Titel Kino 2/2001(2 Alternativ) - German Films

Die Prüfung
Original Title Die Prüfung Type of Project Feature Film
Genre Love story Production Company Mediopolis Film
GmbH, Cologne, in co-production with WDR, Cologne With
backing from Filmstiftung NRW Producer Alexander Ris
Commissioning Editor Andrea Hanke (WDR) Director
Seyhan Derin Screenplay Seyhan Derin Director of
Photography Martin Farkas Principal Cast Arzu Bazmann,
Fatih Alas, Dennis Grabosch, Volker Büditz, Sigo Lorfeo, Dinah
Maria Helal, Lilia Lehner, Nina Jaruga, Klaus Nierhoff, Sabine
Adams Format Super 16 mm, color, 1:1,85 Shooting
Language German Shooting in Cologne from 6 March 2001
for 25 days.
Contact:
Mediopolis Film- & Fernsehproduktion GmbH
Bülowstr. 66 · D-10783 Berlin
phone +49-30-2 35 56 00 · fax +49-30-23 55 60 66
www.mediopolis.de · email: office@mediopolis.de
Principal photography wrapped at the beginning of April on
Seyhan Derin’s debut fictional feature-length film Die
Prüfung at locations in and around Cologne.
Produced by the Cologne outpost of Berlin-based production
company Mediopolis Film, whose past credits include Thomas
Riedelsheimer’s Rivers and Tides (Fluss der Zeit) and
Fred Kelemen’s Nightfall (Abendland), Derin’s romantic
drama was made within the framework of broadcaster WDR and
the Filmstiftung NRW’s ”Six Pack“ initiative for first-time directors.
As Mediopolis Film’s Alexander Ris recalls, Munich’s
Academy of Television & Film (HFF/M) graduate Derin initially
34
Fatih Alas (photo © Mediopolis Berlin GmbH)
approached him with another script (for Papierdrachen, which
they will now film later) and then suggested Die Prüfung which
he describes as ”a love story and a first love against all odds with a
happy end“.
”What we like about this film is that it is not a heavy subject“,
Ris explains, ”it is a universal love story set against a real social
background with real people and their problems. Love is something
universal, as are the problems young people have when
they go against their parents’ wishes to live with someone in
another land“.
Die Prüfung centres on Deniz, a girl of Turkish descent in her
last year of school, who had met and fallen in love with a young
man called Umut on a visit in Turkey. He returns to Germany illegally
to be reunited with Deniz, but his presence threatens to
jeopardize Deniz’s preparations for her school-leaving exams,
much to the chagrin of her parents who demand that she break
off all contact with the impetuous young man … ”We spent a very
long time casting for the film“, Ris declares, ”because we needed
actors around eighteen to nineteen, so we couldn’t take people
who were much older and had played lots of roles“. At the same
time, Die Prüfung marks a reunion of director Derin with
cinematographer Martin Farkas who worked most recently on
Dominik Graf’s Der Felsen and had been behind the camera
for her on her award-winning documentary Ben annemin
kiziyim – Ich bin Tochter meiner Mutter.
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Semper 2000
Original Title Semper 2000 (working title) Genre Creative
Documentary Production Company Next Film Filmproduktion,
Hamburg, in cooperation with ZDF, Mainz With
backing from FilmFörderung Hamburg, Mitteldeutsche
Medienförderung Producer Thomas Tielsch Director
Thomas Tielsch Screenplay Thomas Tielsch, Niels Bolbrinker
Director of Photography Niels Bolbrinker Editors
Thomas Tielsch, Niels Bolbrinker Length 80 min Format
35 mm, color, 1:1.66 Shooting Language German
Shooting in Dresden, Berlin
Contact:
Next Film Produktion GmbH
Lippmannstr. 53 · D-22769 Hamburg
phone +49-40-4 31 86 10 · fax +49-40-43 18 61 11
email: nexthh@nextfilm.de
In the historic center of the German city of Dresden, one of the
baroque treasures of Europe, not far from the Semper opera and
the Frauenkirche, both destroyed in the last days of WWII and
now restored to their former glory, a new temple is taking shape.
A Volkswagen factory.
This, however, is no ordinary building. On one level it provides
transparency into the manufacturing process in that customers can
watch their vehicle, one of the 150 luxury and off-roadsters per
day, being assembled before their eyes. But here, purchasing a car
becomes part of tourism, part of a cultural experience. For the
first time, a company is no longer sponsoring culture, it is
presenting itself and its products as culture.
Nothing comes close to the automobile in terms of the changes it
has wrought in the last century. How fitting it is, then, that it is a
car manufacturer, presenting the final assembly of a luxury pro-