France’s Series Mania, Europe’s largest TV festival, will open with the world premiere of Disney+’s “The Testaments,” the sequel to “The Handmaid’s Tale.” The lineup features AMC’s “The Audacity” starring Simon Helberg and Billy Magnussen, alongside international series addressing themes of authoritarianism and social tensions. CJ ENM’s Korean drama “The Legend of Kitchen Soldier” will also premiere in a special screening.
Series Mania 2026, held in Lille, France, kicks off with the highly anticipated world premiere of “The Testaments,” a Disney+ series created by Bruce Miller, who also showran “The Handmaid’s Tale.” Attendees include Miller, Ann Dowd as Aunt Lydia—who narrates the sequel—Chase Infiniti, Lucy Halliday, and producer Warren Littlefield. The event highlights a contraction in the TV sector, with fewer submissions and shorter formats, yet festival directors Laurence Herszberg and Frédéric Lavigne note a shift toward “more concentrated, sometimes harsh offerings” connected to global tensions.
The international competition includes AMC’s “The Audacity,” created by Jonathan Glatzer, featuring Billy Magnussen as an aspiring tech CEO and Simon Helberg as a “maladjusted genius” inventor. Magnussen described Silicon Valley as a “Renaissance” defining humanity, while Helberg emphasized loneliness and the pitfalls of connecting through technology. Other highlights are Netflix’s “Peaky Blinders” movie “The Immortal Man,” shown out of competition, and Colombia’s “Dear Killer Nannies,” which explores Pablo Escobar’s legacy with John Leguizamo in the role.
European series dominate, with Belgium’s “Breendonk,” “The Best Immigrant,” and “Eternal”; Sweden’s “My Brother” and “Burden of Justice”; and Poland’s first-time entries “Love Is Enough” and “Variola Vera.” Themes of rising authoritarianism and fascism recur, as in Spain’s “The Anatomy of a Moment” and “The Best Immigrant,” which depicts government deportations. Herszberg called this trend “the most impressive” of the edition, amid a 20% drop in submissions.
In special screenings, CJ ENM’s “The Legend of Kitchen Soldier” premieres as the only Korean content, following a disadvantaged enlistee guided by a virtual quest system in his military cooking journey. Carlo Fasino praised its “surrealist joyride” anchored by Park Ji-hoon’s performance. Korea serves as the inaugural Country of Honor. The festival closes with Canada’s “The Glass House” on Prime Video.
