Oscar-winning producer-director Pepe Danquart established Bittersuess Pictures in 2008 and since then has been developing projects for its first slate.
That slate will now include Christian Alvart's next feature Liebe, his first German language film since the 2004 thriller Antibodies drew him to the attention of Hollywood.
2008 saw Alvart directing the $ 40m futuristic thriller Pandorum, starring Dennis Quaid and Ben Foster, for Constantin and Impact Pictures at the Babelsberg Studios. In contrast, Alvart describes Liebe as 'a really small project, a low budget love story. I don't want to lose my radicalness.'
Other projects in development for Bittersuess include the mafia epic Ivan (Iwan) with North Face's Philipp Stölzl attached as director and Pepe Danquart's adaptation of Uri Orlev's book Run, Boy, Run.
Run, Boy, Run is based on the true story of a nine-year-old boy who escaped the Warsaw ghetto and had to survive throughout the war in Nazi-occupied Poland.
Meanwhile, production is scheduled at the beginning of 2010 in Berlin and South America on the drama Santiago, based on a short story by Alexander Osang, to be directed by Christian Schwochow.
However, the company's first project to start filming, at the end of January, will be Shahada by feature debutant Burhan Qurbani in cooperation with the Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg and ZDF's Das kleine Fernsehs piel unit.
Danquart, whose most recent film was the 2007 docufiction To The Limit (Am Limit), established Bittersuess with producer Susa Kusche, and Robert Gold, Uwe Spiller and Andrea Roman of the commercials production company Bigfish.
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