Denmark’s Ingeborg Topsøe, a fast-emerging screenwriter whose credits include Milad Alami’s multi-prized “The Charmer,” has won this year’s Nordic Series Script Award for Netflix smash hit “Secrets We Keep.”
One of Scandinavia’s most prestigious industry plaudits, the Award was announced Tuesday at the Göteborg Festival’s TV Drama Vision, its TV conference strand and market.
Always a frontrunner, Topsøe manages in writing “Secrets We Keep” to pull off a difficult double whammy: an engrossing thriller set in North Zealand, a Copenhagen plush riviera of white stone mansions in which the well-heeled Cecile investigates the disappearance of the neighbours’ au-pair which at one and the same time is packed with social observance – on noblesse-oblige privilege and its economics, as well as parenting, racism and gender violence.
The scripts also form an excellent platform for the direction of of Per Fly (“Follow the Money”) whose sumptuous visuals layering further social sarcasm on a tight, tense mystery plot, building to Fly’s majestic final shot, loaded with the protagonist’s new-found fuller understanding of her own social horror.
Produced for Netflix by Claudia Saginario at Uma Film (“The Opponent,” “The Excavation”) and starring Marie Bach Hansen (“The Legacy,” “White Sands”) as Cecilie, “Secrets We Keep,” shot to No. 1 on Netflix’s global non-English language TV charts on May 15 last year, staying at No. 1 for three weeks and scoring 34 million views – numbers only bettered by only five other Netflix non-English language series in 2025.
“This years’ winner asks the questions: Can intimacy be outsourced? How far are you—as a single individual—willing to go to maintain your position in life? At what cost do you uphold existing power dynamics, both in your private sphere and on a global scale?” the Nordic Series Script Award jury said in a statement. “By confronting us with the harsh realities of human existence – without smothering the audience in numbing escapism – the winner shows that it is possible to combine a compelling, nail-biting whodunit thriller with a strong social commentary.”
(L-R) ‘Secrets We Keep’ Simon Sears as Mike Vinter-Jensen, Marie Bach Hansen as Cecile Mike Vinter-Jensen and Lukas Zuperka as Viggo in Reservatet. Cr. Courtesy of Netflix © 2024
Courtesy of Netflix
‘Blood Cruise’ Wins the Creative Courage Award
In a second prize, The Creative Courage Award went to the Swedish series “Blood Cruise,” produced by Alexander Rönnberg (“Northern Fable”) and Will Tennant (Imaginarium Productions), and commissioned by Johanna Gårdare and Sonja Nilsson Hermele from SVT.
This honorary mention is designed to recognise individuals and companies who dare to take risks and champion new directions in Nordic drama. The Creative Courage recipient is selected from admissions by the Nordic streamers and broadcasters, the Göteborg Festival explained Tuesday.
The Creative Courage Award winner was selected by Liselott Forsman, CEO Nordisk Film & TV Fond, and Cia Edström, head of TV Drama Vision at the Göteborg Film Festival.
“We want to honor the commissioners and producers who dared to make this extraordinary horror series come to life by combining a family story with a Sweden in a microcosmos with multiplying vampires on a ferry, they said.
Written by Mats Strandberg and Malin Lagerlöf, “Blood Cruise” was created for television by Mats Strandberg and Chris Andrew.