Unwritten+

Mounia Aram didn't arrive in the animation industry through a straight door. Born in Casablanca and raised outside Paris, she came through a betrayal, a depression, a phone call to her sister in San Francisco — and a brother-in-law who happened to work in Japanese animation.

That's fate, she says. And she means it.

Today Mounia Aram is one of the leading voices in African animation — founder of the Mounia Aram Company, Africa Council Chair at the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media, and a passionate advocate for diversity in kids content globally.

But none of that was planned. She spent years searching for her voice — through improv theatre, fashion shows, and a university degree in Arabic languages that led nowhere obvious. What she built from all of it is anything but obvious: a company, a global network, a mission, and now a memoir.

In this episode, we talk about:

— what anime taught her about the power of culture as a brand

— why AI is an opportunity, not a threat, for emerging animation studios in Africa

— the women who didn't support her — and the male allies who did

— the family fight that turned out to be the most liberating thing that ever happened to her

— and what it means to keep believing in yourself when the people closest to you don't

Mounia's memoir Route Détournée is out now in French — with an English edition on the way.

Inside European TV Deals: Co-Productions, Financing & Industry Matchmaking:

What if the real power in this industry isn’t on stage — but at the dinner table?

In this episode of Unwritten+, Irina Ignatiew sits down with Frédéric Pittoors d’Haveskercke — one of Europe’s most experienced cross-border dealmakers — to unpack how TV co-productions actually come together.

From carefully engineered seating plans at industry dinners to the quiet work of aligning egos, timing and trust, Fred shares what it really takes to connect the right people to the right projects.

They talk about:
– how European co-productions are built in reality (not theory)
– why some collaborations fail — even when everything looks right
– the role of intuition vs. market knowledge in dealmaking
– navigating slow decision-making, ghosting and industry uncertainty
– why public broadcasters still matter more than ever

Along the way, Fred reflects on a career shaped by cultures, languages and a formative year inside the European Commission — and what it means to build a life around connecting others.

A conversation about the invisible work behind great projects — and the people who make them happen.

One of the biggest myths in television is that you can take a successful show from one country and simply reproduce it somewhere else.

In reality, formats may travel — but they almost never work unchanged.

They have to be rebuilt — culturally, creatively, sometimes even structurally.

That’s something my guest Marc Lorber has spent decades doing, producing television across more than 20 countries.

From stand-up comedy clubs in New York…
to working with David Lynch…
to building productions across Europe, the Middle East and beyond.

In this episode of Unwritten+, Marc shares the stories behind a career spent translating stories across cultures — across scripted series, unscripted formats and international co-productions.

A few things we talk about:

• Why casting is often the make-or-break moment in unscripted television
• What really determines whether a format can travel internationally
• Why a producer’s job is often simply to find the way to “yes”

And a question that stayed with me after our conversation:

• At what point does a format stop being an adaptation — and become its own show?

It’s a longer episode than usual.

But when someone has spent decades producing television in more than twenty countries, the stories are simply too good to rush...

Simone Baumann was still a teenager when she left Eastern Germany to study philosophy in the Soviet Union.

She arrived in Rostov-on-Don in the early 80s to empty supermarket shelves, ration coupons for butter, water running only twice a day and a city she wasn’t allowed to leave.

No internet. No quick call home. No exit strategy.

But somewhere between translating philosophy texts with a dictionary at night and listening to professors debate ideas that couldn’t officially be published, she learned something that stayed with her: how to think in context. How to read a system before reacting to it. And how to listen differently.

Today, she leads German Films, representing contemporary German cinema internationally.

When you hear her speak, you realize that international careers aren’t built on glamour. They’re built on moments that stretch you. On cultural friction. And on learning to observe before you act.

*And for the non-Germans here: Leberkäse (literally “liver cheese”) is a Bavarian classic that contains neither liver nor cheese — just warm, finely ground meat baked into a loaf, sliced thick, and best eaten with sweet mustard in a bread roll.

The new Unwritten+ episode is with Jarmo Lampela, director, teacher, and Head of Drama at Finland’s public broadcaster.

Jarmo talks about growing up between places, spending his childhood moving, observing, adapting. About learning early how communities work. About noticing class, distance, and belonging - long before having language for it.

We talk about:
– directing without pretending to have all the answers
– teaching by starting with a simple question: why are we here?
– living between very different cultures and absorbing ways of life rather than passing through them
– and how being an observer can quietly shape how you work with people

Along the way, you also get a glimpse into Finland, not as a brand or a myth, but as a lived place, and into a certain kind of quiet endurance that’s hard to translate, but easy to recognise once you hear it.

If you work across cultures or simply with other humans, there’s a lot to learn here.

Not in the form of instructions, but through the way Jarmo approaches people, responsibility, and work.

Unwritten+ is back — and we’re starting the year with something new:
our first-ever video episode. I’m excited. And yes, a little bit terrified. Which usually tells me it’s the right move…

🎙️ Pedro Lopes: Building Stories Across Time, Formats, and Borders
On history, conflict, and why stories sometimes refuse to stay on screen

Our guest is Pedro Lopes, Director of Content at SPI in Portugal — an International Emmy–winning writer, academic, and storyteller who has spent years building narratives at scale: telenovelas, high-end series, international co-productions… and now, micro dramas.

We talk about:

– what a background in history gives you as a writer
– why “drama is conflict” still matters, no matter the format

– why international co-production is basically a marriage without dating
- why deadlines are the most honest collaborators

– how being a father sharpened his sense of responsibility as a storyteller
– and what happens when a story doesn’t quite stay on screen

Pedro is expanding into micro dramas — the short, vertical format that started in China, spread across Asia and Latin America, and is now one of the most talked-about shifts in our industry. Not as a gimmick, but with the same care for craft, responsibility, and audience.

It’s thoughtful, grounded, occasionally very funny — and a strong way to open the new season.

Season two starts here.

In the new episode of Unwritten+, I speak with Deborah Bayer Marlow — a producer whose entire life has been shaped by instinct, reinvention and the kind of courage you only discover when the ground under your feet disappears.

Deborah’s story begins in 1988 — a year she calls “a rupture.”
At 18, in the chaos of a family falling apart, she grabbed a backpack, $1,500 and followed the Grateful Dead across America. A wild, rebellious escape that — without her knowing — set her on a collision course with cinema.

From landing as a green PA on Natural Born Killers, to the wild adrenaline of 90s advertising, to working with Gus Van Sant, and then uprooting her Hollywood life for Denmark after 9/11 — her journey is a masterclass in trusting timing, saying yes, and building a career across borders.

We talk about:

• Launching Marlow Film and marrying American ambition with Danish precision
• Creative trust — and holding vision when budget and reality collide
• The mystical timing behind The Girl with the Needle, the film that stunned Cannes and went on to Golden Globe & Oscar nominations
• Why emotion — not algorithms — is her compass
• Choosing people over projects, and knowing exactly when a leap is worth it

Deborah reminds us that dark stories can reveal extraordinary light — and that the real magic happens when instinct, craft and collaboration meet.

This episode is full of heart, honesty and wisdom from a woman who has rebuilt her life more than once — and done it with grace, grit and a deep belief in the power of story.

What I love most about my conversations on UNWRITTEN+ is when they stop being about titles and job descriptions — and become about the life underneath.
My new episode with Daniela Tully is exactly that.

Daniela is a novelist, screenwriter, and creative producer whose journey has unfolded across five countries and three continents — and every place has reshaped the way she writes, works, and sees the world. From co-producing Hollywood films like Contagion and The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel in Abu Dhabi to writing her debut novel Hotel on Shadow Lake (inspired by a WWII letter her grandmother received 46 years late), her path is anything but linear.

We talk about:
• What “home” means when you have several
• How expat life changes your sense of identity — and complicates “belonging”
• Why her students in Dubai read stories without the Western lens
• How Bedouin storytelling influenced her writing
• And yes — the slap on a Mexican film set that echoed across a canyon

It’s a layered, cross-border, deeply human and enormously fun conversation — exactly what Unwritten+ was made for.

Some stories don’t just stay with you — they change you.
This conversation is one of them.

Katya grew up in Mariupol, a city now synonymous with destruction and unimaginable loss.
Before the war, she had already built an extraordinary producing career across CEE, the Nordics, the UK and beyond — a life that changed completely from one day to the next in February 2022.

And two days before the full-scale invasion, she made a decision that still moves me deeply:

She flew back home. Not because it was safe — but because that’s where her family and friends were.
She had a sense of what might be coming, and she chose to be with them.
That kind of clarity… that kind of heart… it stayed with me.

In our conversation, she speaks with a raw honesty that humbled me: about waking up to war, the urgent effort to get her mother out of Mariupol, and the moment she realised her childhood home — and every physical memory of her life there — had been erased.

And in the middle of that devastation, she created Those Who Stayed — a wartime anthology held together by heartbreak, humour and humanity.
A project that exists because the Nordic public broadcasters acted fast, with a very special shoutout to YLE, national broadcaster in Finland, who picked up the phone, rallied their peers and said: “We have to do this.”
And because my former colleagues at Red Arrow (now Seven.One Studios International) believed in the project early and helped make the financing possible.

We talk about producing as an act of resistance. About burnout. About rebuilding her life in Brighton — behind a bar, in a yoga studio, reconnecting with life in its simplest, truest form.

And we talk about co-productions — not as budget puzzles, but as people. About protecting the emotional core of a story.
About her quiet strength and the wisdom she has earned the hard way.

There’s also the absurd, tender, unforgettable story of the Kyiv underground station where she spent the first days of the war — a dramedy she hopes to make one day. I hope she does too.

But the moment that will stay with me most came at the very end.
I asked her for one word to describe the year ahead.

She didn’t hesitate.

“Optimistic.”

Not out of naïveté. But out of strength. Out of choice.
Out of the belief that light deserves space too.

Please let her story be heard.
Listen — and if it moves you, help it reach others.

Unwritten+ has become deeply meaningful because of conversations like this.
I’m grateful for every guest who trusts me with their truths, their fears, their laughter and their lives.
They shape how I see the world — and I don’t take that lightly.

Born in Iran after the Islamic Revolution. A childhood marked by the Iran–Iraq war. Growing up in a dictatorship where silence was survival.

Ali May’s journey took him from Iran to London, where he studied Creative Writing, and from there to Bloomberg, Euronews, and the BBC — before turning to stories for the screen and stage. His projects now cross borders — from France to Germany, Denmark to Finland, and beyond — but always return to the same truth: what power does to people, and how even in the darkest places, there can be cracks of light.

✨ In this episode, Ali shares:
– What it meant to grow up as a child in wartime — and how stories became a way to understand the world.
– How Orwell’s 1984 shaped his decision to leave Iran.
– The hidden grief of exile — and the weight of not being able to return home.
– Why fiction became the place where he could finally voice his opinions.
– And yes, even a story about competing with his mother over who makes the best celery stew with lamb.

Because in the end, it’s the small rituals of family and food that keep us connected, even across borders.

This is a conversation about courage, exile — and why telling stories freely is never something to take for granted.