Palme d’Or winning director Ruben Östlund’s next film The Entertainment System Is Down has been awarded €500,000 in production support from Berlin-Brandenburg’s regional film fund.
It is one of 30 feature films and series projects, from directors such as David Wnendt and Ulrike Ottinger, to share more than €7.2m in Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg (MBB)’s latest funding round.
Phlippe Bober’s Berlin-based Essential Filmproduktion received the €500,000 for Östlund’s second English-language production The Entertainment System Is Down, starring Daniel Brühl, Kirsten Dunst and Keanu Reeves. The long gestating project is set on a long-haul flight whose inflight entertainment system breaks down.
The largest single amount allocated - €1.4m - went to David Wnendt’s futuristic drama Athos 2643, based on Nils Westerboer’s novel, which has been described as “The Name of the Rose in space”.
Wnendt is penning the screenplay which is set in the year 2643 in a remote monastery on Neptune’s moon Athos that has become the site of a mysterious death which may have been perpetrated by a life-sustaining AI. The production by Seven Elephants (Treasure) is scheduled to begin principal photography in autumn 2025. It will see Wnendt reunited with distributor Constantin Film who released his previous feature Sun and Concrete in German cinemas.
Also funded are new feature projects by two veteran German filmmakers Jutta Brückner and Ulrike Ottinger.
Cologne-based COIN Film is producing writer-director Jutta Brückner’s drama Die Assistentin (The Assistant), starring Dying’s Corinna Harfouch opposite Oscar-nominated actress Sandra Hüller. It received €250,000.
Heimatfilm and Amour Fou’s co-production of Ulrike Ottinger’s long gestating vampire film parody The Blood Countess with a cast headed by Isabelle Huppert, Birgit Minichmayr, Lars Eidinger and Sophie Rois, received €150,000.
MMB also provided €600,000 funding for Simon Verhoeven’s adaptation of actor-writer Joachim Meyerhoff’s autobiographical bestseller Ach, Diese Lücke, Diese Entsetzliche Lücke, a collaboration with Toni Erdmann producer Komplizen Film.
Support has also been handed out to projects such as Maverick Film’s production of Russian-born, Berlin-based writer-director Alisa Kolosova’s coming of age drama, Ameisen Fressen Kein Halva; One Two Films’ co-production of The Blue Caftan director Maryam Touzani’s Spanish-language debut Calle Malaga; and NiKo Film’s collaboration with Indian writer-director Megha Ramaswamy on her new feature Reshma Shera about an underage female mine worker forced to marry a dog.
In addition, MBB’s CEO Kirsten Niehuus decided to allocate €2.45 m of the total €7.2m funding to five high-end TV projects. They include Violet Pictures’ thriller series Consultants through Neuesuper’s Breitscheidplatz set against the backdrop of the terrorist attack on the Berlin Christmas market in 2016.
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