Just before Covid stopped the world and the film industry in its tracks, a slew of new screen projects based in Germany's capital had been announced or just started shooting. With most of them getting back to business now, we can look forward to more Berlin on screen over the next seasons. Regional film funding body Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg said that there were an estimated 5,700 days of shooting in the region last year.
My most anticipated Berlin-shot project is Philipp Stölzl's adaptation of Stefan Zweig's famous chess story “The Royal Game” with Oliver Masucci in the lead, who we are all waiting to see as Rainer Werner Fassbinder in Oskar Roehler's Cannes 2020 film "Enfant Terrible" (which somehow didn't make #TIFF20).
On screen with him: Albrecht Schuch, who just had double success at the German Film Awards as Best Leading Actor in "System Crasher" and Best Supporting Actor in "Berlin Alexanderplatz" (also somehow not at #TIFF20), Birgit Minichmayr ("The White Ribbon"), Rolf Lassgard ("Downsizing"), and Samuel Finzi, who starred alongside Masucci in Oskar Roehler's dark and dirty "Outmastered".
Daniel Brühl’s black comedy “Next Door”, his directing debut which he also stars in, is in post-production. Actresses Jasmin Tabatabai, Nicolette Krebitz, and Katja Riemann are back with a sequel to the their 2001 hit "Bandits", reuniting with director Katja von Garnier for the dance movie “Fly.”
Filming of the Amazon series “We Children from Bahnhof Zoo”, directed by Philipp Kadelbach ("Perfume"), continues after it was highlighted at the Berlinale. We will see how far it will depart from Uli Edel's classic 1981 drug drama "Christiane F." but writer Annette Hess ("Ku’damm"; "Weissensee") stands for solid and attractive scripts. The young cast includes Jana McKinnon ("Beautiful Girl", "To the Night"), Michelangelo Fortuzzi ("Berlin, I Love You"), and Lena Urzendowsky ("How To Sell Drugs Online (Fast)", "Dark").
Also shooting in Berlin and environs are the Sky horror series “Hausen” directed by Thomas Stuber ("In the Aisles") with a star cast of Charly Hübner ("Three Days in Quiberon"), Alexander Scheer ("Gundermann"), Tristan Göbel ("Tschick", "West"), and Lilith Stangenberg ("Orphea", "I Was at Home, But", "Wild").
Grimme Award winning director Aelrun Goette delves into the GDR fashion scene just before the fall of the Wall (based on her own life) with “In einem Land, das es nicht mehr gibt” (In a Country That No Longer Exists), promising "socialism and elegance, freedom and betrayal."
The Medienboard awarded almost 35 million euros in funding last year. Around 27 million euros of this went into film funding, according to the annual balance sheet. On their roster: Jewish war drama “Last Song for Stella” by Kilian Riedhof with Paula Beer in the lead role plus Tobias Moretti and Katja Riemann; family tragedy “Kurt” by Til Schweiger based on Sarah Kuttner’s novel, and the development of a new series called “Fck My Heritage” by Christian Schwochow ("German Lesson").
sources: "Diese Filme und Serien werden in Berlin gedreht" © dpa 2020 with permission; and others
image: Oliver Masucci in Schachnovelle (© StudioCanal/Julia Terjung)
