed the series.
Eran Naim, the star of Innermost, a miniseries featuring intersecting stories about six strangers in Tel Aviv by Yaron Shani, won Best Actor in the International Panorama Competition. His award is remarkable for the fact that he is not a professional actor. He previously appeared in Shani’s Chained, part of the Love Trilogy. Innnermost was produced by Black Sheep Productions, an Israeli company founded by Naomi Levari and Saar Yogev.
Israelis at Series Mania in the past
Yehuda Levi, who won Best Actor at Series Mania for his performance in Rama Burshtein’s Fire Dance last year, was a member of the International Jury this year.
Israeli series have done extremely well in this competition in the past. The series His Honor and On the Spectrum, both of which were later remade in the United States, won the Grand Prize in the International Competition there in 2017 and 2018, and many other series from Israel have won prizes.