13/06/2017 - The FFA has greenlit funding for documentaries on great artists and feature films for a young audience, among other titles

The German Federal Film Board (FFA) has greenlit ten feature films and five scripts with a total support amount of €3.6 million. The filmmakers whose new features and documentary projects will receive production grants include writer-director Margarethe von Trotta (Hannah Arendt [+see also:
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interview: Margarethe von Trotta
film profile]), Markus Goller (Friendship! [+see also:
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film profile]), Bastian Günther (Houston [+see also:
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film profile]) and animated film director Toby Genkel (Richard the Stork [+see also:
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film profile]). More than half of the supported projects are children’s films or documentaries.

On the occasion of the 100^th anniversary of the birth of Ingmar Bergman in 2018, German writer-director duo Margarethe von Trotta and Felix Moeller will explore his cinematographic heritage in the documentary Searching for Ingmar Bergman [+see also:
trailer
film profile], for which C-Films (Germany) is receiving €80,000 in production support. A sum of €200,000 goes to the documentary Kulissen der Macht, in which Israel’s Dror Moreh shows how international leaders have reacted when civilians have become victims of massacres since the end of the Cold War. In the documentary Cunningham [+see also:
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film profile], Alla Kovgan will bring legendary American choreographer Merce Cunningham to the big screen. This ambitious project is being funded with €190,000.

Among the fiction features that are receiving production support is Bastian Günther’s drama Avalanche, starring German actor Ulrich Tukur (In the Fade [+see also:
film review
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interview: Fatih Akin
film profile]), for which Flare Film will get €300,000. Meanwhile, Markus Goller will shoot the buddy movie 25 Km/h, in which Lars Eidinger and Bjarne Mädel are dissimilar brothers who embark on a trip across Germany on a small moped, as they had previously planned to do as teenagers. For this road movie, production company Sunny Side Up has secured €494,000. Memories of old times also play a key role in Dagmar Seume’s feature Der kleine König Dezember, in which an aircraft engineer is trying to get his wife back with the help of a fantasy figure from his childhood. Based on the bestseller of the same name by Axel Hacke and co-written by Ulrich Limmer, the Collina Filmproduktion production gets €443,000 in production support.

Altogether, the FFA is fostering four films that are being produced for children or young audiences. They include Toby Genkel’s Die Olchis – der Kinofilm, which is based on a popular children’s book about green creatures that eat rubbish (€400,000), Hilfe, ich hab meine Eltern geschrumpft by Tim Trageser (€500,000), Wickie und das Zauberschwert by Eric Cazes (€480,000) and Fünf Freunde - Im Tal der Dinosaurier [+see also:
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film profile] by Mike Marzuk (€450,000).