In its first meeting of the year, the central German film funding body FFA awarded 2.9 million euros in support for the creation of 8 new film projects and 5 screenplays.
Four of the eight funded productions are inspired by the biographies of strong female personalities:
Andreas Dresen --about to premiere his latest drama "Rabiye Kurnaz vs. George W. Bush" at the Berlinale-- and his long-time screenwriter Laila Stieler will next tell the moving story of anti-fascist resistance fighter Hilde Coppi --a member of the Red Chapel network-- in "In Liebe, eure Hilde," ("With Love, Yours Hilde"), their fifth cinema collaboration.
Berlin, 1942: The inconspicuous Hilde gradually finds her place in a resistance group, falls in love, blossoms and is happy for a summer despite constant danger to her life. In the fall, they are busted and the pregnant Hilde arrested. In prison, she develops unexpected strength, gives birth to her son and lives the memory of her beloved husband Hans. (Hilde Coppi was beheaded by the Nazis in 1943, a year after her husband).
Somali runner Samia Yusuf Omar was a participant in the 2008 Olympic Games and became a role model for many women in Africa through her resistance to the radical Islamist regime.
"Samia," the story of her life and tragic death, is the new film by Yasemin Samdereli, which, like "Almanya - Welcome to Germany," she co-wrote with her sister Nesrin. At just 17 years old, Omar participated in the 2008 Beijing Olympics. She refused to be intimidated by the ever-growing radicalization in her homeland, becoming a thorn in the side of Islamists.
Dora Diamant was an unconventional free spirit in 1920s Germany --and the great love of Franz Kafka. Georg Maas tells her story with Henriette Confurius ("Beloved Sisters") and Sabin Tambrea ("Ludwig II") in "The Glory of Life" with DoP Judith Kaufmann. In the summer of 1923, two dissimilar people meet on the beach of the Baltic Sea. Dora is tanned and barefoot, Franz wears a suit and elegant shoes at all times. Their encounter gives rise to a love affair that spans the last year of Franz Kafka's life and in which they both find happiness.
The German private scholar Maria Reiche pioneered the exploration of the mysterious Nazca lines in Peru starting in the 1930s --soon portrayed by Paula Beer in "Lady Nazca," directed by Damien Dorsaz. Maria Reiche, who emigrated from Germany, lives with her friend Amy in 1930s Peru, where she discovers the Nazca Lines and their true purpose at an archaeology camp in the desert. From then on, she fights obsessively to preserve these enigmatic, unique images -- and in the process becomes more and more distant from her old life and her love Amy.
Paula Beer also stars in Christian Petzold's new film. "Red Sky" is a dramatic love story set against the backdrop of devastating forest fires; Beer's partner here is Jonas Dassler. A hot, dry summer at the Baltic Sea: while uncontrollable forest fires rage, four young people meet in a vacation home. Slowly and imperceptibly, they are enclosed by the walls of flames.
Emily Atef, celebrated for "3 Days in Quiberon," has an amour fou set in an East German village between the fall of the Berlin Wall and reunification in her new film "Irgendwann werden wir uns alles erzählen." ("At some point we'll tell each other everything"). Summer 1990, East Germany is on the verge of change, between the end and a new beginning. 17-year-old Maria lives with her boyfriend Johannes on his parents' farm. But then she meets the solitary Henner, and a tragic love takes its course.
Among the scripts and treatments funded are three projects that deal comically or seriously with migrant life in Germany. And then there is an animation project about the difficulty of being successfully villainous and a graphic documentary about the future of humanity.
Screenplay promotion goes to (among others)
DISENFRANCHISED by David Clay Diaz, Daniel Fazal: When the McDonald's branch in the housing estate closes, 25-year-old ex-criminal Kamel loses his footing and occupies the restaurant with a ragtag group of comrades-in-arms, turning it into a soup kitchen. When the corporation demands their space back, Kamel & Co. fight for their project with all means necessary.
THOUSAND AND ONE DATES by Buket Alakuş is a comedy about Muslim singles hunting for the perfect, big "halal love" in Germany.
Treatment funding goes to
THE SCHOOL OF VILLAINS by John Chambers, an animated film about the eldest son of the rogue family Furchtbar (meaning Aweful), who turns out to be a white sheep and is sent to a proper rogue school to save his family's bad reputation.
TOMORROW by Florian Opitz is a graphic documentary about climate collapse, species extinction, capitalism crisis and the question of what humanity can do to get its act together at the last minute.
source: FFA
image: Hilde Coppi in Treptow Park, Berlin, 21 August 1939 photo by Hans Coppi - Own work,
CC BY-SA 4.0
