Stark wraps Forevermore

by Boyd van Hoeij

26/08/2010 - Director Christoph Stark is about to finish principal photography on his German/Austrian/Luxembourg co-production Forevermore (Für Immer und Ewig) in the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg.

It is the second feature for Stark, a veteran of German TV. The screenplay of the period film is by newcomer Ursula Mauder. The shoot in Luxembourg was preceded by a month of work in Austria.

Produced by German outfit Film-Line Productions, Austrian production company Eclypse Film-und Fernsehproduktions and Luxembourg-based Iris Productions, the €4.2m film is based on the true and unusual love story – to say the least – of the expressionist Austrian poet Georg Trakl and his sister Grete Trakl, a piano player, who lived in fin-de-siècle Vienna.

German actor Lars Eidinger, from Maren Ade’s Everyone Else [trailer, film focus], plays Georg, while newcomer Peri Baumeister plays his younger sibling.

Former Luxembourg Shooting Star Jules Werner co-stars as painter Oscar Kokoschka, while his compatriot Victoire Metzler has been cast as pianist Alma Mahler, the wife of composer Gustav Mahler.

Camera duties are handled by the Lodz-schooled Polish cinematographer Bogumil Godfrejow, a regular collaborator of German director Hans-Christian Schmid (Storm [trailer, film focus], Requiem [trailer, film focus]).

The film is backed by Film Fund Luxembourg, the Austrian Film Institute, Filmfonds Wien and FilmFernsehFonds Bayern. It will hit German screens in the second half of 2011.