
Before
Christmas, Berlin filmmaker Konstantin Bock told us about his pre-Berlinale travel plans in our series "The Making of" that
follows two German-Canadian film projects. Over the past months, Bock has made some important headway with the (true) story --featuring expensive Canadian NHL players-- of 1980s German hockey club owner Heinz Weifenbach who dreamt of making it big … with the help of a dictator.
Konstantin, you’re deep in research and finding a voice for writing the film. How is that going?
Screenwriter Stefanie Schmitz and I received a writing grant from the German Film Board (FFA) and immediately decided to pack our bags and move to Iserlohn, the small town in the Sauerland area of Germany where our story takes place. Previously, I had spent an entire evening on the phone with several people from Iserlohn and I realized that this is not something we can do remotely -- we really needed to be there, research and explore locally, we needed to become part of the social fabric there. Where did Heinz Weifenbach live? Who did he interact with? And who didn't want to interact with him?
Following from that insight we found that Heinz' environment needed to play a bigger part in the film than we had originally envisioned: small-town hustlers, local political quarrels and the determined dream of making it big in the German ice hockey league against all odds -- that's the foundation of our story, a scenario that quickly disintegrates when a Libyan terrorist, who seems to be their only solution against bankruptcy, enters the stage.
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