Nobel prize-winner readies for big screen
Cologne is currently hosting the filming of Die Buddenbrooks, the cinematic feature debut by television director Heinrich Breloer. The production has received €2.15m from the Nordrhein Westfalen regional film fund (Filmstiftung NRW).
The screenplay, written by Dr Horst Königstein and Breloer (both Thomas Mann specialists, Breloer having worked on TV docufiction Die Manns - Ein Jahrhundertroman, which won him the new Adolf Grimme prize and an Emmy award, among others), is the adaptation of one of the principle works that won Mann the 1929 Nobel Prize for Literature.
The Buddenbrooks – a bourgeois family living in the north of Germany who the famous writer knew and whose destiny he narrated over four generations – will be played by Armin Mueller-Stahl, Iris Berben, Jessica Schwarz, August Diehl and Mark Waschke.
Lensing is taking place until mid-November in the Buddenbrooks family home in Lübeck and at the Cologne film studios. In addition to the big screen version, which will be released in December 2008 (Warner Bros), a two-part television film will be made at a later date by ARD.
Die Buddenbrooks is being produced by Colonia Media and Bavaria Film, in co-production with FilmInterest, WDR, NDR, SWR, BR, Degeto and ARTE.
(Translated from French)
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