Seven years after his last film Good Bye, Lenin!, director Wolfgang Becker is now in preparations for a second feature project entitled Oskar alongside the previously announced Ich und Kaminski.
The Berlin-based production house X Filme Creative Pool had originally unveiled Becker’s plans to adapt Daniel Kehlmann’s novel Ich und Kaminski on the eve of the 2009 Berlinale and shoot the film as a European co-production in autumn 2009 in the Alps, France and Belgium. Daniel Brühl, who became an international name after his lead role in Good Bye, Lenin!, is set to take the lead in this film which is still at the stage of preparation and financing.
In the meantime, Becker is now working simultaneously on preparations for Oskar which tells the true story of the very last film to be made by the Nazis in Austria’s Zillertal in April/May 1945. The screenplay will be written by fellow filmmaker Dani Levy, who is currently in German cinemas with his comedy Life Is Too Long and is a partner with Becker in X Filme.
Becker had first come across the inspiration for Oskar when he spent several days in July 1992 interviewing the veteran DoP Heinz Pehlke who served as an assistant cameraman on the production of Harald Braun’s romantic drama Das Gestohlene Gesicht in Mayrhofen.
The Alpine idyll proved such an attractive prospect for the film technicians and UFA stars suffering from the Allied bombing raids back in Berlin that the number in the crew kept on growing. Leni Riefenstahl and the writer Erich Kästner were among those who joined the production of Das Gestohlene Gesicht.
Pehlke recalls in his interview with Becker that the production had originally had a crew of between 20 to 25 people, but this expanded between March and June to 60 to 70.
Producer Stefan Arndt told Screen Daily that one of the two Becker projects is likely to go into production next year.
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