Ben Pengilly proclaims himself a pioneer of European vertical fiction

Ben Pengilly, a British producer specializing in vertical miniseries, recently posted on LinkedIn claiming to have created "the first ever vertical in Europe." In other words, he presents himself as a pioneer of the genre on a continental scale. Perhaps he simply confused the UK with Europe, but this assertion deserves to be put into perspective.

The expansion of vertical drama (or duanju) in Europe is not the work of a single man, but results from a constellation of parallel initiatives carried out in several countries, often without coordination, but with the same intuition: the mobile phone was going to become a screen for fiction in its own right.

Much to the chagrin of our friends across the Channel, France and Ukraine are among the first testing grounds for the duanju format in Europe.

In the spring of 2023, French director Guillaume Sanjorge launched a vertical micro-series on Facebook titled *Next Door Adventure*. This series quickly garnered several hundred thousand views despite the absence of any dedicated streaming platform. With just two clips released on social media (April and June 2023), it proved that an audience existed. Lacking a national distribution network at the time, the series was eventually released on an Asian platform in 2025.

At the same time, the Frenchmen Alexandre Perrin and Adrien Cottinaud of Studio Quinze are also shooting vertically from the end of 2023, with short fictions.

Here again, the aim is not to claim a "first", but to test a language, a breakdown and an actor direction adapted to the 9:16 framework, in a context where no clear line has yet been drawn in Europe.

In parallel, Eastern Europe also plays a decisive role in the rise of the vertical format, to the point of becoming the main economic driver on the continent.

The first European platform dedicated to duanju (short, interactive television series) was born in Ukraine: in early 2024, the startup Holywater, founded by entrepreneur Bogdan Nesvit, launched the MyDrama app. Designed from the outset for mobile use, this platform offers a catalog of vertical series, each episode lasting two to three minutes, tailored to the fragmented viewing habits of young audiences. Its success was meteoric: MyDrama quickly acquired hundreds of thousands of users and generated several million dollars in annual revenue in its first year. To maintain this production pace, the platform relied in particular on Amo Picture, a Ukrainian studio heavily invested in the vertical format, which became one of its key production partners.

DramaShorts, co-founded by Ukrainian Leo Ovdiïenko, began producing vertical dramas in Europe before expanding to the United States. These companies adopt a highly collaborative approach: DramaShorts explains that it leverages the diversity of its teams and locations to appeal to an international audience. These transnational platforms and studios demonstrate that the expansion of duanju (vertical dramas) has not occurred in a single country, but through simultaneous efforts on a European and global scale.

Collaboration rather than competition: a co-created format

The history of vertical drama in Europe is therefore not one of competition for a "first" title, a competition which is also largely imaginary, as the format appeared almost simultaneously in several places without the protagonists consulting each other.

On the contrary, it's a collective adventure, one that has seen multiple paths intersect and cooperate. Further east, Ukrainian entrepreneurs provided the technological infrastructure and funding to give the format a true mass-distribution platform. Elsewhere, writers and directors contributed the worlds, the actors, and the stories.

By recognizing the plurality of forces at play, we do justice to the true architects of this audiovisual revolution: an international community of creators, producers and broadcasters who, each in their own corner and then increasingly networked, built stone by stone the success of vertical drama in Europe.

While Ben Pengilly deserves his share of the spotlight for having helped structure vertical production in the UK, it is important to place his actions alongside those of his equally pioneering counterparts.

Far from a legend of the first to arrive, the only winner, the European vertical drama is the product of a collective effort, without which the format would never have experienced such rapid and successful expansion.