German national, regional funds hand out over €9m to European productions

New films by the German co-producers of the Cannes winners Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives and Tournee as well as directors David Cronenberg and Andreas Dresen are among the projects supported by four German national and regional funds at their last sessions with a total of over Euros 9m.

The BKM fund administered by State Minister of Culture Bernd Neumann allocated support to Jeanine Meerapfel’s Der Deutsche Freund, a love story between Germany and Argentina spanning several decades from the 1950s, which will be produced by Cologne-based Geissendörfer Film, one of the co-producers of Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Palme d’Or winner.

The BKM also backed Hendrik Handloegten’s drama Das Fenster im Sommer, to be produced by Maria Köpf of Berlin-based Zentropa Entertainments; Mondo Lux, Elfi Mikesch’s documentary portrait of the late filmmaker Werner Schroeter; and Veit Helmer’s Baikonur, a love story set in the Kazakh steppe.

Meanwhile, the Leipzig-based fund Mitteldeutsche Medienförderung (MDM) paid out over Euros 2m to 19 projects including Serbian director Srdan Golubovic’s third feature Circles which received the award for best emerging film in Cannes Film Festival’s  Atelier programme last month.

The co-production between Neue Mediopolis and Belgrade-based Film House Bas Celik will be the companies’ fourth collaboration  after Golubovic’s The Trap, Damjan Kozole’s Slovenian Girl and Srdjan Koljevic’s The Woman With The Broken Nose which has its world premiere at this month’s Cinema City festival in Novi Sad.

Funding was also allocated to Hungarian filmmaker Ibolya Fekete’s drama Mom And Other Loonies Of The Family which was pitched at last year’s Connecting Cottbus co-production platform and subsequently attracted the Berlin-based NiKo Film onboard as German co-producer.

In addition, MDM is supporting the development of two projects which will be directed by Whisky With Vodka director Andreas Dresen: a new adaptation of Friedrich Wolf’s classic The Christmas Goose Auguste (Die Weihnachtsgans Auguste) and Jetzt kommen wir about the singer-songwriter Gerhard Gundermann.

At the same time, over 24 projects were awarded around Euros 3.7m by the Stuttgart-based fund MFG Baden-Württemberg in the south-western corner of Germany.

The largest amount allocated at this session - Euros 500,000 - was made for the international co-production of David Cronenberg’s A Dangerous Method which will be shooting at Lake Constance this summer in addition to its shoot in North Rhine-Westphalia.

Another two international projects supported by MFG this time are Eran Riklis’ Danny Huston basketball drama Playoff and MicahLewensohn’s comedy Cyrilson Retires.

 Meanwhile, the first funding session in 2010 for nordmedia, the regional fund for Lower Saxony and Bremen,  saw the largest single amount - Euros 400,000 - going to the TV drama 8 Uhr 28 to be directed by Pandorum’s Christian Alvart for Hanover-based Jumping Horse Film.