“Europe has a role to play in global Duanju” Victor Portrel, TheSoul Publishing

Interviewed by Wenwen Han as part of the roundtable organized by the Short Drama Alliance, Victor Portrel, Director of External Strategy at TheSoul Publishing, embodies a new generation of content strategists. Based in London, he closely observes the rise of short dramas, these ultra-short, vertical fictions that are reshaping video usage on mobile devices. For him, this format is neither a miniature version of cinema nor a passing trend, but a language in its own right, with its own rules, grammar, and economy.

According to Victor Portrel, short drama is emerging as a field of innovation as much as an industrial laboratory. "It's not a short version of the long format, it's another language," he explains. TheSoul Publishing, already known for its massive production of multilingual digital content, is applying a methodology from the digital industry to this new field: rapid testing, creative iteration, and detailed analysis of reception. The goal is not only to produce more, but to understand what captures attention on a vertical screen. The company has also launched its own app, SHRT, dedicated to 1- to 2-minute series, in order to continuously experiment with the preferences of its global audience.

In an ecosystem now largely dominated by Chinese platforms and studios, this approach positions TheSoul Publishing as one of the few European players capable of engaging in dialogue on equal terms. Victor Portrel evokes a “space to be conquered” between local cultural narratives and global storytelling: a terrain where short format can transcend languages and borders. Behind the apparent competition lies a form of creative emulation: how to adapt the emotional intensity and narrative rhythm of duanju to European sensibilities?

For Portrel, the answer lies in structuring, not copying. Industrializing short-form creativity doesn't mean standardizing it: it means organizing the conditions so that stories can circulate at high speed without losing their uniqueness. This ambition, in its own way, echoes that of the Short Drama Alliance: to make the format a universal language, capable of connecting industries and imaginations that were once separate.

The entire Short Drama Forum 2025 is available on YouTube .

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