Karl Markovics, the lead actor in Stefan Ruzowitzky's Oscar-winning The Counterfeiters, is to play the legendary psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud in the fictionalised docudrama Mahler On The Couch by the father and son team of Percy and Felix Adlon.

The story, which is based on actual events, eyewitness accounts and journal entries, is set in the summer of 1910 and shows the famous composer Gustav Mahler (played by Johannes Silberschneider) in his marriage of nine years with his younger wife Alma (Barbara Romaner), who has begun an affair with the famous architect Walter Gropius.

Thrown into despair by the discovery of his wife's infidelity, Mahler visits Sigmund Freud when the psychoanalyst is on holiday in the Dutch town of Leiden to seek his advice.

Kinowelt International has taken on international sales for the co-production between the Adlons' Munich-based production company pelemele FILM&STAGE, their Stateside outfit Leora Films, Vienna-based Cult Filmproduktion and broadcaster Bayerischer Rundfunk.

Concorde Film will release the film theatrically in Germany. Adlon's wife Eleonore will produce together with Eberhard Junkersdorf and Burhard W.R. Ernst.

Principal photography for Mahler On The Couch is scheduled to begin from the end of August at locations in Leiden, the Austrian Tyrol, Vienna and Munich's Bavaria Film studios until the beginning of October.

Meanwhile, a re-mastered 'director's cut' of Adlon's 1987 international hit Bagdad Cafe was premiered at the market in Cannes and has attracted offers from distributors from the UK, Spain, Scandinavia, Turkey, Greece, the Czech Republic, Hungary China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan and Australia, according to Kinowelt International's head of world sales Stelios Ziannis.

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