15/10/2012 - The scriptwriter of the recent Cracks in the Shell is shooting the tough story of a woman from Eastern Germany in a Western Berlin refugee camp

Since October 9, Christian Schwochow (photo) has been shooting an adaptation of Julia Franck’s novel Campfire. The 34-year-old filmmaker who made November Child (his film school final year project that notably won the Audience Award at the 2008 Max Ophüls Festival) and Cracks in the Shell [+see also:
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Lagerfeuer (lit. "Campfire") is set in 1978 (the year the director was born). Nelly is a woman from East Germany. After the father of her son, who was wanted by the Stasi, disappears, she also finds herself being persecuted by the infamous state police. She and her child are admitted to the Marienfelde refugee camp in West Germany, but instead of a new life, there she finds a hell of promiscuity, quarantine, CIA interrogations, and generalised suspicion that make her and her son’s integration impossible.

Nelly is played by Jördis Triebel (Emma’s Bliss [+see also:
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Lagerfeuer is produced by Terz Filmproduktion (Cologne) with Berlin-based production companies zero one (who already produced Lola-award-winning documentary Gerhard Richter with Terz) and Ö Filmproduktion. The project is supported by the FFA, the Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg and NRW regional funds, and the MEDIA Programme. Its international sales are to be handled by The Match Factory. In Germany, Schwochow’s new film is to be distributed by Senator.

(Translated from French)