20/01/2009

The new project by director-actor-screenwriter-producer-editor Detlev Buck (Tough Enough [+see also:
trailer
film profile], Hands Off Mississippi [+see also:
trailer
film profile]) – which began shooting last November in Cambodia – is a true adventure.

Same Same But Different has indeed taken its team across Cambodia and Thailand and back to Hamburg. Their journey is recounted in an original initiative: a blog created by Boje Buck Produktion and available at the web address: http://samesame-themovie.com.

The film sees Buck team up again with young Shooting Star 2009 David Kross, who was discovered in the director’s award-winning Tough Enough (winner of the FIPRESCI Award and the Europa Cinemas Label at the 2006 Berlin Film Festival). The actor has since gained international renown thanks to The Reader [+see also:
trailer
film profile].

Kross stars alongside Apinya Sakuljaroensuk in this unusual and touching love story inspired by Benjamin Prüfer’s eponymous 2006 autobiographical work. The story immediately appealed to Buck, who says he always wanted to make a film that "not only explores love but explores love alone, but no such story had turned up before".

The film – co-written by Ruth Toma, Buck and the actor Michael Ostrowski – retraces Benjamin’s great Asian love affair. Having finished school, he sets out on a voyage to this faraway continent and soon falls in love with a young Cambodian woman, Sreykeo.

She works in a night bar but helps him discover a superb country caught between modernity and ancient beliefs. It’s only when he returns to Germany that the protagonist realises he is prepared to do anything to ensure their love is eternal.

The film also reunites the director with DoP Jana Marsik, with whom he worked on the children’s film Hands Off Mississippi.

Same Same But Different is produced by Buck’s partner Claus Boje for their jointly-owned company. The film will be released domestically by Delphi Filmverleih in autumn 2009.

(Translated from French)