Jaco van Dormael's latest feature Mr Nobody, based on his own original screenplay, is the second film after Kevin Spacey's Beyond The Sea to be awarded a state guarantee by the Land of Brandenburg.

Brandenburg will guarantee up to 80% of the $7.1m (Euros 5:25 m) loan from Commerzbank, which is financing the German co-producer's equity contribution to the film.

The project is being structured as a German-French-Belgian co-production between Marco Mehlitz's Berlin/Potsdam-based Lago Film and Alfred Hurmer's Integral Film with Paris-based Somebody Production and Dormael's Toto & Co Films.

The $49m (Euros 36m) production, starring Jared Leto, Sarah Polley, Eva Green and Linh Dan Pham, began shooting from mid-June in Belgium and will come to Berlin and Brandenburg for location work as well as to Babelsberg Studios for interiors from October until the end of the year. Wild Bunch are handling international sales on the film.

Spacey's Bobby Darin biopic became the first film production to benefit from the State of Brandenburg's guarantee scheme at the beginning of 2004 when Studio Babelsberg Motion Pictures (SBMP) was able to use the guarantee.

At the time, Henning Molfenter, then SBMP's head of production, now managing director, had noted that 'without the state guarantee, Kevin Spacey would have been in England with his project. It is particularly in the independent sphere that this form of financing is very important as a way of bringing projects to Babelsberg. For we are competing globally with all the studios and, apart from the suitable locations and production possibilities, an additional source of financing alongside the classic film subsidies will become more and more important, especially in view of the EU enlargement.'

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