This year's winner of the Serial Killer Festival and winner of the Primetime Killer award was the series Operation Sabre by the scriptwriting, producing and directing duo of Serbian creators Goran Stanković and Vladimir Tagić and distributed by Beta Film. The jury highlighted the excellent craftsmanship of the series - both technically and emotionally. It stated that the script, camera, editing and sound were truly exceptional.

The series, based on real events, tells the story of Zoran Djindjić, a former dissident who was a key figure in the rebellion against former president Slobodan Milošević in Serbia.

You can read CEETV’s exclusive interviews with the creators and the cast of the series.

"After the excellent miniseries Porodica (The Family) about Milošević's exit from the political scene, which won the main jury prize at the 2021 Serial Killer festival, from Serbia comes further proof that quality television is a perfectly controlled platform for processing recent traumatic history," Táňa Zabloudilová, Serial Killer’s program director said.

This year, the jury also decided to award two special recognitions – for the Czech series Daughter of the Nation, it awarded exceptional scenography, and the title Znam kako dises (I Know Your Soul) from Bosnia and Herzegovina awarded an honorable mention for a complex script that gave equal weight to the story and the characters.

It was the creator of the latter title, Bosnian director, screenwriter and producer Jasmila Žbanić, who received the Progressive Killer 2024 prize at the festival this year for an exceptional personality in television production from the Central and Eastern European region. Žbanić is also known to audiences as the director of the Oscar-nominated film Quo Vadis, Aida? or the sixth episode called The Family from the successful series The Last of Us.

This year, the Polish-Belarusian web series Processes by Andrei Kashpersky won the Quick Killer award for the best short series from the judge and world expert in this category, Joël Bassaget .

The Serial Killer festival presented 35 series from 19 countries this year. The TV Days conference presented almost 70 speakers. Among them, for example, the American producer of the series The Bear Carrie Holt de Lama, former senior vice president for TV and film distribution of NBCUniversal in New York Gillian Rose, Veronika Kováčová from the German company Beta Film and Alexandre de Piel and Virginie Padilla from ARTE France.