Cate Shortland on the set of 'Berlin Syndrome'.
Berlin Syndrome filmmaker Cate Shortland is prepping an eight-part series for Matchbox Pictures.
Titled The Monaro, the series will focus on six women in the 1830s and is based on a true crime case, the director told IF.
Shortland will shoot in the titular region, east of the Snowy Mountains, where she also shot her debut feature, Somersault.
“It’s one of my favourite places in the world to shoot so I wanted to do something again there,” the helmer said.
Shortland is an experienced writer for TV, having written episodes of The Slap, Devil’s Playground, Deadline Gallipoli and The Kettering Incident, but this will mark the first series she has directed since The Secret Life of Us in 2003.
She also helmed TV movie The Silence, starring Richard Roxburgh and co-written by Picnic at Hanging Rock’s Alice Addison, in 2006.
Shortland is working with a team of writers on The Monaro, which is based on an idea she's been mulling since film school, she said.
“I’m working with this great team of people and there’s so much research and so much detail and love and art that we want to put in it,” said Shortland. “I’m immersing myself in that world.”
The director is aiming to shoot in winter-time, so as “to get the most atmospheric beautiful cold weather that we can get.”
eOne’s Berlin Syndrome, Shortland’s follow-up to 2012’s acclaimed Lore, is coming to Australian cinemas on April 20. Netflix picked up North American streaming rights to the film prior to its Sundance debut in January.
Shortland is repped by HLA Management and Management 360.