Gore Verbinski, Wim Wenders projects secure German finance

Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg (MBB) has allocated $3.7m (€3.3m) production support to 20 new projects ranging from Gore Verbinski’s horror film A Cure For Wellness to Iranian-born video artist Shirin Neshat’s Looking For Oum Kulthum.

Verbinski’s film, which was shooting at locations in Baden-Württemberg and at the Babelsberg Studios in the summer, received the highest single amount - $560,000 (€500,000) – at this funding session.

Neshat’s homage to the legendary Egyptian singer and musician Kulthum – a co-production between Berlin-based Razor Filmproduktion, Austria’s Coop 99, France’s Arsam International and Egypt’s Film Clinic Cairo - received $168,439 (€150,000) production backing.

Other projects supported by MBB include:

• Wim Wenders’ The Beautiful Days Of Aranjuez, which marks his fifth collaboration with the Austrian dramatist Peter Handke and is now his second fiction feature film to be made in 3D after Every Thing Will be Fine.
  
  
• Roger Spottiswoode’s TV movie Costa Concordia, to be produced by Cologne-based Zeitsprung Pictures.
  
  
• The third outing for the Lilly The Witch children’s franchise, Hexe Lilli – Eingesacktes Weihnachtsfest, to be produced by the Berlin arm of Trixter Productions with Florian Baxmeyer directing.
  
  
• Finnish director Dome Karukoski’s biopic of Tom of Finland, to be co-produced by the Berlin arm of Neutrinos Productions, whose credits include Karukoski’s The Grump, and the Icelandic box-office hits Baldvin Z’s Life In A Fishbowl and Bjarni Haukur Thórsson’s The Grandad.
  
  
• Andreas Schaap’s Print The Legend which is described as a “Western gone Noir” by its producers, the fledgling Berlin-based Little Bridge Pictures.

Changes to German-Polish fund

Changes are afoot at the German-Polish Co-Development Fund after MBB and its partners MDM and the Polish Film Institute agreed to increase the fund’s budget and extend its activities to include production support from 2016.

In future, the fund will support the production of low budget projects, debuts and films with an innovative narrative approach in addition to the existing project development category.

A larger annual budget of $336,000 (€300,000) will now be made available for this expanded brief, with up to $78,600 (€70,000) being allocated for the joint development of a project by producers from Germany and Poland, and up to $168,439 (€150,000) being paid out as production support.

The German-Polish Co-Development Fund – which was launched by the three funding institutions 10 yearas ago – has supported the co-development of such projects as Johannes Schmid’s Winter Daughter, Agnieszka Holland’s Game Count, and Marie Noelle’s Marie Curie.