Sony teams with Babelsberg on Markus Goller road movie '25 KM/H'

Sony’s Deutsche Columbia Pictures Filmproduktion and Studio Babelsberg’s in-house production arm Traumfabrik Babelsberg are co-producing Friendship! director Markus Goller’s latest feature project 25 KM/H, which began shooting in Baden-Württemberg this week.

The road movie stars Lars Eidinger (The Bloom of Yesterday), Bjarne Mädel (Tatortreiniger), Sandra Hüller (Toni Erdmann), Alexandra Maria Lara (Rush) and Jella Haase (Fack Ju Göhte).

The project is the first to go into production for Goller and screenwriter Oliver Ziegenbalg’s recently formed production company Sunny Side Up, and is also in co-production with Deutsche Columbia, Pictures in a Frame, Mythos Film, Traumfabrik Babelsberg and the single-purpose company 26th Babelsberg Film.

25 KM/H is Goller and Ziegenbalg’s first collaboration since their 2010 film Friendship! which was the most successful German film of that year with more than 1.5 million admissions.

That film was produced by The Live Of Others’ Wiedemann & Berg Film Production and was distributed by Sony Pictures in Germany.

Traumfabrik Babelsberg’s managing director Tom Zickler also served as a producer on Friendship! - the film was based on his real-life adventures as a young East German travelling to San Francisco with friends after the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Sony Pictures Releasing plans to release 25 KM/H in German cinemas on September 13, 2018.

Traumfabrik Babelsberg was founded by Zickler and Studio Babelsberg at the beginning of 2016 to develop in-house German language projects and board third-party co-productions.

Earlier this year, the company boarded another project as co-producer, Christian Alvart’s action thriller Steig.Nicht.Aus!, starring Wotan Wilke Möhring, Christiane Paul, Hannah Herzsprung, and Fahri Yardim, with Alvart’s company Syrreal Entertainment, Telepool and broadcaster ZDF.

Meanwhile, Studio Babelsberg announced this week that the studio’s former spokesman Eike Wolf has been appointed a member of the management as the new director of stage rental and marketing with responsibility for studio operations and marketing.

Wolf had served as head of corporate communications and investor relations since 2006 and will be succeeded by Bianca Makarewicz.