12/06/2025 - The feature-length fiction debut by the German director, a drama set during the years of the country’s reunification, stars Italian actress Gerti Drassl in the lead role

Gerti Drassl and Clemens Bobke in Patty (© Fünferfilm)

Patty is the working title of a new historical drama film. At the centre of the story is a woman named Patty, who lives in East Germany, in the GDR, as the country collapses and German reunification is made possible. She loses her job at a local, state-run factory. One day, she enters the forest in the Kyffhäuser mountains and disappears. Some 30 years go by, after which she suddenly emerges again. She has not aged a day, though, and finds herself back in the times of the GDR.

Berlin-born filmmaker Luise Donschen wrote the script and was in charge of directing the film, which is her first fiction feature. Donschen graduated from the University of Fine Arts in Hamburg, and debuted with her documentary Casanova Gene [+see also:
trailer
film profile] in the Forum section of the 2018 Berlinale.

The shooting of Patty took place over the course of 30 days between August and September 2024, in the Saxony, Thuringia, Berlin and Brandenburg regions. Production duties were assured by Julia Cöllen, Frank Scheuffele, Karsten Krause (for Fünferfilm), and Mariam Shatberashvili and Luise Hauschild (for co-producer New Matter Films).

The cinematography was handled by Helena Wittmann, who is an up-and-coming filmmaker to watch herself. So far, she has overseen the camerawork for a series of shorts as well as for documentaries. She also writes, directs and edits her own short-film projects, and her first feature-length effort was the documentary Human Flowers of Flesh [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Helena Wittmann
film profile], released in 2022. Fanny Welz was responsible for the set design, while Marie Gerstenberger and Ulrike Plehn (Deeply) took care of the costumes, and Johann Meis (Sound of Falling [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile]) and Johannes Doberenz (A Higher Law [+see also:
interview: Octav Chelaru
film profile]) the sound design.

The cast of Patty assembles an international ensemble of up-and-coming and more experienced actors. Besides young talents Clemens Bobke and Nele Christoph, the movie stars Austrian-based Italian thesp Gerti Drassl (Persona Non Grata, Welcome Home Baby [+see also:
film review
film profile], Franky Five Star [+see also:
film review
interview: Birgit Möller
film profile]) and Swiss actress Manuela Biedermann (A Forgotten Man, Semret [+see also:
trailer
interview: Caterina Mona
film profile]).

Patty is a Fünferfilm production in co-production with New Matter Films. It was funded by Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg, BKM, MDM, MOIN Filmförderung Hamburg Schleswig-Holstein and the DFFF. The release is planned for early 2026, and the film is handled internationally by Grandfilm GmbH.

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