Raspberry&Cream boards Pierrot Lunaire

Berlin-based Raspberry&Cream has picked up its second Bruce LaBruce title, Pierrot Lunaire, which will have its world premiere in the Berlinale’s Forum Expanded section next month.

Sales company m-appeal’s label for often sexually charged films had been launched in 2010 with LaBruce’s LA Zombie, shown at the film festival in Locarno. M-appeal had previously handled sales on the director’s 2008 film Otto.

The new 56-minute black-and-white feature, which is produced by LaBruce’s regular collaborator Jürgen Brüning, is inspired by composer Arnold Schönberg’s Pierrot Lunaire, which is based on the poems of Albert Giraud and is widely regarded as one of the most influential works composed in the 20th century.

The plot of LaBruce’s new film centres on a young woman regularly dressing as a man, who falls in love and seduces a young girl oblivious to the fact that her lover has the same sex. But when the girl introduces ‘her boyfriend’ to her father he becomes sceptical and unmasks the fraud.

LaBruce says that, while listening to the music of Schönberg, he tried to associate a concept that would match well with the mood of the composer’s atonal music  and also be combined with Giraud’s poems in a more contemporary context.

“From the jungle of thoughts of my unconscious rose a story that is supposed to have happened decades ago in Toronto, and that is both odd and universal,” the director explained.

Beta Cinema handling opening film in Solothurn

Beta Cinema is handling international sales on the opening film at this year’s Solothurn Film Days (Jan 23-30), Akte Grüninger - Die Geschichte eines Grenzgängers by Alain Gsponer.

Gsponer’s drama, which will be released in Swiss cinemas by the local outpost of Disney, is one of the world premieres competing for the Swiss festival’s Prix de Soleure with such titles as Men Lareida’s Viktoria - A Tale Of Grace and Greed, a drama set in Zurich’s red-light district, Christoph Schaub and Kamal Musale’s documentary Millions Can Walk, and Christoph Kühn’s documentary portrait Alfonsina.

Solothurn’s annual panorama of Swiss production will present a total of 179 titles at the 49th edition, including 22 world premieres, from 622 submissions in all genres and lengths.

Comedies are particularly in evidence this year, according to the festival’s artistic director Seraina Rohrer, with world premieres of Sabine Boss’s Der Goalie bin ig, Claudio Tonetti’s Win Win - Chinesisch im Jura, and Mohammed Soudani’s Oro Verde.

Meanwhile, Beta Cinema has hit the box-office jackpot in Germany and Spain with its co-production of Philip Stölzl’s Noah Gordon adaptation The Physician.

The €26m co-production between UFA Cinema, ARD Degeto and Beta Cinema had attracted 840,000 cinema-goers on its first weekend in German cinemas after opening on 25 December and posted over another 600,000 admissions last weekend as it took over the No 1 position ahead of The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug.

The Universal Pictures International release has now been seen by over 1.7m cinema-goers in Germany. Its Spanish release by DeAPlaneta from Dec 25, 2013 also occupied the pole position last weekend.