07/08/2006

Ewa Karlstroem and Andreas Ulmke-Smeaton initially met when they were accepted as the first intake for the new Production and Media Economy course established by Klaus Keil at Munich's Academy of Television & Film in 1989. However, on completing their studies, they went their separate (and successful) paths. They had both gathered invaluable experience overseeing the production of TV series and TV movies when the decision came to set up shop together as SamFilm in 1997.

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"There wasn't any particular concrete project which made us decide to found the company," Andreas recalls. But it didn't take long before the new young outfit had its first project rolling. "Screenwriter Peter Gersina came to us with the idea for Love Scenes On Planet Earth and we picked Marc Rothemund to make his debut feature with this film. It was shot very quickly and was a great success with over 1.3 million admissions."

Someone up there has evidently looked kindly on Ewa and Andreas with the success of the series of The Wild Soccer Bunch films and A Christmoose Carol: the first Wild Soccer Bunch film just missed out on the 1 million mark, while the second film attracted more than 1.5 million cinemagoers, and the third outing has been seen by over 2 million and was the most successful German release in the first six months of 2006. The first two Soccer Bunch films were sold to 25-30 territories and had built up such awareness amongst buyers that the sales agent [Telepool] was able to sell the third film to Brazil and Russia purely on the strength of the trailer at this year's European Film Market in Berlin. However, SamFilm's top-seller has so far been veteran Dutch director Ben Verbong's A Christmoose Carol which was sold to an impressive 40 countries around the globe.

While SamFilm's success has latterly been based solely on family entertainment, Andreas stresses that the company is "open for any genre, but they have to be things which we believe in and have fun doing. We always keep the market in mind when choosing our projects because we think they should have a chance of being successful. At the same time, we are a small company and we want to stay this way," he notes. "We have remained resolutely independent and there hasn't been any pressure to become associated with a larger company. I see it as a certain privilege to be an indie."

The company's future output will not be restricted only to family entertainment: "A change in direction for us is to be involved now in a small low budget film called *WWGW - *Weisst' Was Geil Waer...?!, directed by Mike Marzuk and we are also developing Joachim Masannek's long-cherished adaptation of the novel Tuareg by the bestselling Spanish writer Alberto Vazquez-Figueroa."

Together with other dynamic young production companies like Claussen + Woebke Filmproduktion, Goldkind Film or Rat Pack Filmproduktion, SamFilm has played a significant role in the current renaissance of German cinema. "German films certainly seem to be on an upswing. I believe that this is primarily due to a desire from the audience for authenticity: the cinemagoers can better identify with these stories because they are nearer to their own reality than in other films."

At the same time, he suggests that there is an "urgent need" for new financial incentives such as those being mooted by State Minister for Culture Bernd Neumann to give a boost to the German film industry and bring it onto an even keel with its international competitors. “Financing film projects has never been easy – and it won't be any easier in the future – but we need incentives like those existing in other countries."