Who's staying with the calves? Female films in the making

20-year-old Bex (Svenja Jung from “Electric Girl”) is working her way through a rehabilitation program in prison, not an easy task for the provocative loner. Her coach Ava (Jasmin Tabatabai from “The Baader Meinhof Gang”) tries to win over Bex and the other girls by getting them ready for a dance battle. As Bex opens up, she warms up to Jay – played by actual hip hop world champion Ben Wichert, who interestingly works in Wuppertal, the small German town otherwise only known as the home of late dance pioneer Pina Bausch. While the girls are starting to work together, Bex’ traumatic past brutally catches up with her. The cast of this dance film a la “Step Up“ or “Honey“ also includes Berlin urban dance group Flying Steps. I for one can’t wait for this next-gen follow-up to Garnier’s multi-award-winning female-centric sing-your-way-out-of-trouble gangster ballad “Bandits”, which 23 years ago featured Tabataba, Katja Riemann and a very young Nicolette Krebitz (“Wild”).

Von Garnier is making another “part 2” with “The Physician 2”, again adapting Noah Gordon’s popular storylines but not his exact book trilogy. The first (very male) film, created in 2013 by Philipp Stölzl with Tom Payne, Stellan Skarsgård, Ben Kingsley, Elyas M'Barek and Fahri Yardim took us back to 11th century Persia, where a surgeon's apprentice disguises himself as a Jew to study at a school that does not admit Christians. Now, Rob and friends are on their way back to England, where he wants to use his knowledge. But he gets tangled up in a conspiracy at the royal court. "The Walking Dead" star Tom Payne returns for the historical drama, the rest of the cast are tba.

Move over Fatih Akin, with 2 new projects from writer Katja Eichinger, both set in Hamburg’s notoriously colourful and seedy underworld, as industry magazine Variety reports. The series “Santa Fu”, inspired by a true story, looks at life in Hamburg’s notorious Fuhlsbüttel prison – home to the only prison soccer team in Germany that plays in a regional league (home games only, of course). “King of Snow,” what Eichinger announces as a “white trash comedy”, jogging pants, cowboy boots, gold chains, mullet hairdos and all, is the real story of former drug kingpin Ronald “Blacky” Miehling, who amassed unimaginable wealth in the early 1990s as Hamburg’s premiere coke dealer before losing it all and, coincidently, ending up in ‘Santa Fu’ prison.

Happier and very du jour fare comes in the form of Helena Hufnagel’s sophomore feature “Generation Beziehungsunfähig” – the German term for millennials unable to form relationships. Single Michael has successfully been hiding behind his demonstrative inability to relate, avoiding any kind of commitment. But when he meets “Ghost” aka Lotte, he finds himself on the other side of dating hell. While he thinks he’s smoothly charming her, Lotte has already lost interest – and ghosts him (welcome to 2019). Frederick Lau (“Victoria”, “The Captain”) and Luise Heyer (“The Most Beautiful Couple”, “Dark” and the upcoming “Nahschuss” mentioned above) star in this romantic comedy based on Michael Nast’s easy-on-the-brain bestseller.

Sabrina Sarabi is developing “Niemand ist bei den Kälbern” (“Nobody’s with the Calves” -- love that title, tells you all you need to know about expectations levelled at women) based on the novel by Alina Herbing. Sarabi’s first feature, last year’s “Prelude” with Louis Hofmann (“Dark”, “Land of Mine”, “Red Sparrow”) & “Babylon Berlin” lead Liv Lisa Fries, nabbed the director a Torino Film Festival Best Feature Film nomination. Her magic touch seems to be engaging a young A-list cast – this time round Saskia Rosendahl (“Never Look Away”, “Lore”) and David Kross (“The Reader”). In Schattin, a small community in north-eastern Germany, 24-year-old Christin lives on her boyfriend Jan’s farm. But Christin hates the tedious countryside and wants to leave. But where to?

Emily Atef –of successful recent Romy Schneider drama “3 Days in Quiberon”-- is not a newcomer but her name still needs repeating before she is on everyone’s radar internationally. Her next project “Irgendwann werden wir uns alles erzählen” (“Some Day We Will Tell Each Other Everything”) is based on Daniela Krien’s novel and begins just like Sarabi’s film: Summer 1990 in a small village in East Germany. 17-year old Maria lives with her boyfriend Johannes on his parents’ farm. One day she meets the 40-year-old neighbour Henner and a tragic love story takes its course.

Feo Aladag (“When We Leave”) is preparing for “The Inconvenient Truth”, a working title I assume will have to be changed unless you want to be sued by Al Gore. Based on the true story of Polish dissident Witold Pilecki, the feature follows Pilecki, a soldier with the Polish Army in World War II, as he volunteers for a Polish resistance operation that involves infiltrating, and later escaping from, the Auschwitz concentration camp. In 1941, he writes the first comprehensive intelligence report on Auschwitz and the Holocaust, only to see it ignored by the Allied powers. After the war, he continues to battle authoritarianism, supporting the London-based Polish government-in-exile against Warsaw's Soviet-backed communist regime. Arrested by the secret police, he is executed after a show trial in 1948.

More female filmmakers to look out for in 2021 and beyond with new projects at the treatment or development stages are Maggie Peren, Miriam Bliese, Anke Stellin, Mariko Minoguchi, Ursula Gruber, Catharina Junk and others.

by @JuttaBrendemuhl