Katja von Garnier wraps filming for Ostwind

by Bénédicte Prot

08/08/2012 - Katja von Garnier has just wrapped 40 days of shooting for a film that marks her return to directing, five years after Blood and Chocolate and 15 years, almost to a day, after the releasee of her feature debut Bandits (which in 1997 recorded over one million admissions, and attracted a mostly female audience).

Ostwind, her fifth film, once again has a rather feminine theme. Its young heroine, Mika (Hanna Höppner), is sent to spend the summer holidays on her very strict grandmother’s farm, as a punishment for failing her end-of-year exams. She is supposed to be revising, but among the horses she soon forgets any revision and dreams instead of taming a stallion named Ostwind that no one has yet been able to approach. The day she slips into the horse’s box, a great friendship is born between her and the animal. It turns out that she can speak to horses.

The film's screenplay, written by Kristina Magdalena Henn and Lea Schmidbauer, holds echoes of Von Garnier’s own childhood. She compares her childhood among animals to that of a sort of Pipi Longstocking, a reference that explains her choice to dye her blond actress’ hair flaming red for the film. Shooting such a bucolic tale around Immenhausen in summertime was a very pleasant experience for the whole crew.

On set, the main actress acted alongside German star Jürgen Vogel (The Wave [trailer]) and Nina Kronjäger, as her parents, Cornelia Froböss, as her grandmother, and Marvin Linke, as the young groom.

Ostwind is produced by Ewa Karlström and Andreas Ulmke-Smeaton (who also recently produced Fünf Freunde, a Mike Marzuk adaptation of the Famous Five adventures) for Sam Film. Constantin is to release the film in Germany on March 21, 2013.

(Translated from French)