Star Media was awarded 3 main prizes at WorldFest Houston, the longest running International Film Festival of Independent Films which is one of the three most prestigious ones in North America.
Dokudrama “The Rurik Dynasty” won a SPECIAL JURY AWARD, the highest award of the festival in the nomination “TV Series - Informational.” An 8-episode thriller “Cold Shores” received a PLATINUM REMI AWARD, the second in importance prize, in the nomination “TV Series - Dramatic.” A detective series "The Pleasure Principle" won a PLATINUM REMI AWARD in the nomination "TV Mini-Series"
We would like to note that for the “Cold Shores” series this was the first award won at a film festival. The premiere release of the series coproduced with the Russia TV channel took place on October 14, 2019. In turn, the docudrama "The Rurik Dynasty" was co-produced by Star Media, Babich-Film studio and Channel One Russia with the support of the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation and the Russian Military Historical Society in September 2019 was awarded a special prize at the All-Russian Festival of Historical Films "Veche." Despite the fact that the production did not participate in the competitive program of the festival, it was awarded a commemorative statuette from the Government of the Novgorod Region. It was within the framework of the festival that a closed pre-premiere screening of the docudrama "Vladimir Monomakh" took place. The premiere release of the production on the television took place on Channel One Russia on November 4, 2019.
“The Pleasure Principle,” a high-end international series was produced by Star Media with support of the Ministry of Culture of Ukraine in coproduction with Apple Film Production (Poland), CANAL+ Poland, and Česká televize.
The Award marks another success for the series, the first large-scale series coproduction ever to involve Eastern and Central European countries. The “The Pleasure Principle” has already been bought by the French-German television network ARTE, represented in the international market by a global tycoon, Beta Film, and will soon also air on the Italian channel RAI.
Since its premiere on CANAL+ in June 2019, "The Pleasure Principle" has gained high acclaim from audiences, critics, and journalists.
Shot with a feature film-like breadth in Warsaw, Prague, and Odessa, the series featured acclaimed actors from three countries. Among them, Karel Roden (“The Bourne Supremacy”), Małgorzata Buczkowska (“Fugue”), Stipe Erceg ("The Baader-Meinhof Complex") and Sergey Strelnikov ("Life of a Stranger"). The screenplay was written by Maciej Maciejewski.
Over 4 500 productions from all over the world took part in this year's WorldFest-Houston International Film Festival.