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FUNDING Germany

NRW regional fund hands out €2.96m

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- The North Rhine-Westphalia region’s film fund has allocated €2.11m to production, €293,000 to development, €453,000 to distribution, and €106,500 to modernising cinemas.

In its fifth session of aid allocation this year, regional film fund Filmstiftung NRW (North Rhine-Westphalia) has handed out €2.96m in total, of which €2.11 million went to production, €293,000 to development, €453,000 to distribution, and €106,500 to modernising cinemas.

StrombergArne Feldhusen's adaptation of Ralf Husmann’s successful television series (photo), was the production to receive the most, as it earned its production company Brainpool a boost worth €700,000 because it is to be shot entirely in the region.

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Moneypenny received €600,000 to produce Miss SixtySigrid Hoerner’s first feature that is also to be shot entirely in North Rhine-Westphalia. The film, starring Iris Berben and Jesper Christensen (seen in Lars von Trier’s Nymphomaniac), tells the story of a 60-year-old woman who becomes a mother for the first time.

Feo Aladag, the actress who was laden with awards (including the 2010 LUX Prize) for her directorial debut When We Leave [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Feo Aladag
interview: Feo Aladag
film profile
]
, is preparing a second feature, Später im Sommer, a war tale featuring another cultural shock, this time between a German soldier and an Afghan. For this film, she is once again to work with director of photography Judith Kaufmann (Four Minutes [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
If Not Us, Who [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile
]
). The project is produced by Independent Artists, who received €200,000 from the NRW fund, as did Westendfilme for Weiße Ritter, a social film in which its directors Markus Mischkowski and Kai Maria Steinkühler are to play Mike and Alfred, the two unemployed friends living in Cologne that they have already portrayed in their previous films.

€160,000 also went to The Match Factory for Cypriot filmmaker Yannis Economides’ co-production The Six-Fingered Man, a film noir whose action is set in the depths of Athens. Meanwhile, zero one obtained €100,000 for Adriana Altaras – Titos Brille, a documentary comedy about the Croatia-born theatre personality’s family. The same amount was allocated to Lichtblick for a television film on the greatest train robbery of all  times, Martin Witz and Carl-Ludwig Rettinger’s Die Gentlemen baten zur Kasse. As for production company Mascha Film, it was awarded €50,000 for Sumak Kawsay – Das gute Leben, a documentary about Colombia. 

The fund’s aid to screenwriting notably went to Lola Randl for Schnick, Schnack, Schnuck (Coin Film, €25,000), as well as to Christoph Hochhäusler and Ulrich Peltzer (The City Below [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Christoph Hochhäusler
film profile
]
) for Lichtjahre, to tell the tale of journalist at the heart of an explosive case (Heimatfilm, €70,000).

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(Translated from French)

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