StudioCanal Germany has boarded Banklady, Christian Alvart’s first German language film since Antibodies in 2005, and Oscar winner Caroline Link’s latest project Exit Marrakech (working title) as a co-producer and distributor.
Alvart, who directed Case 39 with Renee Zellweger in 2007, and the dark scifi thriller Pandorum with Dennis Quaid in 2009, is producing Banklady through his own Berlin-based production outfit Syrreal Entertainment, with public broadcaster NDR also onboard as a co-producer and production support coming from FilmFörderung Hamburg Schleswig-Holstein, the German Federal Film Board (FFA) and nordmedia.
The film will shoot in Northern Germany for 36 days from June 6. Nadeshda Brennicke will star as Gisela Werler, who became Germany’s first female bank robber when she held up a bank in Hamburg in 1965.
Charly Hübner will play her partner in crime Wittorff, with other roles taken by Ken Duken, Heinz Hoenig, Mavie Hörbiger and Andreas Schmidt.
Brennicke has regularly been cast in Alvart’s previous German productions, starting with his 1999 feature debut Curiosity and The Cat and continuing with Antibodies, the 2010 TV movie 8 Uhr 28 and the SAT.1 TV movie Wolff - Kampf im Revier.
Meanwhile, shooting on Link’s new film Exit Marrakech (working title) began on April 16 at locations in Morocco. It is a co-production between Peter Herrmann’s Desert Flower Filmproduktion with StudioCanal Germany, ARD Degeto/NR/WDR, Erfftal Film- und Fernsehproduktion, B.A. Produktion and MTM west television & film.
Exit Marrakech features Samuel Schneider (Boxhagener Platz) Ulrich Tukur (John Rabe), Sophie Rois (Three) in a story about the tense relationship between a successful theatre director and his neglected teenage son. The drama will be released theatrically by StudioCanal in 2013.
The first bonafide local co-production by StudioCanal’s German operation was Torsten Wacker’s No Sex Is No Option about a womaniser getting his come-uppance. The comedy had its world premiere at last September’s Internationales Filmfest Oldenburg and was released in German cinemas in December.
The second co-production followed in early 2011 with Sherry Hormann’s film Anleitung zum Unglücklichsein, inspired by the Austrian-American psychologist and philosopher Paul Watzlawick’s besteller The Situation Is Hopeless, But Not Serious, which stars Johanna Wokalek, Iris Berben and Katharina Marie Schubert and will be released by StudioCanal on October 4, 2012.
StudioCanal Germany also served as one of the co-producers of the John Le Carré adaptation Tinker, Tailor, Soldier Spy.
Meanwhile, this summer will see principal photography commencing on veteran Swiss director Xavier Koller’s family film Die schwarzen Brüder, based on the bestselling novel by Lisa Tetzner and Kurt Held, which will be theatrically distributed by StudioCanal in 2013.
Moritz Bleibtreu and Richy Müller are set to play the leads in the co-production between enigma film, Starhaus Filmproduktion, Dschoint Ventschr, Herold Productions and Odeon Film at original locations in Switzerland’s Ticino canton, North Rhine-Westphalia, Hesse, South Tyrol and Italy in June and July.
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