From NEM Dubrovnik, Erika Gómez, the new Sales Director of Onza Distribution, reviews the opportunities for Iberian content in Central and Eastern Europe and presents the company’s latest initiatives in the region.
Produced by Luis Cabrera, from Croatia
The presence of Spanish content in Central and Eastern Europe continues to strengthen, driven by both the strength of local productions and the growing demand for stories with a cultural identity that resonates with audiences in the region. In this context, Onza Distribution has positioned itself thanks to a diverse catalog that combines original productions with carefully selected international titles to meet the needs of each market.
During her participation in NEM Dubrovnik, Erika Gómez, Sales Director of Onza Distribution, highlighted the strong performance of Portuguese telenovelas within the CEE region, a genre that the company has made one of its main selling points.
In addition to its fiction offerings, the distributor is entering the market with new formats and series across various genres, including the Slovakian thriller Neuer and the successful Romanian adaptation of El Hormiguero.
How has the presence of Spanish content evolved in the EEC region?
In this region, Onza has a catalog that, in my opinion, performs very well. And we’re fortunate in that regard, because some of our content is produced by Onza itself, but we also represent other production companies from other countries, which gives us a variety of content that can certainly perform well in these regions.
Furthermore, for example, our best-selling content is telenovelas. And our telenovelas are from Portugal. Portugal is a Mediterranean country, but it’s part of Europe, and culturally it resonates quite a bit with this region. And it performs very well. The telenovela market is usually divided between Mexico and Turkey, and we’ve carved out a niche for ourselves with our Portuguese telenovelas, because, in my opinion, they have the best of both cultures. Perhaps they aren’t as intense, so to speak, as Turkish series in terms of content. And they also resonate with a more Mexican feel, because in the end, we’re all a bit alike in that sense, all Latinos in general.
There’s Spanish-language content that might be somewhat modern for these regions. Or LGBTQ+ content, which, because we work with so many producers from so many countries, allows us to choose what to offer. So there we do have an opportunity.
What content are your clients currently presenting?
We have a series that’s very similar to Cacao in style called La Hacienda (The Color of Love). It’s a story about three sisters who inherit land in Angola. And when they go to Angola, they discover that another family is fighting over the estate because there were two wills. What happens is that one of the sisters falls in love with the other heir, and then they have a Romeo and Juliet-style relationship. It takes place in Angola, which is very exotic and more similar to Cacao.
What we’re presenting in this market now is the telenovela Te doy la vida, which is a remake of the Mexican version from Televisa. It’s the story of a married couple who have an adopted son, and when their son is diagnosed with leukemia, they have to contact the biological father to ask him to be a bone marrow donor. At that moment, the whole family is thrown into turmoil because the biological father’s arrival disrupts everything. So, it’s a story that has all the elements to succeed, and the lead actor is the same as in Cacao.
What other productions are you presenting, besides telenovelas?
We have a series from the region called Neuer, a police procedural thriller. It’s the most-watched series on TV JOJ in Slovakia. It’s a thriller based on a best-selling novel, a very mature, serious, and dark story. It has a Nordic crime style. It’s very action-packed. It’s also very male-oriented. It has that dark, investigative style, a bit like Nordic noir, which resonates a lot with that. So, culturally, with this region, this series is also generating a lot of interest.
What other new things have you brought to this market?
We’ve adapted El Hormiguero, the famous Spanish format, for Romania. Antena 3 did the adaptation in Romania. The difference is that they have a female presenter instead of a male one. Her name is Denise Rifai, who is probably the most famous woman in the country. Her trademark is that she conducts very direct interviews with politicians. The audience didn’t expect that someone with such a serious profile could be capable of making so many jokes, of creating such a family-friendly, fun show, and it’s been a huge success.
One trend that distributors in this market share is that if a title is successful in Romania, it tends to be replicated in other territories in the region…
Absolutely. In fact, many clients, upon learning that the format has been so successfully adapted in Romania, are requesting it from us, because they actually use it as a reference. That’s important.
