New feature films by Jaco van Dormael and Martin Provost have received a total of $974,850 (Euros 730,000) backing by the German-French Funding Commission which is administered by the German Federal Film Board (FFA) and France's CNC to promote co-production between the two countries.

$467,393 (Euros 350,000) was awarded to van Dormael's Mr Nobody which is being structured as a German-French-Belgian co-production between Lago Film/Integral Film, Paris-based Pan Europeene Production and Dormael's Toto & Co Films, and will begin principal photography this summer.

Martin Provost's Seraphine, a French majority co-production between TS Productions and Potsdam-based Flying Moon Filmproduktion, is based on the life of the painter Seraphine de Senlis (1864-1942) and received $507,544 (Euros 380,000) production funding.

Meanwhile, the Frankfurt-based $26.7m (Euros 20m) Hessen Invest film financing fund has provided a $1m (Euros 750,000) conditionally repayable loan for producer-writer-director Vera Belmont's latest film Surviving With Wolves (Survivre Avec Les Loups) which began shooting Monday in the German federal state of Hessen for 24 days of a 90-day shoot.

Based on the bestselling autobiographical novel by Misha Defonseca about her two-year odyssey across Europe as a seven-year-old during the Second World War to find her parents deported by the Nazis, the $8m (Euros 6m) film is being co-produced by Belmont's Stephan Film with Jean Francois Geneix's Les Aventuriers de l'image and Belgian producer Hubert Toint's Saga Film. Frankfurt-based Daniel Zuta's Zuta Filmproduktion is acting as the production service company for the German end of the shoot which has locations near Frankfurt, Darmstadt, Kronberg and in the Taunus region until mid-April.

International sales for the film are being handled by Wild Bunch.

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