01/03/2007

After an avalanche of awards for his debut feature The Lives of Others [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Florian Henckel von Donners…
interview: Ulrich Muehe
film profile] (see Focus), topped off with the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar, Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck finds himself in a relationship of mutual attraction with Hollywood.

As written in Daily Variety in the days following the Academy Awards, brothers Bob and Harvey Weinstein (The Weinstein Co.) are currently negotiating a deal with the young German director to make an English-language remake of his film on the East-German Stasi. The film is set to be directed by two-time Oscar winner Sydney Pollack (Out of Africa, 1986), who runs Mirage Prods with partner Anthony Minghella, whose 1997 film The English Patient picked up nine Oscars.

Donnersmarck is reported to be happy about the choice of director. "Tootsie and Out of Africa are marvellous films. With Pollack, my film is in good hands," said the director.

The filmmaker is unsure as yet about the content of the remake. A transposition to the current US context seems absurd to him because although parallels do exist with the Patriot Act, "2007 America and 1984 East Germany are not quite the same thing," he said. Whatever the content will be, Donnersmarck's role in the new project, as he pointed out, will only be that of "an advisor, a producer".

Meanwhile, the German helmer is planning to make the most of his new-found fame on American shores to put his talents to work in Hollywood.

However, the director will not abandon Europe and will work, like Wim Wenders and many of his peers, on both sides of the Atlantic. "I think that it's possible to combine the two,” he said. “That's what I want to do".

(Translated from French)