24/11/2011

Today, exactly one month away from Christmas Eve, Constantin is launching When Santa Fell to Earth [+see also:
trailer
film profile], the second feature by Oliver Dieckmann after Pizza and Marmelade (2008). This production by leading children’s film producer Uschi Reich is adapted from a novel by Cornelia Funke, the famous children’s novelist whose work has previously inspired the series The Wild Chicks and Hands off Mississippi [+see also:
trailer
film profile].

In this family film, the last real Father Christmas, Niklas (Alexander Scheer), falls out of the sky into the street where Charlotte and Ben (whose pastry chef mother is played by Jessica Schwarz) live. In the course of a thousand adventures peopled with fairytale characters, the two children help him to find his reindeer again and rescue Christmas from its exploitation by consumerist society.

This week, Constantin has more than this wonderful treat in its sack: the leading German company is also releasing Roman Polanski’s latest film, the European title Carnage [+see also:
trailer
film profile], which it co-produced. The film, which describes the encounter between two sets of parents whose sons have got into a fight at school, was co-scripted by the director and Yasmina Reza based on one of Reza’s plays (God of Carnage). It features an impressive international cast, including Jodie Foster, John C. Reilly, Kate Winslet (pictured) and world-renowned Viennese thesp Christoph Waltz (pictured).

Meanwhile, Movienet is giving audiences the chance to discover Anna Justice’s melodrama Remembrance [+see also:
trailer
interview: Anna Justice
film profile], produced by Berlin-based MediaPark. It is based on a true story, about a love affair that develops in a Polish concentration camp and is resumed 30 years later, even though the lovers each thought the other was dead.

The other new German releases in the line-up are Eike Besuden’s docu-fiction Max Windmüller, Story of a Jewish Resistance (distributed by Barnsteiner) and Marie Losier’s documentary The Ballad of Genesis and Lady Jaye [+see also:
trailer
film profile], co-produced with several European countries and the United States.

One of Polanski’s fellow Polish directors, Lech Majewski is today releasing his artistic film The Mill and the Cross [+see also:
film review
trailer
making of
interview: Lech Majewski
film profile], inspired by a Bruegel painting and starring Rutger Hauer, Charlotte Rampling and Michael York (distributed by Neue Visionen).

This week’s enticing line-up of releases also includes Andreas Öhman’s Swedish comedy Simple Simon [+see also:
trailer
film profile] (distributed by Arsenal) and Michaël R. Roskam’s Dutch/Belgian thriller Bullhead [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Bart Van Langendonck
interview: Michaël R. Roskam
film profile] (distributed by Rapid Eye Movies).

(Translated from French)