Quarterly 4 · 2006 - German Cinema

strengths and weaknesses and to stand up for one another.
“The film will show how the three friends became friends,” says
Manuela Lumb, the commissioning editor at Cologne-based
WDR for the series and the feature film. “There are all kinds of unusual
storylines with exciting and emotional characters, and a real
story of adventure aimed at the younger children rather than targeting
the whole family like the Disney films.”
Heine and his wife Gisela von Radowitz provided the basic
storyline for the film, while the actual screenplay was developed by
the writing team of Achim and Bettine von Borries who have
also been involved in an animated feature film version of Tomi
Ungerer’s The Three Robbers for X Filme.
“Apart from the plot, Heine has also come up with some lovely visual
ideas and we naturally want to ensure that we keep to the artwork
from his books,” Lumb adds.
As Heine notes, “Johnny Mauser is the Sherlock Holmes who solves
things with humor, reflection and a magnifying glass. Franz von Hahn
takes the two friends to the scene of the crime on his bicycle. And fat
Waldemar is the ’strong arm’ of the law who arrests the wrongdoers.”
And he adds that these stories about the three friends seem
to appeal in equal measures to children and adults alike because it
speaks about “elementary stories of friendship, love and death. About
all facets of life. That’s something one understands in Brazil in the
same way as in Japan and in Korea.”
Ein Fall fuer Freunde … wie alles begann, which was
presented as a project at this year’s Cartoon Movie co-production
market in Babelsberg, will be directed by Tony Loeser whose
Halle-based company MotionWorks has been involved in the production
of such recent animation productions as Globi and The Stolen
Shadow, The Little Polar Bear (feature films and series), Tobias Totz,
Jester Till, and the two seasons of the Piratengeschichten puppet animation
TV series with Studio Soi for RBB and MDR. Loeser will be
joined on this latest project as co-director by the Danish animator
Jesper Moeller whose past credits include working in various
functions on Asterix and the Vikings, Tarzan II, Help! I’m A Fish, Felidae
and Asterix in America.
MB
Haende weg von
Mississippi
Type of Project Feature Film Cinema Genre Children’s Film,
Family Production Company Boje Buck Produktion/Berlin, in
co-production with ZDF/Mainz With backing from
FilmFoerderung Hamburg, Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg,
Filmfoerderungsanstalt (FFA), BKM, Kulturelle Filmfoerderung
Mecklenburg-Vorpommern Producer Claus Boje Commissioning
Editors Irene Wellershoff, Franziska Guderian
Director Detlev Buck Screenplay Maggie Peren, Stefan Schaller,
based on the novel by Cornelia Funke Director of Photography
Jana Marsik Editor Dirk Grau Production Design Lothar Holler
Principal Cast Zoe Mannhardt, Katharina Thalbach, Christoph
Maria Herbst, Hans Loew, Milan Peschel, Alexander Seidel,
Konstantin Kaucher, Margit Carstensen Casting Jacqueline Rietz
Format 35 mm, color, 1:1.85, Dolby Digital Shooting
Language German Shooting in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, July
- August 2006 German Distributor Delphi Filmverleih/Berlin
Contact
Boje Buck Produktion GmbH
Kurfuerstendamm 226 · 10719 Berlin/Germany
phone +49-30-88 59 13 0 · fax +49-30-88 59 13 15
email: info@bojebuck.de · www.bojebuck.de
W.C. Fields famously once said “Never work with children and animals”,
but that didn’t deter Detlev Buck from trying his hand at a
“children’s western” with an adaptation of the novel Haende weg von
Mississippi by Germany’s answer to J.K. Rowling, Cornelia Funke.
As producer Claus Boje stresses, the decision to make a children’s
film was "not based on any strategic consideration just because family
films are doing so well at the moment. It is rather the case that one
is interested in a story, the characters and the atmosphere. It is a challenge
to do something new where one is looking at the world from a
different perspective, from a child’s point of view. That’s why one
does it."
Adapted for the screen by Maggie Peren and Stefan Schaller,
Haende weg von Mississippi tells the story of young Emma
(played by Zoe Mannhardt) who comes to her grandmother
Dolly’s (Katharina Thalbach) for the summer holidays and
learns to her horror that a dastardly neighbor – known by Emma and
the local children as “the Alligator” – is planning to send his late
german films quarterly in production
4 · 2006 30
Detlev Buck (center) on the set of “Haende weg
von Mississippi” (photo © Boje Buck Produktion)