babylon berlin c netflix

Source: Netflix

Beta Film recently co-produced ‘Babylon Berlin’

Three German regional film funds - Film- und Medienstiftung NRW, FFF Bayern and Hessen Film & Medien - have allocated more than €12m to new film and TV series projects in their latest funding sessions.

The fifth and final season of Babylon Berlin, scheduled to start production this autumn, received the largest sum of €2m from the funding committee of Düsseldorf-based Film- und Medienstiftung NRW.

In total, the fund distributed €5.3m to 12 projects including COIN Film’s production of writer-director Jutta Brückner’s drama The Assistant, starring Corinna Harfouch and Sandra Hüller; Heimatfilm and Amour Fou’s co-production of Ulrike Ottinger’s vampire film parody The Blood Countess starring Isabelle Huppert, Birgit Minichmayr, Lars Eidinger and Sophie Rois; and Nikias Chryssos’ horror thriller Bloody Tennis, produced by BT Co-Production with Port au Prince in place as German distributor.

€1m went to Tradewind Pictures for an animated feature film based on the adventures of a magical sprite called The Slurb (Das Sams) which first appeared in the cinema in a live-action film by Ben Verbong in 2001.

The new Sams film, co-produced with Austria’s Coop 99 and Amour Fou Luxembourg, is directed by Ali Samadi Ahadi whose previous credits include the 2022’s Moon Bound.

Bavaria’s film and television fund FFF Bayern has allocated around €4m to support the development and production of 26 film and TV projects.

€850,000 went to the new feature by Simon Verhoeven, collaborating with Berlin/Munich-based production house Komplizen Film, on an adaptation of actor-writer Joachim Meyerhoff’s autobiographical bestseller Ach, diese Lücke, diese entsetzliche Lücke.

Other projects supported include Violet Pictures’ thriller series Consultants and KJ Entertainment’s Der Gentleman von Wimbledon - both with Lars Kraume attached as director - and Kosmopoliten, a collaboration between documentary filmmakers Heidi Specogna and Thomas Riedelsheimer about artists whose work is exhibited at the Atelier Goldstein gallery in Frankfurt and the challenges they face trying to break into the mainstream art world.

The Bavarian Bank Fund’s production fund handed out €650,000 to three projects including Christophe Gans’ Return To Silent Hill and Sven Unterwaldt’s family film Woodwalkers 2.

Further north, at the Frankfurt-based Hessen Film & Medien, €2m in production support went to 30 projects including new feature films by directors Piotr J. Lewandowski and Faraz Shariat.

Lewandowski’s queer film Mixtape, described as “a universal story about love, loss and the feeling of being different in rural regions”, received €300,000.

Shariat – whose debut feature No Hard Feelings premiered at the Berlinale in 2020 - was allocated €200,000 for Staatsschutz, which also has Sandra Hüller attached for the cast in what is described as a critical look behind the scenes of German public prosecutors.

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