29/09/2009

After the collective project Germany 09 [+see also:
trailer
film profile], to which he was a major contributor (see review), internationally-renowned German director Tom Tykwer has confirmed his intention to focus on his country’s situation. The director of large-scale international co-productions such as Perfume: The Story of a Murderer [+see also:
trailer
film profile] and The International [+see also:
trailer
film profile] starts shooting this week on his first entirely German-produced, German-language feature for ten years: Three.

For Tykwer, who wrote the film’s screenplay, this project is the culmination of a long-held desire to explore familiar territory and speak "for a generation, perhaps".

Starring Sophie Rois (The Architect [+see also:
trailer
film profile]), Devid Striesow (Yella [+see also:
trailer
film profile]) and Sebastian Schipper (who appeared in Tykwer’s Wintersleepers in 1997), the film centres on 40-something couple Hanna and Simon, who both secretly fall in love with fascinating Adam.

Through them, the director says he looks at "the nostalgia, hopes, mysteries and contradictions" of three contemporary Berliners, three people who, half-way through their lives, ask themselves which is "the 'right' life path".

According to Tykwer’s long-time producer Stefan Arndt, who along with the director, Wolfgang Becker and Dani Levy co-founded in 1994 X Filme Creative Pool, which is helming Three (in collaboration with co-producers WDR, ARD Degeto and Arte), the film "is in the tradition of Wintersleepers, Run Lola Run and Deadly Maria", with the only difference that, with age, the director has "become more humorous", for "love after 40 is less fraught with implications", and lighter.

Shooting will take place until the end of November in Berlin and the surrounding area. Arndt points out that "Berlin is the film’s fourth protagonist" and the team will shoot in around 100 different locations in the capital.

Loyal to both his producer and technical collaborators, Tykwer reunites for Three with DoP Frank Griebe, production designer Uli Hanisch, French editor Mathilde Bonnefoy, and musicians Reinhold Heil and Johnny Klimek, with whom the director will co-compose the original soundtrack.

X Verleih plans to launch Three domestically at the end of next summer.

(Translated from French)