Last week we showed you Baran bo Odar’s 2014 successful hacker feature WHO AM I and I tweeted: "Berlin thriller opened #Hollywood door for @baranboodar w/ .@iamjamiefoxx & .@realmonaghan" and "
Netflix Confirms First German Series 'Dark' From Baran bo Odar."
“Dark” is the name of the TV 10-parter slated for 2017. The story: A mysterious saga following four families in a small German town. Their idyllic lives are torn apart when two children mysteriously disappear and the families' dark secrets begin to surface. The creators have announced a supernatural twist.
Speaking of hacking (the theme of our last GOETHE FILMS series) as well as new delivery platforms:
German star comedian-director Matthias Schweighöfer is creating “You Are Wanted“ for Amazon Prime download in 2017 (they are starting shooting as we speak). The 6-part comedy-thriller revolves around the project manager of a Berlin conference centre who falls prey to a mysterious and seemingly random hacker attack that threatens his work as well as private life. As so often, Matthias Schweighöfer also stars.
Variety recently asked ”Is German TV Ready to Go Global?”, quoting new Amazon and Netflix projects and attesting “a growing creative confidence” in the centre of Europe. The
Bavarian Film Centre just announced the first (free) Writers Room Lab to foster the innovation and quality of German TV offerings by turning writers into storytellers and showrunners in collaborative teams in order to eventually arrive at long-running hits à la “House of Cards“ or “Homeland“ or “Downton Abbey.“
The seeds are there, from the surprise UK and US hit, the spy drama “Deutschland '83”, to a number of current series seemingly looking at any post-war year from "Ku’damm 56" to "Weissensee" and the 80s. Tom Tykwer’s ARD-Sky collaboration, the 1920s-set “Babylon Berlin”, out very soon, I have repeatedly mentioned here.
Looking ahead to what’s coming out soonish, in many cases by film auteurs, let’s start with the man who has delivered solid, successful TV series for decades, often based on real crime:
Dominik Graf (BELOVED SISTERS) –remember we showed you his
acclaimed Russian-mafia-in-Berlin mini-series “In the Face of Crime” with Ronald Zehrfeld-- is working on “Blender“, a 7-part crime story around the (real recent) Bavarian cocaine scandal, revolving around the shocking and lurid double life of the corrupt head of the drug squad.
Another big-name film director, Oliver Hirschbiegel –at Berlinale 2015 with award-winning WWII resistance drama 13 MINUTES and memorable for DOWNFALL— investigates the moment just before "Deutschland '83“ with “Berlin – Der geteilte Himmel“ (Berlin – Divided Sky), on your TV screens at the end of the year. Summer 1974: Chancellor Willy Brandt resigns amid a spy scandal, Nixon has been hit hard by Watergate, and Germany goes soccer-crazy over the World Cup. Nowhere can the Cold War be felt more intensely than in the divided Berlin, when young East Berlin "Romeo agent“ Lars Weber (Tom Schilling of OH BOY and WHO AM I) is inserted into West Berlin to seduce Lauren Faber (Sofia Helin of THE BRIDGE) to get British intelligence. Also starring Ben Becker (THE HARMONIST) as a Stasi handler.
Money and economics are still en vogue, as Cannes’ MONEY MONSTER just proved, and here’s another one, aptly named: Gutsy director
Christian Schwochow (WEST), fresh of his collaborative success with NSU, a 3-part TV series about a recent German neo-Nazi scandal, starts shooting “Bad Banks” this fall. At the centre of the story is a young female investment banker who finds herself caught in an intrigue between two competing mega banks in Frankfurt and Luxembourg.
Matthias Glasner (THE FREE WILL) is finishing shooting the two-parter "Landgericht“ (District Court), a historical drama. The interesting link to the previous project: This show is written by Heide Schwochow, Christian Schwochow’s mother and often collaborator, based on Ursula Krechel’s novel oft he same name. It
stars Ronald Zehrfeld (PHOENIX, BARBARA) and Johanna Wokalek (THE BAADER MEINHOF COMPLEX). Nazi persecution breaks up the Kornitzer family in 1938: The parents send their two young children to safety but loneliness in England in the Kindertransport. Jewish judge Richard Kornitzer emigrates to Cuba, his gentile wife Claire not allowed to join him. After the war, the family tries to reunite. Richard returns to Germany and to Claire, and they find their son and daughter. But the wounds of separation run deep, parents and children do not reconnect. Richard’s answer is to bury himself in his work at court to Wiedergutmachung his family’s suffering.
So watch out and watch. To quote Variety again: “Germany is Europe's biggest television market and its largest producer of TV series … new German drama is a radical break from the past, with younger, sexy protagonists; smarter, more complex characters; and a slicker production style adapted from U.S. shows.” Let’s hope that they will find the sweet spot between big brother's shining examples and strong European topics and content.
by
Jutta Brendemühl
