For your fall literary season & upcoming watching pleasure, there’s a slew of ever popular “books on film” to look forward to:
EMPIRE is the working title for Jan-Ole Gerster's anticipated follow-up to multi-award-winning Berlin slacker film OH BOY, which we premiered in Toronto at the European Union Film Festival 2013. Here, August Engelhardt is the radical vegetarian and nudist who left Germany in 1902 to set up a utopian colony on a South Sea island. His malnourished body was found on a beach in 1919. Gerster will start filming this adaption of Christian Kracht’s smash hit adventure novel "A Small Empire” with his OH BOY lead Tom Schilling next year.
Just out is THE DARK SIDE OF THE MOON, by Stephan Rick, with a promising cast: Moritz Bleibtreu, Jürgen Prochnow (currently in Atom Egoyan's REMEMBER) and Nora von Waldstätten (CLOUDS OF SILS MARIA) star in this thriller based on Martin Suter’s novel of the same name, with a high finance attorney taking a hallucinogenic trip from which there is no return.
Updates on two literary adaptations I have mentioned here before: Wolfgang Becker’s KAMINSKI AND ME, based on Daniel Kehlmann’s novel and
starring soon-to-be Baron Zemo in CAPTAIN AMERICA, Daniel Brühl, was just released to rave reviews, especially for his portrayal of slimy journo Zöllner. Brühl, who had worked with Becker 12 years ago on GOOD BYE, LENIN!, also currently stars in Florian Gallenberger’s political thriller COLONIA alongside Emma Watson, out soon after its (mediocre) TIFF premiere.
Sönke Wortmann, successful last year with the dark school comedy MS MUELLER MUST GO, will return in 2016 with another comedy, SUMMER PARTY, based on Frank Goosen's eponymous road-movie novel. A film I will not miss: It is set in my hometown and I went to university with Goosen.
Uli Edel, who has done everything from directing for HOMICIDE and TWIN PEAKS to his recent much lauded German TV mini series THE ADLON, a saga about the famous Berlin hotel, is rumored to finish up FOG IN AUGUST for next year, an adaptation of Thomas Domes’ novel. Germany, 1942: The Nazis take their inhuman euthanasia program to the extreme. 13-year-old Ernst Lossa, the son of “Jenische” —travellers-- is separated from his family and finds himself caught in the Nazi annihilation machine. After his father had been deported to Dachau concentration camp, the boy was taken to a children’s home in his hometown of Augsburg, then to a mental hospital, where he was murdered with two injections in 1944. There are no exact numbers on the fate the Jenische suffered in the “Third Reich”, but their federal council estimates the dead at 100,000, touching literally every Jenische family. The all-star cast of
Sebastian Koch, Fritzi Haberlandt and David Bennent (Oskar Matzerath in Schloendorff's Oscar winner THE TIN DRUM) should bring it the international attention the topic deserves.
At the same time, Uli Edel puts his THE BAADER MEINHOF COMPLEX political thriller chops to work and does Dan Gordon in CODE NAME OPERA: The Israeli Air Force is on a secret mission to destroy a French-built nuclear reactor near Baghdad (It’s billed as a “A true story.”). Let's hope it fares better than his just released Halloween horror film PAY THE GHOST, based on Tim Lebbon's novel and starring Nicolas Cage, new Herzog-favourite Veronica Ferres and Toronto's Lyriq Bent (BOOK OF NEGROES), that is being shown no mercy by critics.
Closing with some teasers for actors, directors, and films to look for in the near future: The afore-mentioned international star actor Sebastian Koch (THE DANISH GIRL) is in cinemas alongside Daniel Auteuil and Montreal's Marie-Josée Croze in French director Vincent Garenq’s KALINKA and with Tom Hanks and Burghard Klaussner in Stephen Spielberg & the Coen brothers' BRIDGE OF SPIES, plus a half dozen other international productions including TV's HOMELAND.
And 50 years after mythical French actor Pierre Briece graced every German kid’s bedroom wall in majestic poses, Philipp Stölzl (THE PHYSICIAN; YOUNG GOETHE IN LOVE) revisits Germany’s favourite native chief WINNETOU and his blood brother Old Shatterhand. Private broadcaster RTL has commissioned a three-part series for Christmas 2016 with Wotan Wilke Möhring, Milan Peschel (an Andreas Dresen favourite who has been doing a lot of comedies lately), Fahri Yardim (lauded sidekick to Til Schweiger’s TV detective), and Jürgen Vogel (soon to be OETZI). Germany & the noble red man ... I am apprehensive and pray it won’t be a political disaster a la Adam Sandler's THE RIDICULOUS SIX.
Happy reading & viewing!
by
Jutta Brendemühl
image: poster for WINNETOU 3 (1965)
