Austrian actor most recently starred in Berlinale title ‘Measures Of Men’
Austrian actor Peter Simonischek, the star of acclaimed film Toni Erdmann, has died aged 76.
Simonischek was well known as a theatre, TV and film actor in the German-speaking world before making his international breakthrough playing alongside Sandra Hüller in Maren Ade’s father-daughter comedy Toni Erdmann which premiered at Cannes in 2016.
Simonischek played an ageing, cranky music teacher with a penchant for pranks who wants to win the love of his daughter.
The Cannes Competition title topped Screen’s Jury Grid at the festival and went on to be...
Austrian actor Peter Simonischek, the star of acclaimed film Toni Erdmann, has died aged 76.
Simonischek was well known as a theatre, TV and film actor in the German-speaking world before making his international breakthrough playing alongside Sandra Hüller in Maren Ade’s father-daughter comedy Toni Erdmann which premiered at Cannes in 2016.
Simonischek played an ageing, cranky music teacher with a penchant for pranks who wants to win the love of his daughter.
The Cannes Competition title topped Screen’s Jury Grid at the festival and went on to be...
- 5/30/2023
- by Tim Dams
- ScreenDaily
Picture Tree Intl. has picked up global sales rights to “Gina” (working title), by Ulrike Kofler, which follows her Netflix debut “What We Wanted.”
“Gina” tells the story of a 9-year-old girl longing for a home and family while having to take care of her younger siblings and mother, who is too overwhelmed to take care of herself, let alone her children.
The film, produced by Film Ag, is the second feature by Kofler, who is a long-time editor for Austrian director Marie Kreutzer. Kofler’s editing work includes “Corsage,” which won best film at the London Film Festival and three nominations for the European Film Awards in 2022, “The Ground Beneath My Feet”, and Josef Hader’s “Wild Mouse”.
Kolfer’s directorial debut “What We Wanted,” starring Elyas M’Barek and Lavinia Wilson, was sold by Pti exclusively to Netflix, and was Austria’s official entry for the Academy Awards in...
“Gina” tells the story of a 9-year-old girl longing for a home and family while having to take care of her younger siblings and mother, who is too overwhelmed to take care of herself, let alone her children.
The film, produced by Film Ag, is the second feature by Kofler, who is a long-time editor for Austrian director Marie Kreutzer. Kofler’s editing work includes “Corsage,” which won best film at the London Film Festival and three nominations for the European Film Awards in 2022, “The Ground Beneath My Feet”, and Josef Hader’s “Wild Mouse”.
Kolfer’s directorial debut “What We Wanted,” starring Elyas M’Barek and Lavinia Wilson, was sold by Pti exclusively to Netflix, and was Austria’s official entry for the Academy Awards in...
- 5/10/2023
- by Leo Barraclough
- Variety Film + TV
Picture Tree Intl. has come on board to handle the international sales of black comedy “Shooting Blanks,” written and directed by Žiga Virc. The Slovenian film looks at what happens when a family goes to war with itself.
The film is in post-production. Pti will present a first private market screening at the Marché du Film in Cannes.
Vida’s father France worships his father, a hero of the partisan resistance. When a German supermarket chain decides to build a new store in his hometown, demolishing a statue of his father in the process, France declares war on this new “enemy.”
Vida could not care less about the past – she is trying to get pregnant, and it is not going well. While she and her husband Toni wait for news from the fertility clinic, France leads local volunteers dressed up as partisans and Nazis into maneuvers against the supermarket.
But...
The film is in post-production. Pti will present a first private market screening at the Marché du Film in Cannes.
Vida’s father France worships his father, a hero of the partisan resistance. When a German supermarket chain decides to build a new store in his hometown, demolishing a statue of his father in the process, France declares war on this new “enemy.”
Vida could not care less about the past – she is trying to get pregnant, and it is not going well. While she and her husband Toni wait for news from the fertility clinic, France leads local volunteers dressed up as partisans and Nazis into maneuvers against the supermarket.
But...
- 5/2/2023
- by Leo Barraclough
- Variety Film + TV
A collective of Afro-German filmmakers and industry professionals have published an open letter raising concerns about what they have described as the selection of “anti-Black” films at the recent Berlin Film Festival.
The group, represented under the title Schwarze Filmschaffende, which loosely translates to Black Filmmakers, identifies three Berlinale titles — Measures of Men, Seneca, and Helt Super! — as projects that depict, amplify, or peddle anti-Black sentiments.
The letter is addressed to the German Minister for Culture and Media, the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and Media, Berlinale artistic directors Mariëtte Rissenbeek and Carlo Chatrian, and the German Film Academy.
Opening the letter, the group note that they not only aim to “denounce the existence and handling of these offensive, racist films” but also want to challenge the “systemic errors and the structural anti-Black racism embedded in the German film ecosystem.”
“As Black Europeans, we are therefore deeply concerned and affected by the selection,...
The group, represented under the title Schwarze Filmschaffende, which loosely translates to Black Filmmakers, identifies three Berlinale titles — Measures of Men, Seneca, and Helt Super! — as projects that depict, amplify, or peddle anti-Black sentiments.
The letter is addressed to the German Minister for Culture and Media, the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and Media, Berlinale artistic directors Mariëtte Rissenbeek and Carlo Chatrian, and the German Film Academy.
Opening the letter, the group note that they not only aim to “denounce the existence and handling of these offensive, racist films” but also want to challenge the “systemic errors and the structural anti-Black racism embedded in the German film ecosystem.”
“As Black Europeans, we are therefore deeply concerned and affected by the selection,...
- 4/26/2023
- by Zac Ntim
- Deadline Film + TV
Hannah Herzsprung reprises her role as piano wunderkind from 2006 film.
Berlin-based Picture Tree International (Pti) has boarded international sales for German director Chris Kraus’ 15 Years, a sequel to the writer and director’s 2006 feature Four Minutes.
15 Years sees Hannah Herzsprung, who went on to star in The Reader and Who Am I, reprising her lead role as the piano wunderkind Jenny von Loeben. It also stars Albrecht Schuch, best known for All Quiet on the Western Front, System Crasher.
Four Minutes launched the acting career of Herzsprung in 2006 and won the best film prize at the Shanghai International Film Festival,...
Berlin-based Picture Tree International (Pti) has boarded international sales for German director Chris Kraus’ 15 Years, a sequel to the writer and director’s 2006 feature Four Minutes.
15 Years sees Hannah Herzsprung, who went on to star in The Reader and Who Am I, reprising her lead role as the piano wunderkind Jenny von Loeben. It also stars Albrecht Schuch, best known for All Quiet on the Western Front, System Crasher.
Four Minutes launched the acting career of Herzsprung in 2006 and won the best film prize at the Shanghai International Film Festival,...
- 4/24/2023
- by Tim Dams
- ScreenDaily
Picture Tree Intl. has picked up international sales duties on “Manta Manta: Legacy,” directed by and starring Til Schweiger. The action comedy is a sequel to the first “Manta, Manta” feature film from 1991, with a market premiere for both movies planned at the Cannes Film Market.
Released by Constantin Film Verleih on March 30, “Manta Manta: Legacy” has reached over 800,000 admissions and was the number one movie in Germany in its opening week.
Produced by Bernd Eichinger, Peter Zenk and Martin Moszkowicz, and directed by Wolfgang Büld, the first movie launched the acting career of Schweiger in a newly reunified Germany. Generating more than 1.2 million theatrical admissions, the film went on to be the most successful film on German commercial television.
“Manta Manta: Legacy” reunites the leading cast of the 1991 original: Schweiger, Tina Ruland (“Ants in the Pants”) and Michael Kessler. The ensemble cast also includes Tim Oliver Schultz, Luna Schweiger,...
Released by Constantin Film Verleih on March 30, “Manta Manta: Legacy” has reached over 800,000 admissions and was the number one movie in Germany in its opening week.
Produced by Bernd Eichinger, Peter Zenk and Martin Moszkowicz, and directed by Wolfgang Büld, the first movie launched the acting career of Schweiger in a newly reunified Germany. Generating more than 1.2 million theatrical admissions, the film went on to be the most successful film on German commercial television.
“Manta Manta: Legacy” reunites the leading cast of the 1991 original: Schweiger, Tina Ruland (“Ants in the Pants”) and Michael Kessler. The ensemble cast also includes Tim Oliver Schultz, Luna Schweiger,...
- 4/17/2023
- by Leo Barraclough
- Variety Film + TV
Director Lars Kraume knows a bit about the hidden corners of German history. His award-winning 2015 drama The People Vs. Fritz Bauer looked at the role played by the eponymous German Jewish state Attorney General in tracking down and bringing Nazi criminal Adolf Eichmann to justice. And his 2018 The Silent Revolution followed the true story of a group of grade 12 pupils in 1956 East Germany who defy the authority of their teachers and state authorities by staging a silent protest in solidarity with the victims of the 1956 Hungarian uprising.
But until he visited Africa himself in the early 1990s, Kraume had never heard of the darkest chapters in German history: the massacre, between 1904 and 1908, of tens of thousands of Herero and Nama people by officials and soldiers of the German colonial empire in what is now Namibia. The killings of the Herero (now often known as the Ovaherero) and Nama is widely...
But until he visited Africa himself in the early 1990s, Kraume had never heard of the darkest chapters in German history: the massacre, between 1904 and 1908, of tens of thousands of Herero and Nama people by officials and soldiers of the German colonial empire in what is now Namibia. The killings of the Herero (now often known as the Ovaherero) and Nama is widely...
- 3/24/2023
- by Scott Roxborough
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
German cinema looks set for a major boom this year with a strong lineup of diverse works that span historical dramas, coming-of-age tales, high-octane nostalgia, animation and sci-fi fun.
The Berlin Film Festival is bowing a muscular selection of local titles, among them “Afire,” by Berlinale mainstay Christian Petzold (“Undine”), screening in competition. The films centers on a group of young people staying at a holiday house near the Baltic Sea during a hot, dry summer, exploring volatile emotions that start to sizzle when a wildfire spreads through the surrounding forest.
Likewise vying for the Golden Bear is Margarethe von Trotta’s biopic “Ingeborg Bachmann: Journey Into the Desert,” starring Vicky Krieps (“Corsage”) as the radical Austrian author. The film examines her relationship with Swiss writer Max Frisch and her 1964 journey of self-discovery through the Egyptian desert.
“Someday We’ll Tell Each Other Everything,” by Emily Atef (“More Than Ever”) and...
The Berlin Film Festival is bowing a muscular selection of local titles, among them “Afire,” by Berlinale mainstay Christian Petzold (“Undine”), screening in competition. The films centers on a group of young people staying at a holiday house near the Baltic Sea during a hot, dry summer, exploring volatile emotions that start to sizzle when a wildfire spreads through the surrounding forest.
Likewise vying for the Golden Bear is Margarethe von Trotta’s biopic “Ingeborg Bachmann: Journey Into the Desert,” starring Vicky Krieps (“Corsage”) as the radical Austrian author. The film examines her relationship with Swiss writer Max Frisch and her 1964 journey of self-discovery through the Egyptian desert.
“Someday We’ll Tell Each Other Everything,” by Emily Atef (“More Than Ever”) and...
- 2/19/2023
- by Ed Meza
- Variety Film + TV
Lars Kraume, who explores Germany’s 19th-century, bloody colonization of Southwest Africa (present-day Namibia) in his latest work, “Measures of Men,” has lined up his next project, a feature film inspired by a California prison program that brings together young inmates with aging prisoners suffering from dementia.
Developed at the California Men’s Colony State Prison in San Luis Obispo, the Gold Coat program selects inmates, known as Gold Coats, to assist severely cognitively impaired inmates.
Kraume’s story is set in a Berlin prison with a multi-ethnic population, where a young man signs up for the program in an effort to get early parole only to realize that he has for the first time in his life started to love and care for someone.
“It’s a beautiful story,” said Kraume, but adds that original screenplays are becoming increasingly difficult to get financed.
Kraume had similar challenges with “Measures of Men,...
Developed at the California Men’s Colony State Prison in San Luis Obispo, the Gold Coat program selects inmates, known as Gold Coats, to assist severely cognitively impaired inmates.
Kraume’s story is set in a Berlin prison with a multi-ethnic population, where a young man signs up for the program in an effort to get early parole only to realize that he has for the first time in his life started to love and care for someone.
“It’s a beautiful story,” said Kraume, but adds that original screenplays are becoming increasingly difficult to get financed.
Kraume had similar challenges with “Measures of Men,...
- 2/18/2023
- by Ed Meza
- Variety Film + TV
Festival to also honour French cinematographer Caroline Champetier with honorary Berlinale Camera.
The Berlinale has added the world premiere of documentary Love To Love You, Donna Summer and a tribute to a century of Disney animation to its upcoming 73rd edition.
The additions complete the lineup for the Berlinale Special sidebar at the festival, set to run February 16-26.
Love To Love You, Donna Summer is co-directed by Roger Ross Williams, Oscar nominated in 2016 for Life, Animated, and US actress Brooklyn Sudano, who is the daughter of Summer and makes her directorial debut with the film.
The documentary will explore...
The Berlinale has added the world premiere of documentary Love To Love You, Donna Summer and a tribute to a century of Disney animation to its upcoming 73rd edition.
The additions complete the lineup for the Berlinale Special sidebar at the festival, set to run February 16-26.
Love To Love You, Donna Summer is co-directed by Roger Ross Williams, Oscar nominated in 2016 for Life, Animated, and US actress Brooklyn Sudano, who is the daughter of Summer and makes her directorial debut with the film.
The documentary will explore...
- 1/30/2023
- by Michael Rosser
- ScreenDaily
2023 truly begins taking shape with next month’s Berlinale, which will run from February 16 to February 26 and feature more than a few of our most-anticipated films this year. Among them are Christian Petzold’s Afire (Roter Himmel), starring new muse Paula Beer; Hong Sangsoo’s In Water, which will appear in the Encounters section; and Philippe Garrel’s The Plough, once known as La lune crevée starring his three children Louis, Esther, and Lena, and (judging from the still) his first color feature since 2011’s A Burning Hot Summer. Meanwhile: Angela Schanelec will return with Music, and––six years after the wonderful Person to Person––it’s nice spotting a new feature from Dustin Guy Defa, The Adults.
Find the lineup below and head back next month for our coverage of the festival headed by Kristen Stewart’s jury.
Competition
20,000 Species of Bees (Estibaliz Urresola Solaguren)
The Shadowless Tower (Zhang...
Find the lineup below and head back next month for our coverage of the festival headed by Kristen Stewart’s jury.
Competition
20,000 Species of Bees (Estibaliz Urresola Solaguren)
The Shadowless Tower (Zhang...
- 1/23/2023
- by Leonard Pearce
- The Film Stage
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