30/06/2014 - The Filmförderung Hamburg Schleswig-Holstein is supporting film projects and distribution with more than €3 million

The Filmförderung Hamburg Schleswig-Holstein (FFHSH) is to provide €3 million of fresh backing. The biggest share of the funding has been snapped up by Hamburg-based filmmaker Fatih Akin, who is due to shoot his next feature film, Aus dem Nichts, completely in Germany. Produced by his new production outfit, Bombero International, the drama is about a heavily overweight train conductor, who feels like a misfit because of his size. He decides to turn his life around, joins the radical left-wing scene and plans a bloody assassination. The FFHSH has given the project a cash injection of €600,000.

A new talent from Hamburg is film director Max Zähle, who received a Bronze Medal at the Student Academy Awards as well as an Oscar nomination for Best Live Action Short Film for his project Raju. His first feature, Schrotten, is about a dubious insurance agent who is trying to save his late father’s run-down scrapyard by planning a coup. Together with his brother, he plots to rob a train. For this adventure, Hamburg-based production company Tamtam Film received €380,000 in production support.

Meanwhile, Mads Mikkelsen and Ulrich Tukur are set to star in the drama The Lion Woman [+see also:
trailer
interview: Vibeke Idsøe
film profile] by Vibeke Idsøe (Body Troopers), about a girl with a genetic defect. Because her body is covered entirely with blond hair, she lives totally isolated in the confines of her room until she is able to escape by creating her own world. The story is based on the bestseller by Erik Fosnes Hansen. Cologne-based Gifted Films West is getting €250,000 for this Swedish-German co-production.

Among the other projects that have received funding in Hamburg are Studio Hamburg Nachwuchspreis winner Dietrich Brüggemann's political satire Heil [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Dietrich Brüggemann
film profile] (Studio Hamburg Filmproduktion, €250,000) and the children’s movie Winnetous Sohn (Kinderfilm, €250,000) by André Erkau (Life Is Not for Cowards [+see also:
trailer
film profile]). For the 2D animated movie My Family and the Wolf, which is being produced in co-production with partners in France and Poland, Hamburg-based Ulysses Filmproduktion benefitted from €200,000. One last misfit is Hendrik Hölzemann’s protagonist Axel der Held, who prefers to live in a miniature version of his village, where he will no longer be ignored. Produced by Ostlicht Filmproduktion in Weimar, the project is being backed with €120,000.