Maverick German filmmaker Rosa von Praunheim has announced plans for a film about cannibalism.

The move comes in the same week that the trial of a man accused of killing, dissecting and eating another man opened in Germany, causing a sensation in the German media.

Von Praunheim - whose credits include It's Not The Homosexual Who Is Perverse, But The Situation In Which He Lives - said that he had been interested in the subject of cannibalism for some years.

While the current cannibalism case had been the catalyst for deciding to proceed with the project entitled Dein Herz In Meinem Hirn (Your Heart In My Brain), he says he will not be making specific reference to it.

Production by Berlin-based Ziegler Film is slated for mid-2004, and von Praunheim plans to develop the screenplay "as close to reality as possible" working in a workshop with actors.

"In our subconscious we all have such desires. And some people carry them out on our behalf", von Praunheim told tabloid B.Z., adding that he was not advocating a "liberation movement for cannibals". "I am not a judge, but rather an observer. I interpret the alien and the outrageous."

The cannibalism trial centres on computer technician Armin Meiwes, who has already admitted in a recent newspaper interview that he killed and then partly ate his victim.

Meiwes advertised on the internet for a well-built male prepared to be slaughtered and then consumed. The victim, 43-year-old Bernd-Jurgen Brandes, answered the advert.