Angelina Maccarone belongs to a generation of well-known German independent filmmakers. She has worked for television and has made a number of feature films. She has a great deal of experience with crime flicks but has also made documentaries, such as, most recently, The Look [+leggi anche:
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scheda film], a portrait of Charlotte Rampling. Her new feature project is a thriller, for which she wrote the screenplay back in 2017 and won an award for it. The shooting of Turning Tables happened in several phases: the first was in Tangier in mid-December 2022, the second took place in Frankfurt from mid-February to mid-March, and the third ended in Erfurt at the end of March.

“Our film finds Frankfurt to be the perfect place to tell this European story: an international metropolis with many wonderful, original motifs, a great atmosphere and, last but not least, a highly motivated, professional team,” say producers Martina Haubrich and Claudia Schröter and director Angelina Maccarone.

The logline of the film is as follows: “An artist, Richard, can no longer afford his British home and is now living in Tangier. With his help, young Moroccan man Malik makes it to Europe, the destination of his dreams. There, of all people, conservative politician Mathilda ends up hiding him. Mathilda’s assistant Amina, who finally wants to leave her Moroccan roots behind, is called in as a ‘cultural mediator’ to solve the problem. But Malik has plans of his own and unwittingly unleashes an avalanche.”

In keeping with this transnational story, the film will feature an international cast. Two veterans of European cinema play two of the main roles – namely, French actor Lambert Wilson, who is also currently starring in Eric Besnard's feature A Great Friend, and Barbara Sukowa, who can presently be seen in the German-Belgian television series The Swarm [+leggi anche:
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intervista: Leonie Benesch
scheda series], in the role of a scientist. They are joined by two younger, up-and-coming actors: German-Iranian thesp Banafshe Hourmazdi (No Hard Feelings [+leggi anche:
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intervista: Faraz Shariat
scheda film]) and France’s Habib Adda.

Several German funding institutions and television channels are involved in the making of the thriller. The project’s development was supported by the BKM Drehbuchförderung script-funding programme and the FFA Drehbuchfortentwicklungsförderung, as well as by the Development Programme of the EU’s Creative Europe and eQuinoxe Europe.

Turning Tables is a production by CALA Filmproduktion GmbH, Berlin, CALA Film Central GmbH & Co KG, Erfurt, and CALA Film West GmbH, Darmstadt, in co-production with Hessischer Rundfunk and in cooperation with ARTE. The film is supported by Hessen Film und Medien, BKM, MDM, MBB and DFFF. The movie is in post-production and will be distributed by German firm Farbfilm Verleih.

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