PTZ readies Nazi Officer's Wife with Rapace, Mikkelsen

Perrine Teze’s PTZ International is putting together financing and handling sales on Barthelemy Grossmann’s Nazi Officer’s Wife. The film will begin shooting in the fall with Millennium star Noomi Rapace alongside Mads Mikkelsen.

Presales have been completed with Scanbox for Scandinavia and Seville for Canada with talks ongoing in Italy, Germany and France.

Based on the book by Edith Hahn Beer, the film is the story of an Austrian Jew who survived the Holocaust living under an assumed identity and who ended up marrying a Nazi officer. Beer’s saga sees her go from being an idealistic law student to a desperate, determined imposter living in Nazi-populated Munich until she emerged as a judge whose connections in Russian-controlled East Germany could free her husband from a POW camp.

Acclaimed cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond will act as DP with The Ghost Writer production designer Albrecht Conrad also part of the team. Producing are Laurent M. Zilber and Dan Maag with Gerlad Morin executive producing and Teze acting as associate producer.

Much of the team, including Teze, Grossmann, Rapace and Mikkelsen, had been set to shoot action-drama Clean Out in Iowa last year but the project was shelved when the state’s tax credit program was suspended. Grossmann then turned to Nazi Officer’s Wife and having bonded with many of his collaborators, kept them onboard.

The film will shoot in Germany and Vienna, Rapace told Screen. Currently shooting another film, Babycall, the actress said she was jumping into preparation for the complex role of Beer which will see her have to transform her body from an achingly thin camp worker to a post-partum mother. Beyond the physical, Rapace is also doing as much research as she can to try to “travel back to the nightmare atmosphere of the time.”