Marie Kreutzer, the Austrian director who brought us the Vicky Krieps-led historical drama Corsage [+leggi anche:
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intervista: Marie Kreutzer
intervista: Marie Kreutzer
scheda film] in 2022, is currently gearing up to shoot her next feature, titled Gentle Monster. The film, which will be an Austrian-German-French co-production, will also be written by Kreutzer, and has German cinematographer Judith Kaufmann (The Teachers’ Lounge [+leggi anche:
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intervista: İlker Çatak
intervista: Leonie Benesch
scheda film], Corsage, Late Shift [+leggi anche:
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intervista: Petra Volpe
scheda film]) on board as DoP and longtime Kreutzer collaborator Ulrike Kofler as editor.

Gentle Monster is being produced by Alexander Glehr and Johanna Scherz for Austria’s Film AG Produktion GmbH, in co-production with Jonas Dornbach and Janine Jackowski for Komplizen Film (Germany) and Jean-Christophe Reymond for Kazak Productions (France). Gentle Monster was selected as one of ten projects at this year’s Cannes Marché du Film Investors Circle, where producers Glehr and Scherz picked up the ArteKino International Prize of €20,000.

The film follows pianist Lucy Weiss, who makes a sacrifice and moves to the countryside with her husband Philipp, where she uncovers a life-altering truth that rocks her world. Meanwhile, Elsa Kühn, a police special investigator who lives for her job, must take care of her ailing father, who has dementia. The two women become entangled around the lives of men “whose dark sides they would rather not see”, according to the synopsis.

The film will star France’s Léa Seydoux as Lucy, Austria’s Laurence Rupp as Philip, Germany’s Jella Haase as Elsa and France’s Catherine Deneuve as Eryn. Seydoux most recently played in Ildikó Enyedi's acclaimed Silent Friend [+leggi anche:
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intervista: Ildikó Enyedi
scheda film], which premiered at Venice, while Haase is best known for her roles in a variety of German comedies (Chantal in Fairyland and the Suck Me Shakespeer [+leggi anche:
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making of
scheda film] franchise) as well as Leonie Krippendorff’s 2020 Berlin-set sapphic drama Cocoon [+leggi anche:
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scheda film]. Rupp starred in Julia Niemann and Daniel Hoesl’s Veni Vidi Vici [+leggi anche:
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intervista: Daniel Hoesl, Julia Niemann
scheda film] (2024).

Principal photography for the film is scheduled to take 45 days and will unfold in Austria and Germany, with the movie scheduled for completion in spring 2026. Paris-based mk2 has already picked up the rights to its world sales.