Leonora In The Morning Light, about the life of English surrealist and feminist artist, Leonora Carrington, co-directed by Germany’s Thor Klein and Lena Vurma, is making its international premiere in the CineCoPro Competition at the Munich International Film Festival this week, shortly after its world premiere at the Guadalajara International Film Festival in Mexico last month.
The film is also preparing for theatrical release in Germany and Austria (Alamode), Mexico (Piano) and Romania (Transilvania Film). Indie Sales is handling international rights.
It is the culmination of a tumultuous few months for the Germany-Mexico-UK-Romania coproduction that was scrambling for crowdfunding support to complete its visual effects only a few months ago. The project was put in jeopardy after funding originally promised from Romania was lost. When the original Romanian partner dropped out, Bucharest-based VFX house Framebreed took over as coproducer.
The €5m film, produced by Vurma’s Berlin-based Dragonfly Films, has taken almost a decade to complete. Based on the novel ‘Leonora’ by Mexican author Elena Poniatowska, it follows the turbulent life of Carrington who lived from 1917 to 2011.
Carrington was the lover of German painter and poet Max Ernst and a key figure in the surrealist movement of the 1930s. Although born into an upper-class family in the UK, she spent much of her life in Mexico and is regarded alongside Frida Kahlo as among the country’s most important artists of the late 20th century. One of her paintings, Les Distractions de Dagobert, sold last year at auction for $28.5m.
Although long revered in Mexico, Leonora was, until recently, a neglected figure in her homeland. “[Carrington] was an overlooked artist [in her lifetime] but she is finally getting rediscovered in Europe,” said Vurma.
Former Screen International UK Star of Tomorrow Olivia Vinall plays the tormented artist who suffered a severe mental breakdown when she was parted from Ernst during the Second World War.
Vurma and Klein first optioned Poniatowska’s novel in 2016. At the time they were working on the feature Adventures Of A Mathematician about Stan Ulam, the Polish immigrant who moved to the US in the 1930s and was behind the development of the hydrogen bomb. Also sold by Indie Sales, the film was released in North America by Samuel Goldwyn Films.
Through Dragonfly, they looked to find a Mexican coproduction partner that could participate fully in the project. In 2019, Meil Melo, a sister company to producer-distributor Piano (which released Triangle Of Sadness in Mexico) came on board.
The project also secured German regional funding through Hamburg’s MOIN Film Funding Hamburg Schleswig-Holstein and Medienförderung (MDM). Germany’s Ostlicht Filmproduktion joined as German co-producer. Broadcaster ZDF/ARTE, which had done well with Adventures Of A Mathematician, came on board.
Meanwhile, Mexican support was secured through the Eficine programme, an incentive which allows taxpayers to invest in Mexican film projects and then obtain tax credits equivalent to their contributions.
In the UK, Glasgow-based Randan, run by James Heath and Reece Cargan, is the coproducer. The film was backed the UK Global Screen Fund. Later on, the filmmakers also received some post-production funding from Screen Scotland.
Producer-director Vurma is herself now partly based on the Isle of Skye where she has a small UK production company, Skye Films.
Alamode will release Leonora In The Morning Light in Germany on July 17, shortly after Munich. Several collaborations with museums are also being planned including with the Max Ernst Museum in the city of Brühl.
The filmmakers successfully licensed work from Ernst whose original art is represented in the film. Carrington’s work was not directly licensed but the film includes chapter cards from UK artist and graphic novelist Bryan Talbot, co-author with Mary M Talbot of the illustrated book, ‘Armed With Madness: The Surreal Leonora Carrington’. These cards are directly inspired by Carrington’s work.
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