Martyisdead

#martyisdead is a Czech thriller webseries that was released on 20 October 2019 Mall.TV. It was created in cooperation with CZ.NIC, filmed by the Czech company Bionaut. It deals with cyberbullying and was inspired by real events drawing inspiration from Blue Whale Challenge.

WWW Official Site

Plot

The series unravels the story of ninth-grade student Martin Biederman, who becomes a victim of cyberbullying. Martin is killed in a car accident at the beginning of the series, and his father, Petr Biederman, finds out from his Facebook profile that he was blackmailed by someone posing as a girl named Eliška Svobodová. "Eliška" convinced Martin to send her a video of him masturbating, then used it to blackmail him, forcing him to carry out tasks such as killing his family dog by putting it in a freezer. Petr, finding the police investigation of his son's death to be progressing too slowly, begins investigating on his own, gradually unraveling the sequence of events that led to his demise.

Cast

Jakub Nemčok as Martin "Marty" Biederman
Jan Grundman as Petr Biederman, Marty's father
Petra Bučková as Alena Biedermanová, Marty's mother
Sára Korbelová as Kristýna, Marty's girlfriend
Matěj Havelka as Kryštof, Marty's friend
Andrej Polák as Marty's teacher
Jan Zadražil as a van driver
Klára Miklasová as secretary
Tomáš Bambušek as criminalist

Broadcast

The pilot episode was broadcast on October 20 2019 on its website by MALL.TV; the remaining seven episodes were published every Sunday until 8 December 2019. During the preparation of the sequel, the series received an Emmy Award nomination.

Reception

Awards

In September 2020, #martyisdead was historically the first Czech series to be nominated for an international Emmy Award, in the category of Short-Form Series. The series won the award in November. It won the main prize at the Serial Killer festival, where it premiered. In March 2021, it won the Czech Lion Award for the Extraordinary achievement in the field of audiovisual.

Spiritual sequel

The sequel, called #annaismissing, is again co-produced by MALL.TV and Bionaut. It was originally scheduled for release in May 2021. Creators eventually decided to produce it as a feature-length film. It premiered in 2023.