Deutschstunde goes into post-production
- Production wrapped two weeks ago for Christian Schwochow’s adaptation of Siegfried Lenz's novel The German Lesson
Christian Schwochow, the much-lauded director of the recent Paula [+see also:
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film profile] (2016), is moving away from the city and the world of high finance depicted in his mini-series Bad Banks to settle in a small Northern German village shortly after the Second World War, with Deutschstunde, adapted from Siegfried Lenz's 1968 novel The German Lesson [+see also:
trailer
film profile] by the director's own mother, Heide Schwochow, who also scripted his previous films November Child [+see also:
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film profile] (2008), Cracks in the Shell [+see also:
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The main character, Siggi Jepsen, is the son of a local German police officer with such a keen sense of duty that he continues to obey the Nazis' ban on his own childhood friend's expressionist paintings, even after the war, much to his son's dismay, as Siggi is trying to save them. This central character will be played by two newcomers at two different ages: Tom Gronau and Levi Eisenblätter. The rest of the stellar cast includes Tobias Moretti, Sonja Richter and three former European Shooting Stars: Johanna Wokalek, Maria Dragus and Louis Hofmann.
The film was shot in the space of two months, from mid-March to mid-May, in Schleswig-Holstein, Hamburg, North Rhine-Westphalia and Denmark, with Schwochow's regular collaborator Frank Lamm serving as the DoP. Deutschstunde is being produced by Jutta Lieck-Klenke, Dietrich Kluge and Ulf Israel for Network Movie, in co-production with Senator Film Produktion, in cooperation with ZDF, and with the support of the German Federal Film Board/FFA, the German Federal Film Fund/DFFF, the Federal Ministry of Culture/BKM and the funds of the regions involved.
The international sales of the movie are handled by Wild Bunch.
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