News

There will soon be sightings of Ghosts in Germany.

BBC Studios has confirmed production of a German-language version of the sitcom, which has been a hit for the BBC in the UK and CBS in the States.

German pubcaster Wdr and streamer Ard Mediathek have commissioned a six-part series, with Erik Haffner directing and BBC Studios Germany producing its first in-house production. Yves Hensel and Aylin Kockler are writing, with Claudius Pläging providing punch-up and Tom Holzhauser and Anne Lindemann overseeing cinematography. Filming is underway in Cologne and will continue over the summer.

First teased in March as Series Mania, the series will follow the plot line of the original. It will centre around young couple Emma (Cristina do Rego) and Felix (Benito Bause), who inherit an old mansion and decide to turn it into a hotel, but after a near-death accident, Emma begins seeing ghosts. The bizarre and chaotic...

Everyone keeps asking average German 30-somethings Michael and Dina when they’re going to get married, long after they’ve moved in together, and still after they have a child. Their non-answer is always the same: They’ve been thinking about it; they’ll get around to it; there just hasn’t been time. It’s not as if anyone’s really interested, anyway. It’s just an obvious thing to ask of lives that have otherwise checked off the requisite middle-class boxes, and hey, don’t Michael and Dina need something to break up their sensible domestic routine? An arch, acid-laced comedy of manners from brother-sister filmmaking duo Dietrich and Anna Brüggemann, “Nö” takes a close, cool gaze at a relationship that seems, the longer we look at it, more a social construct than anything more intimate. It’s left to us to ask whether we’ve done any better for ourselves.

Nö

German director Dietrich Brüggemann has commenced shooting his sixth feature Nö, produced by Martin Heisler and Gabriele Simon for Flare Film. Starring the director’s sister, Anna Brüggemann (who also co-wrote) as the lead, the film also features Alexander Khuon, Isolde Barth, Hanns Zischler, Rudiger Vogler (of Wim Wenders’ Road Trilogy) and Petra Schmidt-Schaller. Brüggemann’s usual Dp Alexander Sass is lensing the feature. Brüggemann’s breakout was his 2014 feature Stations of the Cross (review), which competed in Berlin and took home the Silver Bear for Best Script as well as the Prize of the Ecumenical Jury. His last feature, 2015’s Heil, competed in Karlovy Vary.…...