GFQ 1-2006 - German Cinema

she runs after him until she has lost her marriage, her career and
almost her life. Why?“
“Liebesleben tells a universal story,” Schrader continues. “But the
closer I worked on the story, the clearer it became to me how many
of its aspects are directly connected with Israel.”
“The fascinating and disturbing thing about it is the emotional tour de
force of the main figure,” she says. “What leads a self-confident, intelligent
woman like Jara to let herself be humiliated? Why does she subject
herself to such painful tests? Is it masochism? Is it a strange kind
of martyrdom? It is constantly a slap in the face for both men and
women, for a whole generation profiting from the fruits of emancipation.
To begin with.”
“It is a great advantage that she is an actress,” adds producer Stefan
Arndt, pointing that she probably had more shooting days in the
past as an actress than any director. “She has seen very many different
styles of working and thus has a better starting point. And it is naturally
not really her first film because she was already a co-director
with Dani Levy on Stille Nacht and Meschugge.”
Meanwhile, producer Andro Steinborn notes that finding the
appropriate production partner in Israel to handle and oversee that
part of the film’s shoot was relatively straightforward “because there
are only a limited number of producers in Israel who have international
experience and can cope with an English-language shoot. €3.2
million is a scale which cannot be managed in Israel by every production
company; the average budget there is around $500,000.”
But Transfax Film Productions’ Marek Rozenbaum was
one of the internationally experienced producers in Israel who has
already handled bigger productions than Liebesleben. “If one
looks at the Israeli films of the last four years which have been shown
at festivals and won prizes, then he has very often been involved there
somewhere," Steinborn explains. “There are wonderful films like Late
Marriage, Avanim, or Go, See and Become. During these two years, we
built up such good relations that Liebesleben will certainly not be
the last project we work on together.”
MB
Maria am Wasser
Type of Project Feature Film Cinema Genre Drama
Production Company Egoli Tossell Film/Berlin-Leipzig, in coproduction
with Zweite GFP/Berlin With backing from
Mitteldeutsche Medienfoerderung, Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg,
Kuratorium junger deutscher Film, Filmfoerderungsanstalt (FFA)
Producers Jens Meurer, Judy Tossell Co-Producer David
Groenewold Director Thomas Wendrich Screenplay Thomas
Wendrich Director of Photography István Imreh Editor
Philipp Stahl Music by Kai-Uwe Kohlschmidt Production
Design Marcus Goeppner Principal Cast Alexander Beyer,
Annika Blendl, Marie Gruber, Falk Rockstroh, Hermann Beyer,
Wladimir Tarasjanz Casting Uwe Buenker Format 35 mm, color,
1:1.85, Dolby SR Shooting Language German Shooting in
Dittersbach and Neuhirschstein (Saxony), October – December
2005 German Distributor Timebandits Films/Berlin
Contact
Egoli Tossell Film AG · Jana Kohlmann
Torstrasse 164 · 10115 Berlin/Germany
phone +49-30-24 65 65 18 · fax +49-30-24 65 65 24
email: contact@egolitossell.com
www.egolitossell.com
“Thomas has diligently worked towards his first feature,” says producer
Jens Meurer of Egoli Tossell Film about Thomas
Wendrich’s Maria am Wasser which was shot on location at
Dittersbach in the Erzgebirge and Schloss Neuhirschstein on the River
Elbe.
“He has gone through a thorough development,” Meurer continues,
pointing out that Wendrich had appeared on the stage of the Berliner
Ensemble many times before deciding to move over to writing
screenplays. The graduate of Babelsberg’s Academy of Film and
Television won several prizes for his 2004 short Zur Zeit verstorben,
including the Audience Award at the Filmfest Dresden and the DEFA
Foundation Prize at Filmfest Cottbus, and was awarded the German
Screenplay Award for his script of the Egoli Tossell production Nimm
dir dein Leben by Sabine Michel.
In his feature debut Wendrich has returned home – like the main hero
Marcus Lenk – to the places of childhood and youth: the landscapes
of the Elbe valley, but Meurer stresses that Maria am Wasser "is
not autobiographical, although it is still very personal. It is a bit like a
Western in that a man returns to a place and turns everything upside
german films quarterly in production
1 · 2006 34
Scene from “Maria am Wasser
(photo © Steffen Junghans)