Golden Bear-winning director Fatih Akin is teaming with actress Diane Kruger for a five-part biopic of cinema icon Marlene Dietrich.
The series is being produced by Fremantle label UFA Fiction and Akin’s Bombero International.
The project, which is in development, is based on the biography of Dietrich written by her daughter Maria Riva, titled My Mother Marlene. Dietrich will be played by Kruger, while Akin has written the scripts and will direct.
It’s billed as a portrait of a woman who created her own rules and lived by them, whatever the cost, focusing on Dietrich as artist, lover, German emigrant and mother.
Kruger starred in Akin’s 2017 thriller In the Fade, winning the best actress prize at Cannes for her role. Akin’s Head-On won the Golden Bear at the 2004 Berlinale.
Akin said: “Marlene (w/t) will be not only the first series I have written and directed but also the greatest challenge in my film career. It is the continuation of my successful collaboration with Diane Kruger. Nobody is better cast than her. Marlene was not only a cinematic icon, but a woman in exile, German immigrant in America, resistance fighter and so much more. She was also an UFA-artiste, which is why I am even happier that the series has found a home there.”
Nico Hofmann, executive producer and CEO UFA, and Sebastian Werninger, executive producer and managing director UFA Fiction said: “Marlene Dietrich is an icon of her time: in her open approach to sexuality, her clear stance towards the war with National Socialist Germany, her international outlook and clear recognition of diversity: it is the modern image of womankind far ahead of that of her generation and which impresses even to this day.”
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