Cheeky Girls and Spanish rhythms

by Bénédicte Prot

04/08/2010 - Summer is a notoriously quiet season for distributors, but besides the two rather insignificant US titles distributed by Kinowelt and Sony Pictures, today’s selection of new releases is quite interesting.

Constantin is hoping for success with the teenage girl-centred Cheeky Girls sequel, in which Ute Wieland continues to draw inspiration from Bianka Minte-Koenig’s series of best-selling novels for blossoming young girls with strong characters. This is familiar territory for the director of FC Venus - Women with Balls [trailer], in which some women challenged a male football team.

Cheeky Girls 2 [trailer] catches up with the trio of young teenage girls: Mila, Kati and Hanna, who are still as close despite occasional quarrels. Now they’ve found themselves boyfriends, new problems arise.

Cheeky Girls 2 was once again scripted by Maggie Peren, who has worked with Dennis Gansel, Marco Kreuzpaintner and Detlev Buck (on Hands Off Mississippi [trailer], winner of the Lola Award for Best Youth Film in 2007) and will soon release her second directorial feature, Die Farbe des Ozeans, after the success of Special Escort [trailer].

Like the first instalment, Cheeky Girls 2 was produced by Ulrich Limmer for Collina Filmproduktion.

Meanwhile, Alpha Medienkontor is releasing Stefanie Sycholt’s South African title Themba [trailer], co-produced by Cologne-based companies Zeitsprung Productions and Rheingold Films. It centres on a young man who dreams of becoming a footballer, but has to cope with poverty, family separation, rape and AIDS.

Movienet is launching Antonio Naharro and Álvaro Pastor’s Spanish film Me Too [trailer], about the love a young man with functional Down’s syndrome feels for his "normal" colleague.

Alamode is releasing Map of the Sounds of Tokyo [trailer], by acclaimed Spanish director Isabel Coixet.

Finally, MFA is venturing elsewhere on the globe, bringing to screens South Korean director Bong Joon-Ho’s Mother.

(Translated from French)