News

Beta Cinema has taken international sales rights for “Let It Rain,” the new film by Oscar-nominated director Hannes Holm (“A Man Called Ove”), starring Robert Gustafsson, star of the box office hit “The 100-Year-Old Man.”

Shooting wrapped at the end of September and Beta Cinema will present first materials at next month’s American Film Market.

The story is set in a small town in Southern Sweden, where grumpy widower Ingmar lives a regimented life. Ever since his wife passed away a few years ago, his relationship with his daughter Erika has deteriorated. Apart from his daughter, the only other things left in his life are his annoying, divorced neighbor Burman and his late wife’s roses.

As the hottest and driest summer in living memory stretches on, everyone waits for rain that never seems to come. But through what might be a miracle or sheer coincidence, Ingmar finds himself...

Beta Nordic Studios (Bns), a division of German production and sales group Beta Film, has taken a 51 percent stake in Swedish production company Unlimited Stories.

Founded in 2016 by Poa Strömberg, Patrick Ryborn and Linus Stöhr Torell, Unlimted Stories has produced a number of local-language feature successes, including A Piece of My Heart, Sune and Knyckertz. The Stockholm-based group has recently moved into television drama with the new series Missing People, commissioned for public broadcaster Svt.

Unlimited Stories will be the fifth company under the Bns umbrella, alongside Finnish production company Fisher King (Nymphs, Bordertown), Iceland’s Sagafilm (The Minister, Stella Blomkvist), the Norwegian group ...

Beta Nordic Studios (Bns), a division of German production and sales group Beta Film, has taken a 51 percent stake in Swedish production company Unlimited Stories.

Founded in 2016 by Poa Strömberg, Patrick Ryborn and Linus Stöhr Torell, Unlimted Stories has produced a number of local-language feature successes, including A Piece of My Heart, Sune and Knyckertz. The Stockholm-based group has recently moved into television drama with the new series Missing People, commissioned for public broadcaster Svt.

Unlimited Stories will be the fifth company under the Bns umbrella, alongside Finnish production company Fisher King (Nymphs, Bordertown), Iceland’s Sagafilm (The Minister, Stella Blomkvist), the Norwegian group ...

Exclusive: Martin Schreier’s Dreamfactory, the period romantic drama that grossed close to $1m in its local market last year, has sold to the U.S. with German company Capelight partnering with Mpi for the North American release.

The deal, struck with Berlin-based agent Picture Tree International, is a similar one to Capelight’s earlier acquisition of German pic The Collini Case, which it will release this year again in collaboration with Mpi. Capelight also recently handled the U.S. release of South Korean action blockbuster Ashfall in December, grossing close to $400,000.

The distributor is planning an English language dub of Dreamfactory. Set in 1961, the movie follows a young studio extra’s ambitious efforts to reunite with the French girl he loves after being separated by the construction of the Berlin Wall.

Dreamfactory (German title Traumfabrik) comes from German outfit Traumfabrik Babelsberg, founded by Tom Zickler with Christoph Fisser, Vice...

Berlin-based Picture Tree International (Pti) has acquired global sales rights to Leander Haussmann’s highly anticipated East German laffer “A Stasi Comedy.”

Set in the early 1980s, the film centers on East Germany’s infamous state security service, the Staatssicherheitsdienst or Stasi, and young agent Ludger, played by David Kross, who is sent to infiltrate the counterculture scene in East Berlin’s Prenzlauer Berg district, home to artists, bohemians and free-thinking radicals. Decades later, Ludger is confronted with the possibility of his secret Stasi past coming to light.

Written and directed by Haussmann, “A Stasi Comedy” is the third installment in the celebrated filmmaker’s East German-themed comedy trilogy that began with “Sonnenallee” (“Sun Alley”) in 2000 and followed with “Nva” in 2004.

“After 30 years, it should be finally allowed to laugh about the Stasi,” Haussmann said.

“A Stasi Comedy” is produced by Ufa Fiction in co-production with Constantin Film, which is...

Directed by Antti Jokkinen, the biopic is about Finnish painter Helene Schjerfbeck.

Picture Tree International has boarded sales for Antti Jokinen’s Finnish drama Helene.

Picture Tree plans to screen the film for buyers at Goteborg’s Nordic Film Market and at Berlin’s European Film Market, with a festival premiere coming later in 2020. The film was previously touted as a work in progress in Haugesund in August 2019.

The biopic is about Helene Schjerfbeck, a Finnish painter who lived a quiet life in the countryside with her elderly mother. The film covers her life from 1915-1923, when an art dealer...

Distributed by Nordisk Film, Edward af Sillén's musical has already been pre-purchased for Israel, Taiwan and Poland. Inspired by the same feel-good atmosphere as that found in Damien Chazelle's La La Land, with touches of former Abba member Björn Ulvæus' musical talent, Edward af Sillén's new feature, A Piece of My Heart, is set to hit Swedish cinemas on 25 December this year. The musical, penned by composer and screenwriter Lars Johansson (best known as Vasa) and based on Tomas Ledin's music and lyrics, focuses on a driven business woman, called Isabella and played by Swedish thesp Malin Åkerman, who returns to her hometown to celebrate her father’s 60th birthday. Back home, she learns that Simon, her teenage sweetheart, is getting married and realises that some feelings never go away....

Exclusive: Swedish musical comedy A Piece Of My Heart, which is set for a wide domestic release in its home territory via Nordisk Film on Christmas Day this year, is getting the international treatment with an English dub arranged by Abba band member Björn Ulvaeus.

Berlin-based sales outfit Picture Tree International is taking the film to Afm having initially picked it up ahead of last year’s market in La, and will be hosting two private screenings of the English version.

It stars Malin Akerman, whose credits include Zack Snyder’s Watchmen, Rampage alongside Dwayne Johnson and Showtime series Billions, and Christian Hillborg of Fleabag and The Last Kingdom fame, in a story based on the music by legendary Swedish artist Tomas Ledin.

Ledin composed the original score and Swedish lyrics. Ulvaeus has re-arranged them into English with altered lyrics, which were re-recorded by the same cast.

With the international...

Picture Tree Intl. has acquired the rights to Carolina Hellsgård’s “Sunburned,” the follow-up feature to her zombie drama “Endzeit – Ever After.”

Pti will be presenting first footage from the film, currently in post-production, at this year’s German Films Previews (July 3-6).

“Sunburned” follows solitary teenager Claire on a family holiday in Spain. Neglected by her distant mother and older sister she eventually finds company in Amram, a young, struggling Senegalese beach vendor. Claire promises to help him, regardless of the consequences.

The film is Hellsgård’s third feature as director after her debut “Wanja,” which premiered at the Berlinale in 2015, and post-apocalyptic zombie feature “Endzeit – Ever After,” which premiered at Toronto Film Festival last year. The latter film is still traveling the festival circuit with an upcoming U.K. premiere at Edinburgh Film Festival on June 29, and is being readied for its U.S. release through Juno Film,...

The 20th Nordic Film Market in Göteborg, unspooling Jan. 31-Feb 3, will showcase 16 works in progress including Hlynur Pálmason’s “A White, White Day”, Grímur Hákonarson’s “The County”, Mikael Håfström’s “The Perfect Patient” and Jesper Ganslandt’s “438 Days.”

Iceland is well represented this year with top directors and festival darlings Pálmason (“Winter Brothers”), Hákonarson (“Rams”) as well as “Volcano”’s Rúnar Rúnarsson, who will pitch their latest projects at Göteborg’s Biopalatset where last year Benedikt Erlingsson first introduced “Woman at War.”

“I simply had to select the three films by Pálmason, Hákonarson and Rúnarsson as they are on the top list of many festival programmers and buyers and their films are very different from one other, displaying the wide breath of talents from Iceland,” said Nordic Film Market’s head of industry Cia Edström.

“A White, White Day” stars Ingvar E. Sigurðsson (“Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald”) as an off-duty police chief,...