BROTHERS in post-production
In Production and in Post-production January 2023
In production
- BLUE BANKS by Andreea Bortun, producer: EAVE graduate Jean-Laurent Csinidis is in production. Lavinia, a single mother, is trying to make a better living for her and her son in a poor Romanian village on her own terms. She’s impulsive, she miscalculates, she doesn’t know very well how to love. When she gets a job in Marseille, she has to leave her son behind. While she’s away, he grows into a man. Support comes from Eurimages, CNC Romania, MEDIA Europe Créative, the Romanian Cultural Administration Fund, Goethe Institut, France CNC (Cinémas du monde), Région Sud and the Slovenian Film Fund.
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- THE MIRACULOUS TRANSFORMATION OF THE WORKING CLASS INTO FOREIGNERS by Interchange graduate Samir Eshra is in production. The film is based on a historical event which, according to the director, shaped and continues to shape the perception which Switzerland has of the many foreigners who call the country home: the so-called Schwarzenbach Initiative which, at the beginning of the Seventies, aimed to deport half of Switzerland’s foreign workers from Swiss soil. Although those eligible to vote (at that time exclusively composed of overwhelmingly white men) narrowly rejected the initiative, the hostility which they displayed in public towards so many foreign workers who had helped the Swiss economy prosper since the early Sixties was a real shock for many. Among those shocked was young Samir, a fifteen-year-old migrant who lived in Zurich suburb Dübendorf. It’s from the sense of rejection he felt and which shaped the rest of his life that the film unfolds. Produced by Dschoint Ventschr Filmproduktion alongside Italy’s Casa delle Visioni and RSI Radiotelevisione svizzera, was selected for the IDFA Forum and the Apulia Film Forum where it attracted the attention of numerous TV networks (including ARTE) and potential co-producers. Samir also benefitted from a two-month grant from the Swiss Institute in Rome in order to take his research further, as well as support from the Swiss Federal Office for Culture, the Zurich Film Fund, the Canton of Aargau and the “Library of the Working Class” Foundation.
- DAVOS by Jean-Eric Mack and Anca Miruna Lazarescu, producer: EAVE graduate Ivan Madeo is in production. The historical series tells a fictional story with a female main protagonist in six episodes. Johanna is a nurse who gets embroiled in a plot involving international spies. She intends to find her illegitimate daughter and agrees to a dangerous deal with the German secret service. The story is set during World War I in the then supposedly neutral Switzerland. The shooting of the series, co-produced by Germany and Switzerland, started in November 2022 in the German regions of Hamburg, Bavaria and North Rhine-Westphalia. In January this year, the second leg of shooting started in Switzerland, which should last until March. Swiss producer Ivan Madeo, of Contrast Film, says: “It was our goal from the beginning to produce the first Swiss series designed for an international audience.” It’s therefore only logical that the series will be directed by an international duo, which is composed of Swiss director Jean-Eric Mack and German-Romanian helmer Anca Miruna Lazarescu, who both have experience with series. The script has been written by Swiss author Adrian Illien, in conjunction with Thomas Hess, Julia Penner and Michael Sauter. DAVOS is a production by Switzerland’s Contrast Film and Germany’s Letterbox Filmproduktion in co-production with Amalia Film (Germany) as well as the TV channels SRF and ARD Degeto. It has been funded by the Zürcher Filmstiftung, the Teleproduktions-Fond, the municipality of Davos, the cantons of Graubünden and Zug, MEDIA Desk Suisse and the region of Engadin Bassa/Val Müstair. The funding on the German side comes from the Film- und Medienstiftung NRW, FFF Bayern, MOIN Filmförderung Hamburg Schleswig-Holstein, MFG-Filmförderung Baden-Württemberg, Nordmedia Film- und Mediengesellschaft Niedersachsen/Bremen and the German Motion Picture Fund. The release of the spy thriller is planned for winter 2023/2024.
Post-production
- BROTHERS by Tomas Masin, co-producer: EAVE graduate Karsten Stöter is in post-production. One of the most-discussed life stories from the post-war period in Czechoslovakia is that of the brothers Josef and Ctirad Masin. So far, several attempts to shoot the story have ended in failure, but now, Czech director Tomas Masin (a distant relative of the siblings) has wrapped shooting for the film. Preparation for the project has been ongoing for 12 years. In 1953, five young men crossed the border from Czechoslovakia to East Germany. They went to deliver a secret message from a Czechoslovak general to the US authorities, and they planned to join the US Army Special Forces in order to return and liberate Czechoslovakia. The three-day operation turned into “the largest manhunt of the Cold War” as thousands of East German and Soviet troops pursued the group for 31 days through thick and thin. Milan Paumer, Josef and Ctirad Masin eventually made their way to West Berlin. And there, they created an anti-communist resistance group inspired by a World War II resistance leader, Czech general Josef Masin, the brothers’ father. However, the siblings’ heroic legacy has been tainted by the group’s killings of six people. Czech public opinion is therefore divided over their status, with some regarding them as heroes and others as villains. BROTHERS is being produced by Czech outfit FilmBrigade, and co-produced by German production company Rohfilm Production, Slovak firm PubRes and Czech Television. The Czech Film Fund, the Slovak Audiovisual Fund and Eurimages have supported the project.
Page published 31 January 2023.
