New productions by Benedek Fliegauf, Christian Alvart, and Geoffrey Sax are among 35 projects receiving over $12m in support from the German Federal Film Board (FFA) and Leipzig-based Mitteldeutsche Medienfoerderung (MDM).
At its latest sitting the Berlin-based FFA supported such projects as Hungarian director Fliegauf's first English language production, Womb, produced by Razor Film with Hungary's Inforg Studio, France's A.S.A.P. Films and the UK's Film4; Alvart's forthcoming sci-fi thriller Pandorum, with Dennis Quaid and Ben Foster for Constantin Film and Impact Pictures; and Rainer Matsutani's youth gang drama ROX!, with Wild Soccer Bunch stars brothers Jimi Blue and Wilson Gonzales Ochsenknecht.
In addition project funding was allocated to Matthias Glasner's drama This Is Love which began shooting in Saigon, Vietnam, in mid-July and has now returned to Germany with a cast including Corinna Harfouch, Danish character actor Jens Albinus (Idiots, The Boss Of It All), newcomer Duyen Pham, Juergen Vogel and Devid Striesow.
The film is the first production of Badlands Film, which was set up by Glasner, Vogel and Lars Kraume at the end of last year and marks Glasner's second collaboration with distributor Kinowelt. Kinowelt also released his previous feature, The Free Will, which won lead actor Vogel a Silver Bear at the 2006 Berlinale.
In total, the FFA allocated $4.6m (Euros 2.92m) to 10 projects from 44 submissions.
Meanwhile, MDM awarded over $7.8m (Euros 4.9m) to 25 projects, including such international co-productions as Geoffrey Sax's Black Death, Sam Garbarski's Distant Neighbourhood, and US writer-director Tony Pemberton's Buddha's Little Finger.
The largest amount -- $1.2m (Euros 750,000) -- went to Sax's Black Death, which will be produced later this year in Saxony-Anhalt by the UK's Ecosse Films with Egoli Tossell Film Halle, the joint venture production company established by Berlin-based Egoli Tossell Film and Chris Curling's Zepyhr Films to produce Michael Hoffman's $20.8m (Euros 13m) Tolstoy drama The Last Station.
Garbarski's project is based on the manga comic Quartier20Lointain by Japanese writer Jiro Taniguchi, which is known as Vertraute Fremde in Germany, and has three of the co-producers from his 2007 Berlinale competition film Irina Palm (Halle-based Pallas Film, Belgium's Entre Chien et Loup and Luxembourg's Samsa Film) onboard again, together with France's Archipel 35.
Speaking exclusively to ScreenDaily.com, Pallas Film's Thanassis Karathanos explained that the new film will star German actress Alexandra Maria Lara (Youth Without Youth) and be handled internationally by Wild Bunch. X-Verleih -- who posted $3.8m (Euros 2.4m) at the German box office with Irina Palm last year -- will release the film theatrically in Germany.
In addition, MDM allocated $785,000 (Euros 500,000) to Berlin-based Rohfilm for its English-language gangster movie Buddha's Little Finger, which has been adapted by Pemberton from the best-selling novel by Russian novelist Viktor Pelewin to be a German-Russian co-production with the Mikhail Kalatazov Fund (Wild Field).
Rohfilm is represented in the official competition at next week's Locarno with its co-production of Kirill Serebrennikov's Yuri's Day and is also a co-producer of Aida Begic's Snow, this year's opening film at the Sarajevo Film Festival.
At its latest sitting the Berlin-based FFA supported such projects as Hungarian director Fliegauf's first English language production, Womb, produced by Razor Film with Hungary's Inforg Studio, France's A.S.A.P. Films and the UK's Film4; Alvart's forthcoming sci-fi thriller Pandorum, with Dennis Quaid and Ben Foster for Constantin Film and Impact Pictures; and Rainer Matsutani's youth gang drama ROX!, with Wild Soccer Bunch stars brothers Jimi Blue and Wilson Gonzales Ochsenknecht.
In addition project funding was allocated to Matthias Glasner's drama This Is Love which began shooting in Saigon, Vietnam, in mid-July and has now returned to Germany with a cast including Corinna Harfouch, Danish character actor Jens Albinus (Idiots, The Boss Of It All), newcomer Duyen Pham, Juergen Vogel and Devid Striesow.
The film is the first production of Badlands Film, which was set up by Glasner, Vogel and Lars Kraume at the end of last year and marks Glasner's second collaboration with distributor Kinowelt. Kinowelt also released his previous feature, The Free Will, which won lead actor Vogel a Silver Bear at the 2006 Berlinale.
In total, the FFA allocated $4.6m (Euros 2.92m) to 10 projects from 44 submissions.
Meanwhile, MDM awarded over $7.8m (Euros 4.9m) to 25 projects, including such international co-productions as Geoffrey Sax's Black Death, Sam Garbarski's Distant Neighbourhood, and US writer-director Tony Pemberton's Buddha's Little Finger.
The largest amount -- $1.2m (Euros 750,000) -- went to Sax's Black Death, which will be produced later this year in Saxony-Anhalt by the UK's Ecosse Films with Egoli Tossell Film Halle, the joint venture production company established by Berlin-based Egoli Tossell Film and Chris Curling's Zepyhr Films to produce Michael Hoffman's $20.8m (Euros 13m) Tolstoy drama The Last Station.
Garbarski's project is based on the manga comic Quartier20Lointain by Japanese writer Jiro Taniguchi, which is known as Vertraute Fremde in Germany, and has three of the co-producers from his 2007 Berlinale competition film Irina Palm (Halle-based Pallas Film, Belgium's Entre Chien et Loup and Luxembourg's Samsa Film) onboard again, together with France's Archipel 35.
Speaking exclusively to ScreenDaily.com, Pallas Film's Thanassis Karathanos explained that the new film will star German actress Alexandra Maria Lara (Youth Without Youth) and be handled internationally by Wild Bunch. X-Verleih -- who posted $3.8m (Euros 2.4m) at the German box office with Irina Palm last year -- will release the film theatrically in Germany.
In addition, MDM allocated $785,000 (Euros 500,000) to Berlin-based Rohfilm for its English-language gangster movie Buddha's Little Finger, which has been adapted by Pemberton from the best-selling novel by Russian novelist Viktor Pelewin to be a German-Russian co-production with the Mikhail Kalatazov Fund (Wild Field).
Rohfilm is represented in the official competition at next week's Locarno with its co-production of Kirill Serebrennikov's Yuri's Day and is also a co-producer of Aida Begic's Snow, this year's opening film at the Sarajevo Film Festival.
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