Bavaria goes to Morocco with new Caroline Link film

Bavaria is starting pre-sales in Cannes and a French co-producer will be recruited.

The as-yet-untitled project — based on Link’s original screenplay — is set in Morocco, about a German stage director working on a play in Marrakech, who is dealing with his troubled teenage son. The son meets a feisty prostitute who takes him to her hometown.

Ulrich Tukur (The Lives of Others) will play the father and Hafsia Herzi (The Secret Of The Grain) is in talks to join. The film will shoot in winter 2011 on a budget of $8.5m (EUR 6m).

The film reunites the team behind Oscar winning Nowhere In Africa. Herrmann’s Desert Flower Filmproduktion most recently produced Desert Flower.

“Caroline’s new project follows up on her successful high quality films. With her extraordinary talent as a writer and director she succeeds in telling a dramatic relationship between a father and his son for a broad audience. I am very much looking forward to continuing our successful collaboration after Nowhere in Africa,” said Herrmann.

“Caroline Link’s major strength is her ability to craft genuine and truthful stories from the perspective of young protagonists while still connecting with a wide and sophisticated audience. Her new film will be an exotic and yet a familiar one - one that everybody can identify with, a son-father relationship that is put to the test. This is right down her territory and I am delighted to reunite with Caroline Link and producer Peter Herrmann on such a promising project,” added Thorsten Ritter of Bavaria Film International.