The White Masai,directed by Hermine Huntgeburth, has become the second local film this yearafter Til Schweiger's Barefoot to take the number one spot at the Germanbox-office.

The love storybetween cultures between a Swiss businesswoman and a black Masai warrior hadbeen primarily targeted by distributor Constantin at female audiences, althoughthe Euros 7m production has also received positive responses from malecinemagoers at test screenings. The film is an adaptationof Corinne Hofmann's best-selling autobiographical novel of the same name.

Released on September 15 aftersuccessfully premiering at the Toronto Film Festival the previous day,Huntgeburth's film attracted around 50,000 admissions on the first day ofrelease and sold a total of 301,265 tickets from 385 prints over the first fourdays.

While garnering a screen average of 782admissions per print - second only to the 831 of Tobis Filmkunst's release ofJim Jarmusch's Broken Flowers - The White Masai's solid openingdid not come close to eclipsing another Constantin release, OliverHirschbiegel's Oscar-nominated Downfall (Der Untergang) which was seenby 483,585 cinemagoers and took over Euros 3.5m in its first weekend a year agoafter also having its world premiere in Toronto.

The next release likely to appealparticularly to female audiences will be Concorde's Ladies In Lavenderon October 6, which had been the closing film of this year's Munich FilmFestival at the beginning of July.