Why are Second World War movies still hot property for sales agents?

It is the war that keeps on giving. European sales agents at AFM are again hawking a wide selection of Second World War movies. Certain companies specialise in the field. “If you want a good Second World War film, everyone knows that Beta Cinema has a lot of titles,” says Tine Klint, founder and CEO of Danish sales outfit LevelK.

Beta Cinema’s UK-based head of sales Tassilo Hallbauer agrees that war movies have long been part of Beta’s DNA — ever since the breakthrough of Oliver Hirschbiegel’s Downfall in 2004, with a barnstorming performance from Bruno Ganz as an emotionally unhinged Adolf Hitler, holed up in a Berlin bunker and on the verge of defeat. “We are kind of a specialist for Second World War films. When Downfall became incredibly successful, it shaped a certain profile for us,” says Hallbauer. “Another reason is [us] being a German company — a lot of the Second World War happened in Germany and was caused by Germans. That is a natural fit.”

New perspectives

True to form, Beta is back in Los Angeles this week, looking to tempt buyers with several new war features. It is pre-selling I Is Another, a drama about Heinrich Himmler’s masseur who falsely passed himself off as an Oskar Schindler-like hero, and is also presenting Finnish director Aku Louhimies’ epic Lapland War, a follow-up to his earlier box-office hit Unknown Soldier. 

Beta’s slate also includes Fatih Akin’s coming-of-age drama Amrum, about a 12-year-old boy on a remote island off the North Sea coast at the end of the conflict. Proving a hit in Germany, it has racked up more than $3m in ticket sales since being released last month.

Other sales agents are on the offensive with war movies of their own. Global Constellation is launching its sales campaign for Jan Holoubek’s Polish war drama Wild, Wild East, set in 1943 as a German official investigates the disappearance of a Jewish lawyer from a remote village; Spanish outfit Filmax has Frontier, about a Spanish customs officer helping Jews to cross the Pyrenees and escape the Nazis (Menemsha has taken North America rights); and LevelK has Belgian wartime drama The Soundman, from veteran director Frank Van Passel and produced through Caviar (although Klint points out the love story between a Jewish woman and Belgian soundman in Brussels is not a traditional war picture). 

Sales agents suggest a variety of reasons why their buyers remain so keen on stories set in the era. Some believe the situations in Ukraine and Gaza have given war pictures added relevance and topicality, while others talk of the ongoing fascination among young male audiences with action and battle scenes.

“But what we are trying to find is new approaches to this very familiar world,” says Beta’s Hallbauer, while Global Constellation CEO Fabien Westerhoff notes: “With international conflict dominating global headlines, audiences are reconnecting with the moral complexity of the Second World War. It’s exciting to see filmmakers using the genre not just to look back, but to comment on the world we’re living in today.”

Like Westerhoff, Hallbauer believes war movies are evolving. New filmmakers are taking radically different perspectives on the conflict. For example, Akin’s Amrum is seen from a young person’s point of view while Beta’s Each Of Us is set in Ravensbrück women’s concentration camp. It is directed by a team of female directors and sets out to capture women’s experiences.

War films might generally be targeted to a slightly older audience, but their appeal stretches well beyond European boundaries. Sales agents describe the US, Japan and Australia as also being significant markets. 

“[Asian markets are] not in a great state in general but are still interested in the Second World War projects, especially Japan and, with limitations, also Korea,” observes Hallbauer. “[War films] really do sell, even in some Latin American countries. Normally, for European foreign-language films that are not war related, it has become hard to sell outside of Europe. [But] the Second World War has a bit more of a chance.”

War movies also tend to have a long tail. Most have decent production values, do not date and are often informative. This heightens the value for secondary markets, even when the films are not given full theatrical releases. That is why, when it comes to selling war movies, no-one is looking to retreat any time soon. 

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