News

New sales have been struck for ‘Schächten: A Retribution’, ‘Alma & Oskar’, ‘A Stasi Comedy’

Berlin-based Picture Tree International has confirmed several new deals on its AFM slate.

Crime drama Schächten: A Retribution has gone to Alfa Pictures (Spain), Moving Stores (Australia), HBO/Warner Media for central and eastern Europe, and to One Gate (formerly Studio Hamburg Enterprises) for Germany and Austria for VoD.

Directed by Thomas Roth, the film is about a young Jewish businessman in 1960s Vienna who takes the law into his own hands when the prosecution of a Nazi crime against his family fails. The film previously...

Picture Tree Intl. has picked up the global sales rights to Austrian horror movie “Smother” by up-and-coming director Achmed Abdel-Salam. The Glitter and Doom production is tentatively set for a local theatrical release in early 2023.

After the sudden death of her estranged father, Michi, a young mother and former alcoholic, decides to stay in the inherited summer house for a few days with her small daughter Hanna, hoping to regain the motherly trust she lost.

During the first night, long repressed memories of her childhood overshadowed by her mother’s suicide start to haunt her. Trying to numb herself again with alcohol only drives her daughter Hanna further away and accelerates Michi’s paranoid state. When her demons also start to threaten her daughter, Michi must finally confront them to save her.

Picture Tree Intl.’s AFM slate features a variety of new international films, including a first visual pitch...

WarnerMedia Germany has confirmed that Ricky Gervais is among the cast of its comedy series Greenlight – German Genius, which is now shooting in Berlin.

The eight-part TV satire stars Kida Khodr Ramadan (4 Blocks) as himself. It recounts a dramatized version of events after Ramadan’s real-life Twitter exchange with Gervais in 2018, in which the British comedian praised Ramadan’s performance in 4 Blocks.

In Greenlight, Ramadan convinces Gervais to give him the rights for a German adaptation of Extras. However, as he attempts to progress the show to production, he comes up against the fact that the Germans aren’t particularly known for their humor, and that there are not many international stars in the country.

Also in the cast are a host of known German actors, musicians, and comedians, including: Detlev Buck, Frederick Lau, Tom Schilling, Veysel Gelin, Olli Schulz, Heike Makatsch, Maria Furtwängler, Sascha Geršak, Katrin Bauerfeind, Britta Hammelstein,...

Ricky Gervais has boarded “Greenlight – German Genius” a new series from WarnerMedia Germany inspired by one of his tweets from 2019.

The 8-episode series, which has started shooting in Berlin, satirises the German television industry.

Two years ago the “After Life” writer and actor sent a public message via Twitter to German actor Kida Ramadan praising his portrayal of character Toni Hamady in series “4 Blocks.”

“Congratulations,” wrote Gervais. “Another masterpiece.”

In a case of art imitating life, Ramadan and Gervais will now appear as fictional versions of themselves in “Greenlight – German Genius,” in which Ramadan convincing Gervais to let him make a German adaptation of his hit series “Extras” after the comedian sends Ramadan a tweet praising his performance in “4 Blocks.”

However, Ramadan hits a stumbling block when he realizes there aren’t any international celebrities in Germany to cameo in the adaptation all while trying to navigate the...

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...

Just yesterday, Empire posted a photo of Tom Tykwer and Lana and Andy Wachowski surrounded by novelist David Mitchell and producers Uwe Schott, Philip Lee, Stefan Arndt and Grant Hill. The occasion? They'd just wrapped shooting at Studio Babelsberg on the most expensive German film since the days of Ufa, Cloud Atlas. Babelsberg, practically on life support after the fall of the Berlin wall, is thriving once again. And in February, the legendary studio celebrates its 100th anniversary.

To celebrate, the Berlin International Film Festival, running February 9 through 19, will be awarding the studio a Berlinale Camera and presenting a special series, "Happy Birthday, Studio Babelsberg." The lineup:

Fw Murnau's The Last Laugh (1924) Josef von Sternberg's The Blue Angel (1929/30) Josef von Báky's The Adventures of Baron Munchhausen (1943) Wolfgang Staudte's The Murderers Are Among Us (1946) Kurt Maetzig's The Rabbit Is Me (1965) Konrad Wolf's Goya (1971) Roland Gräf's...

A new issue of Senses of Cinema will always be the top story, any day it appears. As this one's not only the 60th but also a "bumper issue," as Catherine Grant puts it, it's "a timely reminder of just what a valuable publication this online journal is." Without question, it's worthy of your support if you're able to provide it. Among the highlights of this issue are remembrances of Claudine Paquot by Serge Toubiana and Bérénice Reynaud, who finds it "hard to convey the loss experienced by French-speaking readers and cinephiles to the Anglo-Saxon world, how her presence in the editorial staff at Cahiers du cinéma had had a definitive impact on the way cinema is written about."

Samuel Bréan considers the reception of the "Navajo English" subtitles for Godard's Film socialisme. Three disparate moments in the history of German cinema: Alexandria Placido on women and fashion in Weimar cinema,...

A comedy set both in Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Russia? It seems like a bold - perhaps even foolhardy - move but that's exactly what director Leander Haußmann has done with Hotel Lux.Following the life of a stage and screen comedian who wants to flee war-era Germany for America but has to settle for Russia when he can't land the required paperwork, Hotel Lux is every bit as polished and classy a reconstruction of a bygone era as what Michel Hazanavicius presents in his OSS117 films and The Artist. In 1938, Hans Zeisig, an apolitical comedian, impersonator and cabaret actor, flees with a Russian passport (instead of an American one which he would have preferred) from Nazi Berlin, and finds himself in the legendary...

COLOGNE, Germany -- Fatih Akin's Head-On, the Golden Bear winner at the Berlin International Film Festival, leads the nominations for the German Film Prize, Germany's biggest film awards, with four mentions, including nominations for best picture and best director, as well as best actor noms for stars Birol Unel and Sibel Kekilli. Sonke Wortmann's boxoffice hit The Miracle of Bern, Leander Haussmann's '80s tragicomedy Berlin Blues and Christian Petzold's drama Wolfsberg were close on the heels of Head-On, picking up three nominations each.