GFQ 2-2007 - german films

Moreover, the venture will also be benefiting some good causes:
SAT.1 is donating all income from DVD, video and international sales
to the UNICEF schools in Africa as well as “Deine Stimme gegen
Armut”, the German branch of Richard Curtis’ “Make Poverty
History” campaign. Furthermore, producers Egoli Tossell Film
and Cinema for Peace will be waiving any profit and all proceeds from
the production, and Curtis has committed to donate his fee for the
adaptation rights to “Make Poverty History”.
Hanami
Type of Project Feature Film Cinema Genre Drama Pro -
duction Company Olga Film/Munich With backing from
Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg, FilmFernsehFonds Bayern,
Filmfoerderungsanstalt (FFA), German Federal Film Fund (DFFF)
Producers Molly von Fuerstenberg, Harald Kuegler Director
Doris Doerrie Screenplay Doris Doerrie Director of Photog -
raphy Hanno Lentz Editor Inez Regnier Production Design
Bele Schneider Principal Cast Elmar Wepper, Hannelore Elsner,
Nadja Uhl, Birgit Minichmayr, Felix Eitner, Maximilian Brueckner,
Floriane Daniel Casting Nessie Nesslauer Format HD, blow-up
to 35 mm, color, 1:1.85, Dolby Shooting Language German
Shooting in Tokyo, Berlin, Baltic Sea coast, Allgaeu, March – April
2007 German Distributor Majestic Filmverleih/Berlin
World Sales
Bavaria Film International
Dept. of Bavaria Media GmbH · Thorsten Schaumann
Bavariafilmplatz 8 · 82031 Geiselgasteig/Germany
phone +49-89-64 99 26 86 · fax +49-89-64 99 37 20
email: international@bavaria-film.de
www.bavaria-film-international.com
Doris Doerrie has once more traveled around the globe to the
distant climes of Japan for her latest production Hanami after
having filmed there in the past for her two features Enlightenment
Guaranteed and The Fisherman and His Wife.
The €2.9 million film also marks another kind of reunion: with Molly
von Fuerstenberg and Harald Kuegler’s Munich-based production
house Olga Film which had produced Doerrie’s inter -
national breakthrough hit Men more than twenty years ago as well as
two other of her films, Straight Through the Heart and Money.
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“Hanami” team (photo © courtesy of Olga Film)
“We worked over the past two years with Doris on this film idea and
it is naturally wonderful that we are able to work together again after
such a long time. The film is just right for us,” von Fuerstenberg de -
clares.
“This new film can’t be seen as a continuation of the previous two
films set in Japan,” she stresses. “There is perhaps a little connection
with Enlightenment Guaranteed, but in fact it is really something quite
different.” Unlike many of her previous films, Hanami is not based
on one of Doerrie’s short stories, but is an original story this time.
Doerrie and the Olgas have put an impressive cast together for this
tragicomic drama about a widower traveling from Germany to Japan
in the search of the lost dreams of his late wife.
“The cast was pretty clear from the outset,” von Fuerstenberg recalls,
“but we then had to re-cast one role at the last minute when Monica
Bleibtreu fell ill and we were fortunately able to get Hannelore
Elsner instead.” This year’s “Shooting Star” Maximilian
Brueckner plays the widower’s son who is living in Japan, and other
roles are taken by Nadja Uhl (Summer in Berlin), Birgit
Minichmayr (Fallen) and Floriane Daniel (Winter sleepers).
“The shooting schedule was so rigid for us to start in the middle of
March because the global warming means that the blossoming of the
cherry trees in Japan is taking place earlier than ever,” she continues.
“This is an important element in the film so we couldn’t postpone the
start of shooting.”
The producers and Doerrie are also very pleased to have been able
to cast Elmar Wepper in the role of the widower: “We knew that
he is a very good actor and would be the right choice to play an older,
Bavarian civil servant from the countryside,” von Fuerstenberg says.
Indeed, Doerrie had worked with Wepper on her last feature The
Fisherman and His Wife and Olga Film knew him from their collaboration
on the 2005 TV movie Mathilde liebt by Wolfram Paulus.
However, it is the first time that Doerrie will have worked with the
cinematographer Hanno Lentz whose feature film credits include
the lensing of Sherry Hormann’s Guys and Balls and Jobst Oetzmann’s
The Loneliness of the Crocodiles.
“We are shooting in the HD format because it is very important for
Doris and us at Olga Film to have this feeling of mobility and to be up
close to the characters,” von Fuerstenberg explains. “And you have a
much better chance of really capturing the crazy atmosphere in Tokyo
than if you tried to set up a 35 mm camera there.”
After the Japanese end of the shoot, the production moved at the
beginning of April to locations in Berlin and on the Baltic Sea coast
before wrapping in the Allgaeu region in Southern Germany at the
end of April.
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german films quarterly in production
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