TrustNordisk will handle worldwide distribution for Matthias Glasner's latest feature This Is Love which is currently shooting on location in Berlin before moving to North Rhine-Westphalia next week.

Speaking exclusively to ScreenDaily.com, co-producer Jörg Schulze of cine plus Filmproduktion explained that the contact to the Scandinavian sales company had come via Maria Koepf, the managing director of Zentropa's Berlin outpost and the sales agent had come onboard with a high minimum guarantee after reading Glasner's screenplay.

The presence of TrustNordisk as sales company had also now convinced the German Federal Film Board (FFA) to provide production funding.

TrustNordisk is representing Hans-Christian Schmid's first English-language project Storm which began shooting in Berlin on July 29.

Described by director Glasner as 'a film about unfulfilled love', This Is Love is the first project of the Berlin-based production company Badlands Film he set up last year with fellow film-maker Lars Kraume and actor Jürgen Vogel (The Wave).

The $ 4.5m (Euros 2.9m) co-production wit h Schwarzweiss Filmproduktion, cine plus Filmproduktion and broadcasters WDR and ARTE, with backing from Filmstiftung NRW, Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg, BKM, German Federal Film Fund (DFFF) and German Federal Film Board (FFA), will be released theatrically in Germany next year by Kinowelt.

The cast is led by Corinna Harfouch, Danish actor Jens Albinus (The Boss Of It All), newcomer Duyen Pham and Vogel.

Kinowelt had also released Glasner's previous film The Free Will (Der Freie Wille) which received a Silver Bear for lead actor/co-screenwriter/producer Vogel at the 2005 Berlinale.

Vogel told ScreenDaily.com that Badlands will soon enter the financing stage for Lars Kraume's next feature project, an epic love story and family drama entitled Die Kommenden Tage, to go into production in 2009, while he is preparing his own directorial debut with a story reportedly set in the hooligan scene in east Germany.

In addition, Badlands is open to third party projects and is thus developing Wolfskinder by writer-director Erik Ostermann about the fate of refugee children immediately after the end of the Second World War, possibly as a co-production with broadcaster ZDF's Das kleine Fernsehspiel unit.

Meanwhile, apart from co-producing This is Love, cine plus has also served this summer as the producer of DoP Michael Ballhaus's directorial debut, the digitally produced documentary Berlin with the Argentine-born director-cinematographer Ciro Cappellari as co-director.

The portrait of the changes to the metropolis in almost 20 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall features interviews with German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Berlinale director Dieter Kosslick, TV presenter Maybritt Illner and the Turkish kiosk owner Ercan Ergin, among others.

Farbfilm Verleih will release the film theatrically in Germany next year, with Bavaria Film International handling international sales.

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