Beta Film explores refugee, drug trafficking

Germany’s Beta Film is co-developing a series about refugee and drug trafficking at the south eastern European border with a Croatian producer.

Beta Film is working with Drugi Plan on Amnesia (6×60′), which will star Branka Katić (Marvel’s Captain America: The Winter Soldier), Tihana Lazović (The High Sun) and Aleksandar Cvjetković (The Paper).

With director Goran Gajić (The Beat) on board, Amnesia will begin shooting next March in the Plitvice Lakes National Park, which is the actual route used by many refugees who are fleeing Syria and other war-torn regions.

It follows the 17-year-old son of a former mayor who, after suffering a brutal beating, wakes up from a coma to find he can’t remember who attacked him.

This triggers the unveiling of a series of dark secrets in the small Croatian border town, where local authorities are profiting from trafficking operations of both drugs and refugees from the south of Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, to Austria and Germany.

It comes after Beta Film worked on productions such as HBO Europe and Agnieszka Holland’s Burning Bush as well as The Pleasure Principle, the first coproduction between Poland, Czech Republic and Ukraine.

Drugi Plan was set up in 2004 by Nebojša Taraba and Miodrag Sila. As well as working with the three Croatian national TV stations, HRT, Nova TV and RTL, it has also produced the first HBO Europe series in the Adria region, Success. Its recent TV series The Paper was picked up by Netflix internationally.