Shortland shoots Lore in Saxony

by Bénédicte Prot

27/07/2011 - The Saxony town of Görlitz (where Tarantino shot a few scenes of Inglourious Basterds [trailer]) is currently playing host to the shoot for Lore by Australian director Cate Shortland (Somersault), adapted from the novel The Dark Room, by British author Rachel Seiffert who is of Australian and German heritage.

Whereas the book told the stories of several German citizens before, during and after the Second World War, the screenplay, co-written by the director and Robin Mukherjee, focuses on 15-year-old Lore, daughter of an SS officer. In the absence of their parents, she single-handedly guides her brothers and sisters across the war-ravaged German countryside to their grandparents’ Hamburg home.

The young heroine is played by Saskia Rosendahl, who stars opposite Nele Trebs (The Door [trailer]), young actor Kai Malina (seen in The White Ribbon [trailer, film focus]) and Ursina Lardi (the baroness in The White Ribbon).

Lore, whose budget is around €4m, is produced by Karsten Stöter for German company Rohfilm in co-production with UK-based Edge City Films and Australia’s Porchlight Films.

The film, which Stöter says “is not a conventional historical film” but an account of a strange journey, received backing from German Federal Film Fund DFFF and the FFA, from German regional funds Mitteldeutsche Medienförderung (MDM), HessenInvestFilm, FilmFörderung Hamburg Schleswig-Holstein and MFG Baden-Württemberg (the 38-day shoot will also take place in these regions) and from Screen Australia, Screen New South Wales and Creative Scotland.

The film will be released in German theatres by Piffl Medien. International sales are being managed by Memento Films, who have already sold the title to French distributor Haut et Court.

(Translated from French)