The six-part series Escaping Bolivia (Flukten fra Bolivia) currently in development, was pitched by rising talent Beck and Fremantle Norge CEO Petter Testmann-Koch at this week’s Nordic TV showcase Scandinavian Screening in Oslo.

The series based on a true story, is a pet project for Beck, co-director with Per Olav Sørensen of the Netflix original film Royalteen and director of NRK’s current hit documentary No Place Like Home (Veien hjem).

The 31-year-old Beck who first pitched the project at Nordic Talents 2020, has been researching the subject for more than six years. “It’s like my baby; I simply feel it has to be made”, says the director, currently writing the screenplay with Helena Nielsen and Ingrid Haukelidsæter.

Beck was 16 when she first heard in the media about three young Norwegian women who were arrested at the customs in Bolivia, with 22 kg of cocaine in their bag and subsequently sentenced to 13 years in jail. Two of them managed to escape - one with a baby child, was helped by a journalist - but the third girl stayed behind in Bolivia. “To this day, nobody really knows what happened between those three girls,” observes the director.

To feed her narrative, Beck has conducted interviews with two of the real-life protagonists, as well as friends, family, acquaintances, inmates in the Bolivian prison and police reports. But as stressed by the director, the series remains a fiction work, with its own point of view and dramatised events.

“It’s a story about friendship, betrayal, white privilege and about how far you’re willing to go to save yourself,” she said.

The project is due to start filming next spring between Spain and Norway, with a delivery scheduled for Q1, 2024.

Meanwhile Beck’s current documentary about adoption No Place Like Home produced by Indie Film, had its Norwegian premiere at the last Oslo Pix and was subsequently watched by more than 211,000 Norwegians on NRK in less than a week after its TV launch.

The film shows the personal consequences of international adoption, through the story of adopted Norwegian from Sri Lanka Kine Priyangika, who is investigating her origins. The documentary supported by Nordisk Film & TV Fond has raised debates at home, to the point where Norway’s Minister for Children and Families Kjersti Toppe said she might consider a review of the current system of foreign adoption.

Beck’s first feature length documentary will next screen in competition at Nordisk Panorama’s New Nordic Voice section.