EXCLUSIVE: Germany-set drama and TV mini-series in works.

Like Water Like Chocolate director Alfonso Arau is in development with Bagdad Café writer Chris Doherty on 1930’s-set drama The Crime of Love, about an illicit love affair between two German officers in Nazi Germany.

Carsten Lorenz is on board to produce the project, which is being exced by Mark Holdon with Arri Worldwide in talks to handle sales.

“I was looking for a great love story,” Arau told Screen. “Germany in the 1930s was such an interesting and intense period in history that I knew I wanted to set this love story at that time.”

“This project, like the greatest romance of all, Romeo and Juliet, is about real love in a world where such love is prohibited.”

Arau’s hit romance-drama Like Water for Chocolate was nominated for a BAFTA in 1994.

Latest directorial effort L’imbroglio nel lenzuolo (2010) starred Maria Grazia Cucinotta and Geraldine Chaplin.

Arau and exec Mark Holdom are also developing a TV mini-series on the Spanish conquest of Mexico called Conquest of the Sun, with Houdini writer Nicholas Meyer in talks to script.

The director-actor is simultaneously working with writer Doherty on a script about astronaut Jose M Hernandez.