2024 Radio Shortlists

Host: Pelle Peter Jencel. Editors: Ole Fugl Hørkilde, Morten Narvedsen. Editor-in-Chief: Anders Stegger. Sound Design: Jakob Franck Jensen. Project Manager: Maja Rathmann Mølbak.

Tessa wanders around in the winter cold in Vesterbro, Copenhagen. The year is 2014 and she is 16 years old. She has been to a party but has nowhere to stay. The homeless teenager ends up by breaking into McDonald's, where she falls asleep in a toilet. A few years later, the same girl will change the Danish music industry. She just doesn't know that yet. In the first episode of Who is Tessa?, we meet a young girl who is struggling to find her way in life. And then one day she receives a very special message that will change her life forever.

Screenplay, Direction: Eva Tigerstedt. Sound Design: Anders Wiksten. Production Year: 2023.

You hear your voice speaking rubbish on a video you have never recorded. How come your voice is there? You hear music composed by artificial intelligence, but it sounds very much like… Can artificial intelligence sing with others? Curious Sound Explorer Eva Tigerstedt reflects on sound and music in a world of AI and generation. Or rather, the human world. What ethical problems do the cloning and synthesising of sound and music pose, especially now that social media are spreading everything at the speed of a virus pandemic? This feature is part of The Curious Sound Explorer, a series in which Eva Tigerstedt addresses a range of phenomena involving science, the arts and music.

Author: Noam Brusilovsky (Libretto). Direction: Noam Brusilovsky, Tobias Purfürst. Actors: Susanna Hurrell (Soprano); Peter Becker, Kilian Jörg, Jorinde Schulz, Lisa Hrdina, Rainer Sellien, Aviran Edri, Amy Benkenstein, Hannah Müller, Chiara Palmer, Guillaume Robin, Jorinde Schulz, Johan Andersson, Markus Hänsel (Voices). Composer: Tobias Purfürst. Editing: Juliane Schmidt. Technical Realisation: Nikolaus Löwe, Ulrich Hieber. Assistant Director: Eunike Kramer. Producing Organisation: Rundfunk Berlin-Brandenburg.

Jessica and Brian are on a world trip and stop off in Berlin, the capital of club culture. They head to Berlin's most well-known techno club. Every weekend thousands of guests from all over the world move together in unison to the rhythm of the beat on the club's dance floor. Partying in the TEMPEL is exclusive. The doorman decides who gets in. Excess – from Saturday evening to Monday morning. Many of the party-goers have one end in mind – to "club to death" – and drugs are definitely a part of it. For Jessica this has fatal consequences. She dies of an overdose during the night. The true story of this death of a club guest develops into a technoid epic and as the protagonist sings her tragic aria finale the techno set continues uninterrupted as backdrop.

Author: Kim Jae-hee. Direction: Yoo Ki-sung, Joo Ha-young. Narrating Voice: Jung Dong-hwan.

K-POP, beloved by international fans, is known as powerful performance. But what kind of message is K-POP singing? Here we come up with representative K-POP lyricists, who wrote the lyrics of famous K-POP Artists SHINee, The Boys, IVE, Oh My Girl, NCT and so on. We dive into what K-POP lyrics say, how they come from initial idea. Especially we focus on the process of K-POP lyrics writing with lyricist step by step, so that can see all details of K-POP lyrics writing. We have an in-depth discussion with the questions, "How can we judge such lyrics as a good quality?", "What is a good lyrics?", etc. Through this, we can define K-POP lyrics as a new musical language and think about its meaning.

Direction: Wibo Dijksma. Producing Organisation: AVROTROS.

In the AVROTROS podcast series The Last Days of… the final days of famous pop stars are reconstructed. George Michael was one of the greatest pop stars ever, but he died under mysterious circumstances in his house in the English countryside. In the fourth season of The Last Days of…, using archive material, interviews and of course music, Dutch Journalists Wibo Dijksma, Anne Hurenkamp and Michiel Tjepkema delve into the turbulent life and last tragic days of this English superstar. Who was he really, what is the secret behind his beautiful songs and why was there no one to save him in the end? In the first two episodes, George's youth and career as a member of Wham! are discussed. These subjects are interwoven with the last stages of his life, where George, struggling with a drug addiction, is unable to get his life and career back on track. This third episode focuses on his last day and the creative process of his musical masterpieces: Faith, Listen Without Prejudice Vol 1 and Older. The three journalists tell intriguing stories about the lives and especially the deaths of various pop icons. Previous seasons featured John Lennon, Freddie Mercury and Marvin Gaye.

Author, Screenplay, Narrating Voice, Direction, Editing: Andrea Lupi. Producing Organisation: RTP – Antena2. Production Year: 2024.

Semibreve is the name of a series of short radio programmes broadcast every week as part of A Ronda da Noite by Luís Caetano. It started in 2013 and the second season started in April 2022. Semibreve is the name of the longest rhythmic figure, contrary to what "brief" suggests. Each episode lasts an average of 12 minutes and a different topic is explored each week. Classical music, jazz or popular music are analysed and explained, often comparing the different versions. Each programme is the result of in-depth and careful research and the final result is the fruit of the particularity of each subject, there is no formula.

Direction: Hannah Thorne. Production Year: 2024.

Between the Ears takes an immersive dive into the life and music of one of the greatest film composers of all time: Henry Mancini who was born 100 years ago this year. It tells his story from being handed a flute by his father, to composing hits like Moon River and The Pink Panther. The idea was to break free of the traditional composer documentary structure, so it is unpresented, and Mancini helps tell his own story via exclusive interviews from the BBC archives, adding insight, humour and pathos. We also hear from his daughter Monica Mancini, son in law Gregg Field, Film Music Expert Jon Burlingame and Pianist Tom Poster. The overall sound design playfully fuses archive and interview with newsreel and film clips. The main character in the storytelling though is the music: so the whole show is underscored with Mancini's music.

Author: Manuela Tomic. Direction: Andreas Jungwirth; Daniela Gassner (Assistant). Actors: Marie-Luise Stockinger, Ljubiša Lupo Grujčić, Sandy Lopičić, Ana Stefanovic Bilic, Luka Vlatković. Sound Track: Manuel Radinger, Elmar Peinelt. Translation: Theresa Grandits, Davor Frkat (Serbo-Croatian), Kimi Lum (English). Intern: Cassilda Verderber. Producers: Elisabeth Zimmermann (Ö1), Stefanie Zussner (Line Producer).

Ivo has died. In a country that is both near and far for the mid-30s protagonist Mira. In the middle of the night, in 1998, she and her family get into the car in Völkermarkt (Carinthia) and drive to Bosnia for Grandfather Ivo's funeral. Mira fled the Bosnian war with her family as a child. Memories of life before the war and their escape as well as stories about arriving in a foreign country emerge. The war and the traumas associated with it haunt the father in particular. A special aspect is the protagonists' use of two languages (German/Serbo-Croatian). This reflects the linguistic reality of many refugees from the former Yugoslavia living in Austria and explores the limits of what German-speaking listeners can understand without knowing the words, based solely on the context.

Direction: Jessica Edén. Narrating Voice: Tyra Wingren. Actors: Tyra Wingren, Jessica Grabowsky, Elmer Bäck, Sara Soulié, Ellen Forsström, Joel Häggblom, Hanna Branders, Anna Bäckman, Artur Djupsjöbacka, Ellen Haakana, Noa Paul, Michelle Sarström, Vincent Runeberg, Walter Runeberg. Sound Track: Timo Hietala. Editing: Niko Ingman. Dramaturg, Audience Development: Matilda Gyllenberg. Translator: Rosanna Fellman. Producers: Marina Meinander-Sederholm; Barbro Ahlstedt, Anna-Maija Kalén (Production Coordinators). Producing Organisation: Svenska YLE. Production Year: 2023.

Medea's Daughter is a 3-part drama series. Our idea was to rewrite classics for teens. The story is loosely based on Euripides' play Medea, which is considered a feminist classic. The programme tackles the issues of divorce, power, feminism and social media hoaxes. The script is based on extensive interviews with police officers, cyber crime investigators, teachers and foremost high school students. A focus group of high school students participated in every step, from idea development to fixing dialogue. Many of them also participated in the recording of the audio drama as actors. We created a soundtrack with teens and had a composer who arranged the songs that our leading actor sang. These songs were also released. Our young actors were mostly amateurs and theatre school students. The series is mixed with Dolby Atmos with immersive surround sound. We created an extensive educational kit for high school students.

Authors: Benjamin Abitan, Wladimir Anselme, Laura Fredducci. Direction: Benjamin Abitan. Actors: Aurélien Gabrielli, Saadia Bentaieb, Cyril Texier, Grégoire Baujat, Paul Spera, Christina Crevillén, Yasmine Haller, Mario Bastellica, Agathe Mazouin. Editing: Benjamin Abitan. Producers: Virginie Lacoste, Sahar Pirouz, Jacques Falgous. Producing Organisations: ARTE Studio, ARTE Radio.

No longer eligible to claim benefits for his narcissistic personality disorder, Lapin tells the story of his move back to Lapinville and his decision to make a podcast in order to take revenge on his former classmates. He is soon joined by Chloé Bloomington, a movie star taken down by an enormous shitstorm that forces her to return to her hometown to act in a lame soap opera. And then there is Spiruline, the resourceful city hall intern, whose investigations reveal previously unsuspected scandals in Lapinville's corridors of power. One by one, the town's inhabitants testify in order to understand how, one thing leading to another, they wound up provoking the destruction of the planet. The intertwined threads of their fates form a ball that is visible from space, which this series gradually unravels in daily 5-minute episodes of truth, adventure, cynicism, depression, humor and love (no, there's not much love, but there's still a little sex.)

Authors, Direction: Gustav Lie Gundersen, Erik Goplen. Actors: Darin Hagi, Gustav Lie Gundersen, Erik Goplen, David Kløve Kjernlie, Joakim Ljønes, Linn Skåber, Trond Fausa Aurvåg. Sound Design: Pål Gauslaa Sivertzen. Producers: Ingrid Torjesen; Gunhild Nymoen (Executive). Production Year: 2023.

Four buddies record a podcast in a mountain cabin. Then they're found brutally murdered. The case remains unsolved. Now, their former classmate and journalist Clara has finally gotten her hands on the recordings and wants to uncover what really happened. By listening through the raw materials and talking to their friends and family, she gradually inches closer to the truth. The Lads Pass is an original audio drama in six parts, combining comedy and crime. The series premiered in the Easter of 2023 and succeeded in reaching a younger audience with a new format.

Author, Screenplay: Jaka Smerkolj Simoneti. Dramaturgy: Vilma Štritof. Direction: Špela Kravogel. Actors: Gaja Filač, Nina Valič, Uroš Furst, Marijana Brecelj, Urban Kuntarič. Sound Track, Editing: Matjaž Miklič, Urban Gruden. Music Design: Darja Hlavka Godina. Production Year: 2023.

The author defines his monologue of a young woman as a family drama about three generations of women. Young Rina distances herself from everyone and everything, she finds everything pointless. Her parents are divorced and do not communicate, her grandmother, with whom she has the most genuine relationship, is dying and finally dies. Determined to kill herself, Rina is discovering introspection of the younger generation born into a world that appears to be ruled by absence, shallow and destructive relationships, never ending hustle, in alienating coexistence, which can no longer be called life, but a mere existence where life is reduced to a struggle for survival, content is lost, forgotten, stripped of any importance. However, the ending is left open. The radio drama has been partly recorded in binaural technique.

Author: Mayca Aguilera. Direction: Benigno Moreno, Mayca Aguilera. Actors: Angy Fernández, Marta Larralde, Nico Romero, Rebeca Hernando, Juan Suárez, Fernando Delgado, Julio Valverde, Pedro Muñoz, Amaya Prieto, Fernando Castro, César Gil. Production Year: 2020.

A successful professional woman, around 35 years old, maintains a relationship with a superior, but with the promotion of our protagonist in the company, the relationship is complicated and breaks. At the same time, she begins to receive harassing phone calls and messages threatening to make public compromising photos of her previous relationship in exchange for money. The threats are carried out and her life becomes complicated; she suffers the consequences of rejection, both in her work environment and with a new partner with whom she is beginning to have illusions. This may be a familiar situation, but the surprise of the story comes when you hit rock bottom and have nothing left to lose. The story is based on real events. Our proposal is an original Sound Fiction focused on the issue of impersonation in social networks, internet and, generally speaking, in the digital environment.

Author, Screenplay: Jude Dibia. Direction: Manal Masri. Narrating Voice: Magdi Saleh. Actors: Magdi Saleh, Johan Svensson. Sound Track: Anna Jondelius. Editing: Mattias Miselli. Dramatic Adviser: Magnus Berg. Producer: Drazen Kuljanin. Production Year: 2024.

In A Night in Copenhagen, we meet a young man, Chuck, at a bar in Copenhagen. It´s Friday, December 23. He is trying to recall what happened the night before when a man with blazing red hair, well-manicured nails and an unlit cigarette between his fingers approaches and asks if he can join him. The man's name is Anders. It is a suggestive drama about an inter-cultural date, erotic tension and a verbal ping-pong match of power. A Night in Copenhagen is part of Swedish Radio Drama's series Transit. Eight standalone episodes based on themes of flight, migration and emigration. Eight personal life stories where the listener gets close to the creators. Author Jude Dibia is from Nigeria but was forced to flee the country when homosexuality was criminalized. Since 2015 he lives and works in Malmö, Sweden.

Author: Lucy Catherine. Direction: Sasha Yevtushenko. Actors: Amanda Hale, Joel MacCormack. Sound Engineer, Editing: Peter Ringrose. Production Year: 2023.

In Autumn 2022, the writer Lucy Catherine travelled to the high arctic aboard a barquentine sailing ship with 29 other artists, searching for inspiration and healing in the polar twilight. In this drama-documentary, she tells the story of that personal voyage, combining it with a drama about two people travelling to the end of the world in search of a new beginning. "With exquisite sound design from Peter Ringrose, it's a deep meditation on grief, healing and personal discovery" (The Guardian). Footage of Lucy's expedition was recorded during her time in the arctic. The score was made up from a mixture of cleared commercial music and production library music. The programme had a strong impact with the audience, with many listeners getting in touch to say how moved they were by Lucy's bravery and honesty, as well as the beauty evoked by the writing and sound design.

Direction: Anne Pedersen, Jakob Rasmussen. Sound Design, Editing: Marie Kildebæk. Senior Producer, Editor: Jens Vithner. Consultant: Torben Brandt.

Through unique and original phone recordings, listeners are brought close to the intense dilemmas that arise when four adult children are entrusted with the responsibility of saving their father's life. They must negotiate with FARC through their father as a translator, because FARC's soldiers don't speak English. The experienced hostage negotiator, Jens Serup, assists the children throughout the entire process. He explains why it is crucial to negotiate firmly in order to ensure Niels's safe release. In the first episode, with the help of the professional hostage negotiator, the four siblings devise a strategy for negotiating their father's release. In the second episode, the captivity takes its toll on Niels, both physically and mentally. In the third, FARC insists that it must be a family member who brings the ransom and that the exchange must take place deep within their territory. In the last episode, with a backpack full of money and a drive too far into FARC's territory, the two agents must now try to get Niels released.

Author: Laetitia Druart. Direction, Editing: Arnaud Forest, Laetitia Druart. Narrating Voice, Editorial Support: Sabine Zovighian. Sound Track: Damien Tronchot.

For as long as I can remember, I've been convinced that there's a curse hanging over my family. It killed my grandfather, my grandmother and almost killed my mother. What if this curse is a transmissible mental illness? Following in the footsteps of my family heritage, I'm investigating to find out how to escape it and protect my son. On the Edge is a documentary series about the psychiatric disorder that has plagued my family for as long as I can remember: bipolarity. It's a personal and intimate investigation into an illness that is both unknown and famous, of which Kanye West is the perfect exponent. Through the ghosts of mental illness and those of my family, discussions with close friends and family, my shrink, psychiatrists and the testimonies of people with bipolar disorder, I will try to understand how to live with this illness and, above all, how to avoid triggering it myself.

Direction: Omar Ouahmane. Editing: Jérôme Chélius, Martine Meyssonnier. Mixing: Alisson Ascrizzi.

Without a government for more than two years, following the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse in July 2021, Haiti, a Caribbean island of 11 million inhabitants, is plagued by the violence of criminal gangs that control 80% of the capital Port-au-Prince and have caused the deaths of nearly 2,500 people since the start of the year. In a country where the government has collapsed, public services no longer function and the population is left to fend for itself, people are beginning to arm themselves and form self-defence gangs, at the risk of plunging the country into civil war as these armed groups roam the streets of the Haitian capital, blocking supplies, firing heavy weapons into houses and perpetrating the worst horrors such as rape and kidnapping. It was to shed light on this situation and its direct consequences for the population that Omar Ouahmane, a senior reporter with Radio France's international newsroom, travelled to Haiti for ten days, meeting local residents, gang leaders, victims of these groups and NGO leaders… and offering a terrifying insight into several districts of Port-au-Prince.

Author, Narrating Voice: Wilfried Huismann. Direction: Nikolai von Koslowski, Marie Hecht (Assistant). Actors: Maximilian Held, Henning Nöhren, Hanns Jörg Krumpholz, Tilmar Kuhn, Claudia Sandoval, Udo Schenk, Wilfried Huismann. Technical Realisation: Michael Kube. Editing: Thomas Nachtigall. Producing Organisation: Westdeutscher Rundfunk. Coproducing Organisation: Film-und Medienstiftung NRW (research support). Production Year: 2023.

The overthrow of Salvador Allende by the Chilean military moved the world in 1973. Little known until now was the role of German Nazis in the coup d'état and the establishment of the repressive regime. Not only Hitler-admiring officers and German-Chileans supported the Pinochet dictatorship. The former SS Standartenführer Walther Rauff, wanted as a WWII criminal, contributed his experience in the extermination of Pinochet's opposition members. Rauff had been recruited by the German Federal Intelligence Service BND in 1958 to "prevent the spread of communism on the American subcontinent". For the first time, witnesses from Chilean intelligence confirmed his leading role in organising systematic torture and disappearances. Documents show that the German Colonia Dignidad also played a far more important role than has been known.

Author, Narrating Voice, Direction: Michela Mancini. Actors: Eleonora Belcamino, Giulio Cristini. Sound Track: Roberto Ribuoli. Editing: Massimo Verolini. Producing Organisation: Rai Radio1. Production Year: 2024.

This documentary tells the story of a former asylum and its place: a small town nestled in the hills of southern Italy, called Girifalco. Founded in 1881, the psychiatric hospital and townspeople long progressed in symbiosis. With the initiation of "open doors" practices as soon as the early 1900s, patients deemed less serious went freely on village streets. Madness and normality melded in a peculiar blend that, over the centuries, brought national and international notoriety to Girifalco, as the town of the insane. More rudely, Crazy Town. Local people, far from experiencing the label as a stigma, took pride in their identity. But what happens to that town when the asylum closes and the "crazies" leave? Is a madman still mad even without that name? Or what are we when we're no longer called by the name we know so well?

Authors: Miranda Wretman, Lydia Bandolin Sörlin. Direction: Anna Frey. Narrating Voice: Miranda Wretman. Editing: Anna Frey, Tor Sigvardson. Production Year: 2023.

As a 13-year-old boy, Noah is forced to flee his home, family and country: Afghanistan. After a long and difficult journey, he ends up in Sweden as an unaccompanied refugee in 2015. Here he is placed in the home of the couple Gert and Lasse. Noah has never heard about homosexuality before, and it goes against his religion, Islam. But with his two new dads, Noah starts a new life. Having started out illiterate, he has now begun studying at the university: politics, philosophy and economics. He has friends, goes to the gym and reads thick books on Kant and Socrates. But the thoughts of the mother who once abandoned him won't leave him. He wants to meet her one last time.

Direction: Sue Mitchell, Winifred Robinson, Joel Moors. Sound Track: Mom Tudie. Reporters: Sue Mitchell, Rob Lawrie. Production Year: 2024.

Scorpion is wanted by police across Europe. Very little is known about him, but he runs an organised crime gang responsible for smuggling thousands of migrants across the English Channel. Police almost caught him through covert surveillance but Scorpion got away. The series sees BBC Investigative Journalist Sue Mitchell and former British Solider Rob Lawrie succeed where the authorities can't – penetrate Scorpion's human trafficking network, find and confront him. Not only did we find him but two days later, the Iraqis arrested Barzan Majeed, the leader of the Scorpion migrant smuggling gang. When we tracked him down, he had been on the run for almost two years, attempts by the authorities in Belgium to secure the cooperation of the Iraqis had, up to that point, failed. Barzan Majeed's interview for this series, in which he admitted migrant smuggling on a grand scale, was the information the Iraqis needed to act.