X-Filme Creative Pool's Wolfgang Becker is developing comedy Hamstrung (Schinken), which could be the first project to go through the company's first-look deal with Miramax.

The film, which Becker will direct, is about a butcher from Aberystwyth, Wales who travels to Phoenix, Arizona, to take part in a world ham championship. X-Filme signed the first-look deal with Miramax in 1998.

Becker said that he is also developing two other directing projects - the long-gestating Sonne and comedy Goodbye Lenin. Sonne was partly shot during the eclipse of the sun last October, but the film is being delayed by further work on a complicated, episodic screenplay.

Goodbye Lenin, written with Cologne-based author Bernd Lichtenberg, is about a young East German trying to hide the truth about the downfall of Communism from his mother who has a weak heart and wouldn't survive the shock.

The films join previously announced projects on X-Filme's slate:

  • Nele & Captain, Connie Walther's East-West love story which is set to start shooting in May.
  • Liebeslied, to be directed by Gigantic director Sebastian Schipper
  • Dani Levy's Jewish family drama Zucker, co-scripted with Holger Franke.
  • Michael Klier's Berlin-set drama Heidi (Kein Alpenepos).
  • Michael Stock's coming-of-age tale Die Aussoehnung.
  • Enter The Void, X-Filme's first non-German project to be directed by French director Gaspar Noe on location in Japan from this spring.