Garbarski’s My Friend Vijay will star Moritz Bleibtreu

by Boyd van Hoeij

05/04/2012 - The German-born, Belgium-based director of 2007 Berlinale hit Irina Palm [trailer, film focus] (European Film Award nominations for Best Actor and Actress for Miki Manojlovic and Marianne Faithfull) and the more recent A Distant Neighbourhood [trailer, film focus], a French-language adaptation of Jiro Taniguchi’s manga starring Pascal Greggory and Alexandra Maria Lara, will start shooting his latest film on April 16.

My Friend Vijay, which is described as a comedy, tells the story of an actor (Moritz Bleibtreu - pictured) who is stuck on a New York City children’s TV show. After a traffic accident in which he is mistakenly pronounced dead, he decides to attend his own funeral disguised as a Sikh. What he didn’t expect to happen was that his now widowed-wife (Patricia Arquette) suddenly takes a romantic interest in the Indian stranger she’s met at the funeral.

The film, which was written by the director, regular co-writer Philippe Blasband and U.S. screenwriter Matthew Robbins, is a three-way co-production between Belgium, Luxembourg and Germany and is set to shoot through June 12 on locations in Luxembourg, New York and Cologne, Germany.

The director’s regular production companies, Brussels-based Entre Chien et Loup and Luxembourg outfit Samsa Film will again produce, this time in collaboration with the Germans of Pandora Filmproduktion.

The project’s backed by Filmstiftung NRW, Filmförderung Hamburg-SchleswigHolstein, Luxembourg Film Fund and the Belgian Ministry of the French-Speaking Community.