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Other People’s Money plays in the Panorama section at the Berlin Film Festival. The series premiere will be a full circle moment for Jan Schomburg – his first film, Above Us Only Sky, played in the same Berlinale sidebar in 2011.

The German writer and director is speaking to Deadline from his Berlin Film Festival base. The warehouse-like space will serve as the venue for the after party following the premiere of the series that he wrote, and upon which he was showrunner.

Other People’s Money takes in a tax fraud that centered on so-called cum-ex trades, and the work of those seeking to expose the wrongdoing. The shorthand explanation often used for those not familiar with the complex financial machinations is it’s “a bit like parents claiming a child benefit for two children when there is only one child in the family.”

The series was inspired by the CumEx files,...

Exclusive: International buyers have gone big on Bookish. The quirky series was created by and stars Mark Gatiss. It been sold into a handful of territories ahead of its launch on UKTV in the UK and PBS in the U.S.

Beta Film is across distribution. It has booked presales with BBC First for Benelux, AMC Networks for Latin America, Trt in Turkey and Hrt in Croatia. Further deals are in the works.

Gatiss plays eccentric but whip-smart bookshop owner Gabriel Book in Bookish, which is produced by Eagle Eye and Happy Duck Films. A former spy, Book now helps the police solve their knottiest murder cases. He is married to Trottie, who owns the wallpaper shop next door. But is a relationship of convenience given Book is a gay man and the drama is set in late 1940s London, a time when homosexuality was illegal.

The cast includes Bridgerton star Polly Walker,...

The first trailer for drama series “Other People’s Money,” which has its world premiere at the Berlin Film Festival, debuts here. Variety spoke to its producers and the creator-showrunner about how they crafted the show, which is inspired by the real story of the biggest tax fraud in European history. Beta Film is handling worldwide sales on the series.

The first four episodes of “Other People’s Money” will world premiere in Berlin at 3.30 p.m. on Feb. 20 at the prestigious Zoo Palast movie theater, followed by a Q&a with cast and crew.

The project started when Michael Polle at X Filme Creative Pool, the company behind “Babylon Berlin,” joined forces with True Content Entertainment’s Ole Søndberg, whose credits include “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.” Their objective was to tell the true story of how a criminal network of mega-rich investors, bankers and lawyers stole 146 billion euros ($150 billion) from European taxpayers.

Beta Film has taken world sales rights to drama series “Other People’s Money,” which will make its world premiere next month in the Berlinale’s Panorama section.

The series centers on Europe’s biggest tax fraud ever. It tells the story of how a criminal network of megarich investors, bankers and lawyers stole €146 billion from European taxpayers.

The showrunner and creator is Jan Schomburg. The producers are Michael Polle at X Filme Creative Pool (“Babylon Berlin”), Ole Søndberg (“Millennium” trilogy) at True Content Entertainment, and Epo-Film. The show is backed by broadcasters Zdf, Dr and New8, which is a group of public broadcasters from northern and western Europe.

“Other People’s Money” is the latest addition to Beta’s Berlinale lineup, headed by the Berlinale’s opening film “The Light” by Tom Tykwer, starring Lars Eidinger and the Panorama world premiere “Cicadas” by Ina Weisse (“The Audition”), starring Nina Hoss.

“Other People’s Money...

The Berlin Film Festival’s 2025 Panorama section will launch with Welcome Home Baby, a psychological horror film from Austrian director Andreas Prochaska, leading a lineup of 34 films from 28 countries. The section head Michael Stütz unveiled the full program that addresses societal fractures, health systems, and democratic instability on Thursday.

Prochaska’s film reimagines the homeland horror genre as a response to 1950s German-language cinema. The selection continues its genre focus with the Norwegian body horror The Ugly Stepsister, Turkish political thriller Confidante, and Taiwanese gangster narrative Silent Sparks.

German productions hold a significant presence this year with six films. Mehmet Akif Büyükatalay presents the conspiracy thriller Hysteria, while five female directors bring new works. Debut features come from Nele Mueller-Stöfen with Delicious and Sarah Miro Fischer with The Good Sister. Ina Weisse reunites with Nina Hoss for Cicadas.

The documentary selections include Martina Priessner’s The Moelln Letters, examining the 1993 racist arson attacks in Mölln,...

For 22 nail-biting, torturous hours in a crammed studio in Munich during the 1972 Olympics, an ABC Sports broadcast crew suddenly found itself in the middle of the action when violence broke out in the Olympic Village and Israeli athletes were taken hostage. In writer-director Tim Fehlbaum’s gripping take on that historical day, September 5 follows young and ambitious producer Geoff Mason (Robert Altman recipient John Magaro) and legendary TV executive Roone Arledge (Spirit Award nominee Peter Sarsgaard), who led a valiant effort to report the deadly event to the world, inadvertently broadcasting a terrorist attack live on the air for the first time in history.

We recently spoke to veteran picture editor Hansjörg Weißbrich, who is singularly qualified for this project thanks to a combination of his German language skills and his familiarity with analog editing equipment prevalent in the film.

Before we start, I just want to say that you...

The founders are producers Roshanak “Rosh” Khodabakhsh and Jorgo Narje.

Netflix and Amazon Studios are among the backers of a new German programme entitled NewMotion to promote greater diversity in the nation’s film industry. It was officially launched at the Explorer Conference at Filmfest Hamburg this month.

The programme is the brainchild of producers Roshanak “Rosh” Khodabakhsh (Port au Prince Film und Kultur Produktion) and Jorgo Narjes (X Filme Creative Pool) in cooperation with the Producers Alliance Initiative for Qualification (Paiq).

“A central element of this initiative is a shadowing programme giving on-the-job training where you follow one person...

The German-based distribution and production company Port au Prince Film And Kultur Produktion has hired Roshanak “Rosh” Khodabakhsh as a producer and executive board member.

Khodabakhsh will start the role on March 1. One of her tasks will be to further expand and lead the company’s Berlin branch.

Khodabakhsh mostly recently spent three years at the German distributor-producer Dcm, where she was a producer. Prior to Dcm, Khodabakhsh spent six years as a freelance production coordinator and production manager on projects such as Netflix’s Sense8, UFA’s Charité, and the X Filme series Babylon Berlin. She has also worked with directors such as Tom Tykwer, Sönke Wortmann, Fatih Akin (The Golden Glove), Jan Schomburg (Divine), and Ilya Khrzhanovsky (Dau).

Port Au Prince Producer and Managing Director Jan Krüger previously collaborated with Khodabakhsh in 2009 on Ali Samadi-Ahadi’s Grimme Award-winning doc The Green Wave.

“I would like to thank Marc Schmidheiny,...

The 16 writers will participate in pre-writing workshops to shape drama series

French screenwriter Thomas Bidegain, who co-wrote Rust And Bone and The Cowboys is one of the 16 writers taking part in a series of workshops hosted by The Creatives, the Fremantle-backed alliance of 10 international production companies.

The Creative Connection will aim to strengthen drama series writing in Europe and is co-funded by The Creatives and the European Commission.

The writers, who span 14 countries, will participate in three five-day workshops across Europe and collaborate with the 10 producers that form The Creatives, including the Netherlands’ Lemming Film, UK’s Good Chaos,...

The Creatives, an alliance of independent production companies from across Europe and beyond, has picked 16 screenwriters to participate in a session of brainstorming workshops aimed at developing ideas and pitches for new films and high-end drama TV series.

The group, announced Monday, includes veteran writers Thomas Bidegain, co-writer of The Bélier Family, the 2014 French feature adapted into English as 2021 Best Picture Oscar winner Coda, as well as several collaborations with French director Jacques Audiard, including A Prophet (2009), Rust and Bone (2012) and The Sisters Brothers (2018); Israeli writer Sigal Avin, creator of Apple TV+ Losing Alice; and Denmark’s Julie Budtz Sørensen, a writer on Netflix series The Rain and Chosen.

The 16 writers, joined by 10 producers from The Creatives, will take part in three, five-day workshops across Europe this year. The first will kick off in France’s Île-de-France region this week. The concept of the workshops will see the writers and...

As 2021 draws to a close, the film aficionados who make up Deadline’s International Critics Line crew have each chosen their top three titles of the year to hail from abroad. Some were world premieres at Sundance, Berlin, Cannes, Venice or Toronto, though not all are on the Oscar International Feature shortlist, nor are they each in a foreign language It’s also interesting to see some overlap, with a trio of films showing up more than once.

Here are Deadline critics’ top international films of 2021 (in alphabetical order by title):

Drive My Car

Since its premiere in Cannes, where it won writer-director Ryusuke Hamaguchi the screenwriting prize, to its recent honors as Best Film from critics groups in New York, Los Angeles, Boston and more, the Japanese-shortlisted entry for the Best International Film Oscar has become perhaps the one to beat at the Academy Awards. With a three-hour running time,...

Back in 1964, CBS premiered the sci-fi rom com “My Living Doll” in which a bachelor psychiatrist (Bob Cummings) is asked to take care of a beautiful prototype android (Julie Newmar) because her creator doesn’t want the robot to fall in the hands of the Army. The shrink decides to teach his stunning but naïve charge how to be the perfect woman: a pre-women’s lib female does what she is told and never talks back to him. That premise wouldn’t fly these days especially in the wake of the #MeToo era. Even then the series only lasted one season. The tables are turned in the sophisticated, thought-provoking rom-com “I’m Your Man,” Germany’s official entry for Best International Feature at the Oscars.

Directed by Maria Schrader and starring Maren Eggert and Dan Stevens, “I’m Your Man” revolves around a bright young woman, unlucky in love and working at a financially strapped museum,...

I’m Your Man, a sci-fi rom-com from director Maria Schrader, featuring Downton Abbey star Dan Stevens as a German-speaking romance robot, has won the Lola in Gold for best film at the 2021 German Film Prize, Germany’s top film awards.

Schrader, fresh off her Emmy win (for best directing for a limited series in Netflix’s Unorthodox), picked up the best director Lola for I’m Your Man. Schrader and co-screenwriter Jan Schomburg took the best screenplay honor for their I’m Your Man script, an adaptation of a short story by German writer Emma Braslavsky. Maren Eggert, who plays the robot’s no-nonsense human love ...

I’m Your Man, a sci-fi rom-com from director Maria Schrader, featuring Downton Abbey star Dan Stevens as a German-speaking romance robot, has won the Lola in Gold for best film at the 2021 German Film Prize, Germany’s top film awards.

Schrader, fresh off her Emmy win (for best directing for a limited series in Netflix’s Unorthodox), picked up the best director Lola for I’m Your Man. Schrader and co-screenwriter Jan Schomburg took the best screenplay honor for their I’m Your Man script, an adaptation of a short story by German writer Emma Braslavsky. Maren Eggert, who plays the robot’s no-nonsense human love ...

Dan Stevens as Tom and Maren Eggert as Alma, in German director Maria Schrader’s sci-fi I’M Your Man (Ich Bin Dein Mensch). Courtesy of Obscured Pictures and Bleecker Street

Would you fall in love with an android specially designed to please you? Would that be a good thing? That is the premise behind director Maria Schrader’s German sci-fi tale I’M Your Man (Ich Bin Dein Mensch) starring Dan Stevens and Maren Eggert. I’M Your Man starts out like a romantic comedy, but takes a deeper, more thoughtful, and thought-provoking turn in this excellent German language film. Of course, people falling in love with robots has a long literary history, going back to Pygmalion, and human-made men tales go back to the Golem and Frankenstein, was well as being a familiar science fiction theme. But Schrader, whose previous work includes the Netflix series “Unorthodox,” puts a new spin on...

In Dan Stevens’ new film “I’m Your Man,” the British actor speaks perfect German throughout. And to everyone’s surprise, Stevens actually learned German in school.

“Really loved it — it’s been a lifelong love of mine, the German language,” Stevens told TheWrap’s Beatrice Verhoeven in a virtual interview during the Toronto International Film Festival. “I did a movie there about 12 or 13 years ago playing an Englishman who spoke German, so a little bit different to this one.”

He added: “It was nice to dust off the German and use it in this way.”

In “I’m Your Man,” Stevens plays a humanoid robot designed to be the perfect man for Alma (Maren Eggert), who is taking part in the humanoid experiment to obtain research funds for her studies. The entire film, directed by Maria Schrader, is in German. Schrader co-wrote the script with Jan Schomburg, based on a short story by Emma Braslavksy.

Ammonite, Apples, Promising Young Woman, Supernova, The Dig, The Father and The Mauritanian are among the first wave of movies recommended by a European Film Awards committee for nomination at this year’s event.

A record number of movies have been suggested by the committee this year in light of the pandemic disruption. More than 40 films have been revealed today — features and docs — with more set to be revealed in September.

The feature films have been selected by a committee of the Academy Board and a range of European industry professionals. The documentary films have been selected by Efa Board Members Graziella Bildesheim (institutional/Italy) and Ada Solomon (producer/Romania), Katja Gauriloff, Kathrin Kohlstedde (festival programmer/Germany), Veton Nurkollari (artistic director/Kosovo), Orwa Nyrabia, Rada Šešić (festival programmer and filmmaker/Bosnia & Herzegovina/The Netherlands), Rajesh Thind and...

Maren Eggert won Berlin’s Silver Bear for her performance in Maria Schrader’s romantic comedy.

Curzon has acquired UK and Ireland rights to Maria Schrader’s romantic comedy I’m Your Man and Daniel Brühl’s dark comedy Next Door in a brace of deals with Munich-based sales agent Beta Cinema.

Both German features received their world premiere in competition at the Berlin International Film Festival in March, where Maren Eggert won the Berlinale’s first gender-neutral Silver Bear acting prize for her leading performance in I’m Your Man.

Curzon will release I’m Your Man, which also stars Dan Stevens,...

Bleecker Street has acquired U.S. rights to Maria Schrader’s I’m Your Man after the film picked up a Silver Bear for Maren Eggert’s lead performance at the 2021 Berlin International Film Festival.

Eggert stars alongside Dan Stevens in the German-language movie. Story follows Alma (Eggert), a scientist coerced into participating in an extraordinary study in order to obtain research funds for her work. For three weeks, she has to live with a humanoid robot tailored to her character and needs, whose artificial intelligence is designed to be the perfect life partner for her. Enter Tom (Stevens), a machine in human form in a class of its own, created solely to make her happy.

Bleecker will release the film in cinemas later this year. The deal was brokered between Kent Sanderson and Avy Eschenasy of Bleecker Street with UTA and Beta Cinema’s CEO Dirk Schuerhoff on behalf of the filmmakers.

Bleecker Street has acquired the U.S. rights to Maria Schrader’s “I’m Your Man,” which stars Dan Stevens and Maren Eggert.

The film won the Silver Bear at the 2021 Berlinale for Eggert’s leading performance, and will be released in theaters later this year with a VOD release to follow.

“I’m Your Man” follows Alma (Eggert), a scientist who is coerced into participating in an extraordinary study to obtain research funds for her work. For three weeks, she has to live with a humanoid robot, who is designed to be the perfect life partner for her.

“Maria has created such a funny and touching story of love and connection that questions what it means to be human,” Andrew Karpen, CEO of Bleecker Street, said. “Maren and Dan are sure to be this year’s most romantic modern couple.”

Schrader added: “I’m delighted that a great company like Bleecker...

Bleecker Street has acquired U.S. rights to Maria Schrader’s “I’m Your Man,” which won the Berlinale’s Silver Bear for leading performance for Maren Eggert. The film, which also stars Dan Stevens, will be released in theaters later this year with a VOD release to follow.

In the film, Eggert plays Alma, a scientist coerced into participating in an extraordinary study in order to obtain research funds for her work. For three weeks, she has to live with a humanoid robot tailored to her character and needs, whose artificial intelligence is designed to be the perfect life partner for her. Enter Tom (Stevens), a machine in human form in a class of its own, created solely to make her happy.

“Maria has created such a funny and touching story of love and connection that one questions what it means to be human,” said Andrew Karpen, CEO of Bleecker Street.

The German comic romance took the best actor Silver Bear at Berlin.

In what is its first acquisition of foreign- language film, Bleecker Street has secured US rights to Maria Schrader’s I’m Your Man, the German romantic comedy that won Maren Eggert the best actor Silver Bear at last month’s Berlin festival.

Bleecker plans to release the film in cinemas later this year, with a VoD release to follow.

Written by Jan Schomburg and Schrader and inspired by an Emma Braslavsky short story, the film was produced by Lisa Blumenberg and executive produced by Dan Stevens, who also stars,...

Other titles on the Beta EFM slate have also been doing brisk business

Munich-based sales agent Beta Cinema has reported multiple deals on its Berlin EFM slate, including brisk sales on its two Berlinale competition titles, Maria Schrader’s I’m Your Man and Daniel Brühl’s Next Door.

I’m Your Man, whose star Maren Eggert won Berlin’s first gender-neutral Silver Bear acting prize for best leading performance last week, has gone to France (Haut et Court), Italy (Koch Media), Spain, Portugal and Latin America (Sun Distribution), Scandinavia (Edge Entertainment), Switzerland (Filmcoopi), Cis and Baltics (Volgafilm), Poland (Monolith), Hungary (Cirko Film...

You have to wonder when she sleeps.

The tireless Maria Schrader — fresh off an Emmy win as outstanding director of a limited series for Netflix’s Unorthodox and another critically-acclaimed turn in front of the camera as East German spy Lenora Rauch in Amazon’s Deutschland 89 — somehow managed, during a pandemic, to shoot her fourth feature film.

I’m Your Man, which Schrader co-wrote with Jan Schomburg, is a screwball comedy with a sci-fi premise. Alma, a workaholic archeologist with no interest in romance (Maren Eggert) takes part in an experiment. For three weeks she will test drive the latest in ...

You have to wonder when she sleeps.

The tireless Maria Schrader — fresh off an Emmy win as outstanding director of a limited series for Netflix’s Unorthodox and another critically acclaimed turn in front of the camera as East German spy Lenora Rauch in Amazon’s Deutschland 89 — somehow managed, during a pandemic, to shoot her fourth feature film.

I’m Your Man, which Schrader co-wrote with Jan Schomburg, is a screwball comedy with a sci-fi premise. Alma (Maren Eggert), a workaholic archaeologist with no interest in romance, takes part in an experiment. For three weeks she will test-drive the latest in ...

With a strong showing at this year’s Berlin Film Festival that includes the directorial debut of Daniel Brühl and new works by Maria Schrader and Dominik Graf in competition, German films are set to garner much of the spotlight at the accompanying European Film Market.

Brühl, who is set to reprise his role as the vengeful Helmut Zemo in the upcoming Marvel series “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier,” explores the contradictions of present-day Berlin in “Next Door.” The seemingly self-referential story has Brühl playing Daniel, a successful actor living in the city’s Prenzlauer Berg district, who is about to jet off to audition for a role in a superhero movie. His life suddenly changes when he is confronted by a disgruntled neighbor, played by Peter Kurth (“Babylon Berlin”), a victim of gentrification in former East Berlin and one of the many losers of German reunification.

Written by bestselling author Daniel Kehlmann,...

Where Ira Levin’s “The Stepford Wives” ends is where a truly fascinating domestic drama should begin. Have you never wondered if the misogynistic menfolk of Stepford, Conn., having finally realized their collective dream of flawless, submissive android wives with cleavage and housekeeping skills to die for, ever tire of the dull perfection they’ve designed? Life lived without friction and unpredictability isn’t much of a life at all; surely it’s only a matter of time before restless human desire sabotages the idyll. German filmmaker Maria Schrader has, one suspects, given the matter some thought, though her cool, grown-up romantic fantasy “I’m Your Man” twists the scenario’s gender politics and significantly changes the stakes — presenting an independent, idiosyncratic female protagonist with a robot man so perfectly tailored to her needs that she just can’t stand it.

The appealingly peculiar result lands somewhere between “Ex Machina” and...

The concept of human-robot love has provided fertile ground for sci-fi storytelling, from Data in “Star Trek” to the disembodied voice of “Her” all the way through “Ex Machina” and “Wandavision,” because it presents an obvious paradox: No amount of engineering genius, it seems, can design the perfect mate. “I’m Your Man,” the , inverts that formula: A machine may provide the ideal companion, but that very question for perfection is part of the problem.

Actor-turned-director Schrader, who last handled Netflix’s breakout miniseries hit “Unorthodox,” has once again made a movie about one woman learning to come to terms with her greater potential. In that respect, “I’m Your Man” is only sci-fi in the flimsiest sense, and seems less invested in epistemological questions than the way they speak to its protagonist’s soul-searching malaise. Alma (Maren Egert) is an established scientist at Berlin’s Pergamon Museum working on a complex...

The Pygmalion myth gets a gender flip in I’m Your Man, the Berlin Film Festival competition entry from Germany’s Maria Schrader. Maren Eggert stars as Alma, a single anthropologist who agrees to live with a humanoid robot for three weeks as part of a trial testing period. Thomas (Dan Stevens) has been designed as Alma’s ideal partner, using algorithms based on her brain scans, her responses and research involving 17 million people.

Polite, charming and well dressed, Thomas appears human, save for the occasional cock-headed mechanical smile. Then there’s also his habit of spouting detailed statistics, something he learns to curb as Alma crossly puts him straight about her real preferences — or at least, what she thinks they are. “Maybe they know you better than yourself,” chuckles Alma’s colleague, as she complains about Tom’s chat-up lines. When the odd couple begins to cohabit, the robot is...

The German actress/filmmaker discusses her latest feature starring Dan Stevens as a “partnership robot”.

A mix of “humour and bewilderment” drew German filmmaker Maria Schrader to make I’m Your Man, which will play in Competition at the virtual Berlin International Film Festival (March 1-5).

“I was drawn to it by the simplicity of the set-up,” says Schrader, who tackled more serious subject matter last year in Netflix miniseries Unorthodox, which won her an Emmy for directing. “It’s like a boy meets girl thing. But it’s actually girl meets boy and it’s a robot boy.”

The romantic comedy,...

The logline “man meets robot” evokes a litany of famous android romances — “Her,” “Stepford Wives” and “Bladerunner” among them — but, curiously, there are nowhere near enough featuring male robots. The Dan Stevens-fronted “I’m Your Man” (Ich bin dein Mensch) ably rights the balance while posing philosophical questions in a witty, modern rom-com.

The Berlin Film Festival competition entry, directed by Maria Schrader, turns on cynical anthropologist Alma (Maren Eggert) who, in order to raise funds for her research, agrees to a three-week study trial with a humanoid robot named Tom (Dan Stevens), who is designed to fulfil her every need.

The Letterbox Filmproduktion-made film, which is being shopped internationally by Beta Cinema, was shot after the first wave of the pandemic in 2020, from August through September. Schrader — a major acting talent in Germany who’s now familiar to international audiences as Lenora Rauch in the recently ended “Deutschland” series,...

The German company boasts two entries in the main competition of the Berlin International Film Festival, while a handful of titles will be featured at the EFM. World sales agent Beta Cinema is heading to this year’s selection of the Berlin International Film Festival and to the accompanying European Film Market brandishing two Golden Bear contenders, while three more of its titles are featured in Market Screenings and the company will also be negotiating deals for six promising upcoming features at the EFM. In particular, the company is pinning its hopes on I’m Your Man by German writer-director Maria Schrader, winner of the Primetime Emmy Award for Unorthodox, which is part of the main competition of the 71st Berlinale. Scripted by Schrader and Jan Schomburg, and based on a short story by Emma Braslavsky, the tragicomic tale focuses on Alma (Maren Eggert), a scientist working at the...

‘Next Door’ is directed by Daniel Brühl and Dan Stevens stars in ‘In Your Man’.

World sales agent Beta Cinema has swooped on international rights to Daniel Brühl’s directorial debut Next Door and Maria Schrader’s I’m Your Man, which will both premiere in Competition at the Berlin International Film Festival (March 1-5).

The Munich-based outfit will introduce the features to buyers at the European Film Market (EFM), which will run alongside this year’s industry-focused, online-only event.

Next Door marks the directing debut of Brühl, who also stars in the black comedy alongside Peter Kurth and Phantom Thread’s Vicky Krieps.

The romantic comedy, starring Maren Eggert and Dan Stevens, will focus on the relationship between a woman and a humanoid robot. German actress-screenwriter-director Maria Schrader, whose 2020 Netflix miniseries Unorthodox earned her the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Directing for a Limited Series this year, is currently working on her next directorial effort, a television production. The romantic comedy I’m Your Man, scripted by Schrader and Jan Schomburg, and based on a short story by Emma Braslavsky, will focus on Alma, a scientist working at the prestigious Pergamon Museum in Berlin. The need to fund her own research makes her determined to take part in an unusual study: she agrees to live with a robot with a humanoid appearance, who is programmed to be suitable for her character and needs. Maren Eggert, known for playing the lead in Angela Schanelec’s Marseille, will star as Alma, alongside British actor Dan Stevens.

Indie titles hoping to capitalise on blockbuster absence.

UK-Ireland, opening Friday August 14

Picturehouse Entertainment heads the new titles this weekend with Shannon Murphy’s Australian comedy-drama Babyteeth in 140 locations.

The debut feature of theatre and TV drama director Murphy played in Competition at Venice last year, where Toby Wallace won the Marcello Mastroianni award for emerging actor/actress. It most recently won the top prize at the 19th Transylvania International Film Festival last weekend.

Adapted by Rita Kalnejais from her stage play of the same name, the film centres on Milla (Eliza Scanlen), a seriously ill teenager, who falls in...

She had previously worked at Senator Film, Atlas Film & Medien and her own company Mk Film Consulting.

Milada Kolberg has been appointed to the newly created position of head of acquisitions at Berlin-based distributor X Verleih, with responsibility for acquiring new projects and completed films from Germany and internationally for distribution.

Kolberg, who arrives in Locarno today (August 8) on the lookout for new titles at the festival, took up her position at X Verleih at the beginning of August.

She had previously served as head of acquisitions and sales at Senator Film, Atlas Film & Medien and, most recently, managed her own company,...

Opening in L.A. and other cities June 16, “Stefan Zweig: Farewell to Europe” is a stylishly accomplished and intellectually well thought out character study of a man who was the most popular author in the world in the 1920s and 1930s and who, today, is nearly forgotten. Told through six windows of 20 minutes each, this unique storytelling technique gives the film an immediacy as each part of Stefan Zweig’s life plays out in real time.

Stefan Zweig’s books have been made into 23 movies around the world, including his novel, Letter from an Unknown Woman, which was adapted to the screen in 1948 by Max Ophüls and starred Joan Fontaine and Louis Jourdain. His writings have also inspired Wes Anderson’s “Grand Budapest Hotel”.

Having just read his memoir, The World of Yesterday and having been on my own private search for what it means to have to leave your...

Stefan Zweig (Josef Hader) - "He was considered one of the greatest travelers, the big European mastermind of the European Union."

In 2000, Max Färberböck's Aimée & Jaguar star Maria Schrader was on the Berlin Film Festival jury with Andrzej Wajda, Gong Li, Walter Salles, and Marisa Paredes when Paul Thomas Anderson's Magnolia won the Golden Bear and the number of translators had an impact on her. In New York, the director of Stefan Zweig: Farewell To Europe and I discussed her creative team, including co-writer Jan Schomburg, cinematographer Wolfgang Thaler, and editor Hansjörg Weißbrich. We followed a Zweig trail from Terence Davies on Max Ophüls' Letter From An Unknown Woman to George Prochnik's influence on Wes Anderson's The Grand Budapest Hotel to Varian Fry, Lion Feuchtwanger and Defying The Nazis: The Sharp's War, directed by Ken Burns and Artemis Joukowsky.

Maria Schrader: "I dedicated the movie to Denis Poncet.

Deutschland 83 star and Stefan Zweig: Farewell To Europe director Maria Schrader with Anne-Katrin Titze Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze

Maria Schrader's Stefan Zweig: Farewell To Europe (Vor Der Morgenröte – Stefan Zweig In Amerika), co-written with Jan Schomburg, is a sharp and vital depiction of Zweig's life in exile (1936-1942), portrayed by Josef Hader with nuance and grace. Aenne Schwarz is Lotte, the writer's loyal second wife and the good spirit who organizes with their faithful interpreter/guide Vitor (Nahuel Pérez Biscayart) the couple's time in Brazil. Barbara Sukowa is Friderike, the writer's ex-wife. With a great Austrian accent the legendary Rainer Werner Fassbinder star (Berlin Alexanderplatz) and Margarethe von Trotta stronghold says the words unlike any other as she signals the years of the past married life with a single glance.

Josef Hader as Stefan Zweig: "I'm not Thomas Mann. I cannot send away all the petitioners."

The cinematography...

Exclusive: Josef Hader and Barbara Sukowa star in feature from Cloud Atlas producer.

Films Distribution has boarded international sales rights to German-language drama Before Dawn, which will chart the life of renowned 20th century writer Stefan Zweig.

The Paris-based sales outfit will co-produce alongside X-Filme, Maha Productions, Dor Film and Ideale Audience, reuniting with producer Stefan Arndt (Cloud Atlas, The White Ribbon), with whom they worked on 2014 drama The Dark Valley.

Before Dawn, currently in post-production, charts the years in exile of the famous Jewish Austrian writer who struggled to reconcile himself to events in war torn 1930’s Europe before taking his own life in Brazil.

Zweig’s works have inspired numerous films including Wes Anderson’s Oscar-winner The Grand Budapest Hotel, Patrice Leconte’s 2013 drama A Promise and Roberto Rosselini’s 1954 drama Fear.

Josef Hader (The Bone Man) stars alongside Barbara Sukowa (Hannah Arendt) in the drama which marks the feature debut of actress Maria Schrader ([link...

Above: Something Must Break

International Film Festival Rotterdam 2014

Tiger Awards Competition

Afscheid van de Maan/Farewell to the Moon by Dick Tuinder (Netherlands, 2014, world premiere)

Visual artist Dick Tuinder’s second feature revolves around 12-year-old Dutch and his family in the hot summer of 1972, when the Americans launch their last mission to the moon. Tuinder contrasts the tragicomic adventures of his protagonists with the lost illusions of that transitional year, in the aftermath of the Vietnam War and approaching oil crisis. Iffr showed many of Tuinder’s short films, as well as his first feature Winterland (2009).

Anatomy of a Paper Clip by Akira Ikeda (Japan, 2013, European premiere)

Akira Ikeda's crazy and funny second feature is a dark fairytale revolving around Kogure, a paperclip bender in a paperclip factory, a man without characteristics and a stoical loser. One day he finds a butterfly in his flat. She becomes his wife,...

The International Film Festival Rotterdam has completed the lineup for its Hivos Tiger Awards Competition.

These 10 titles join the five previously announced. All 15 first or second features will compete for three equal Tiger awards worth €15,000 each.

Elia Suleiman will lead the jury, also comprised of of Nanouk Leopold, Edwin, Violeta Bava and Kiki Sugino.

The selections (listed in full below) including Dutch artist Dick Tuinder’s second feature after Winterland, a 1972-set Dutch family story entitled Farewell To The Moon; Syria-set debut feature Arwad by Samer Najari and Dominique Chila; Busan audience award winner Han Gong-ju by Lee Su-jin; producer Luis Minarro’s first fiction feature Falling Star, about the lonely king of Spain in 1870; and Mark Jackson’s Us production War Story starring Catherine Keener.

The titles confirmed today are:

Farewell To The Moon (Afscheid van de Maan)

Dick Tuinder (Netherlands, world premiere)

Arwad

Samer Najari and Dominique Chila (Canada)

Casa grande

Fellipe Barbosa (Brazil, world...

First five films selected for the Hivos Tiger Awards announced.

The International Film Festival Rotterdam (Iffr) has revealed the first five titles selected for the Hivos Tiger Awards Competition, which aims to give up-and-coming talent “the opportunity to shine on a global stage. They are:

Concrete Clouds, Lee Chatametikool

(Thailand/Hongkong/China, 2013, European premiere)

New York based-currency trader Mutt returns home to Bangkok after the death of his father amidst the Asian financial crisis of the 1990s. He faces past family and relationship issues in this first feature by Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s editor. This project received Iffr’s Hubert Bals Fund support for script and project development.

Happily Ever After, Tatjana Bozic

(Croatia, 2013, world premiere)

Filmmaker Tatjana Bozic grew up in Croatia before the Balkan War and ended up settling in The Netherlands. Her first feature-length documentary is a tragicomic portrait of her own love life. She revisits her past love affairs in a desperate effort to save...

First five films selected for the Hivos Tiger Awards announced.

The International Film Festival Rotterdam (Iffr) has revealed the first five titles selected for the Hivos Tiger Awards Competition, which aims to give up-and-coming talent “the opportunity to shine on a global stage. They are:

Concrete Clouds, Lee Chatametikool

(Thailand/Hongkong/China, 2013, European premiere)

New York based-currency trader Mutt returns home to Bangkok after the death of his father amidst the Asian financial crisis of the 1990s. He faces past family and relationship issues in this first feature by Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s editor. This project received Iffr’s Hubert Bals Fund support for script and project development.

Happily Ever After, Tatjana Bozic

(Croatia, 2013, world premiere)

Filmmaker Tatjana Bozic grew up in Croatia before the Balkan War and ended up settling in The Netherlands. Her first feature-length documentary is a tragicomic portrait of her own love life. She revisits her past love affairs in a desperate effort to save...

Nader and Simin, a Separation and the other winners of the 2011 Berlin International Film Festival have been announced. The 61st Annual Berlin International Film Festival, often called the Berlinale, is “one of the world’s leading film festivals and most reputable media events.With 274,000 tickets sold and 487,000 admissions it is considered the largest publicly-attended film festival worldwide. Up to 400 films are shown in several sections, representing a comprehensive array of the cinematic world.” The full listing of the 2011 Berlin International Film Festival winners is below.

Golden Bear for Best Film

Jodaeiye Nader az Simin (Nader And Simin, A Separation) by Asghar Farhadi

Silver Bear – The Jury Grand Prix

A torinói ló (The Turin Horse) by Béla Tarr

Silver Bear – Best Director

Ulrich Köhler for Schlafkrankheit (Sleeping Sickness)

Silver Bear – Best Actress

to the actress-ensemble in Jodaeiye Nader az Simin (Nader And Simin, A Separation) by Asghar Farhadi

Silver Bear – Best...

I’m a little perplexed by the trailer for German director Jan Schomburg’s new film Above Us Only Sky (Über Uns Das All) which recently screened in this year’s Berlinale Panorama section. The reason for my confusion is that this trailer seems to be misrepresenting the film. It may be that it’s only focusing on one side of the story but I can’t help but think that people going in expecting some sort of romance will walk away sorely disappointed.

The film stars award winning actress Sandra Hüller as Martha, a young woman in a happy relationship with a man she loves, knows and trusts. Or so she thinks because when a pair or policewomen come knocking at her door with terrible news, she comes to realize that the man she thought she knew was a stranger.

There’s a little more to this story but...

Though it slipped past us somehow the 2011 Berlin Film Festival released the first block of titles from their Panorama section yesterday and there are some very familiar names in there, among them Ryoo Seung-Wan's The Unjust, Jorge Padilha's Elite Squad 2, Angelique Bosio's The Advocate For Fagdom and Hugo Olsson's The Black Power Mixtape - all of which have received coverage here in the pages of Twitch. You want the complete list? Here it is:

Panorama Main Programme + Panorama Special Bu-dang-geo-rae (The Unjust) by Seung-wan Ryoo, Republic of Koreawith Jung-min Hwang, Seung-bum Ryoo, Hae-jin Yoo Chang-Pi-Hae (Ashamed) by Soo-hyun Kim, Republic of Koreawith Hyo-jin Kim, Kkobbi Kim Dance Town by Kyu-hwan Jeon, Republic of Koreawith Mir-an Ra, Seong-tae Oh The Devil's Double by Lee Tamahori, Belgiumwith Dominic Cooper, Ludivine Sagnier Dirty Girl by Abe Sylvia, USAwith Juno Temple, Milla Jovovich, William H. Macy, Dwight Yoakam, Mary Steenburgen, Jeremy Dozier...