Films by Finland’s Juho Kuosmanen, Swedish-Georgian filmmaker Levan Akin and Austria’s Ulrich Seidl, are among seven projects supported with a total €1.2m by Germany’s minority co-production fund in its 2026 call.
Berlin-based One Two Films received €200,000 to become a minority co-producer on Kuosmanen’s Dream Come True which is inspired by the true events surrounding the salvaging of the cargo of the world’s most expensive champagne from the two-masted schooner Jönköping in the 1990s.
The production with Denmark’s Snowglobe Film and Finland’s Aamu Film Company will be One Two Films’ second collaboration with Kuosmanen following The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Mäki in 2016.
Akin’s drama Summer In Heat is set in 1993 on the Turkish Black Sea coast during a family wedding, also received €200,000 for the Danish-German production outfit Adomeit Film to be a minority partner with Sweden’s RMV Film as the lead producer and France’s Eaux Vives Productions as a minority co-producer.
Producer Katja Adomeit had previously served as a co-producer on Akin’s Crossing which was the opening film of the Berlinale Panorama in 2024.
Meanwhile, Seidl’s outfit Ulrich Seidl Filmproduktion has received €200,000 for Distances, based on a screenplay the director has written with his wife Veronika Franz and nephew Severin Fiala. The lead producer is Philippe Bober’s Berlin-based Essential Filmproduktion. France’s Société Parisienne de Production is also coproducing.
Ulrich Seidl Filmproduktion and Essential Filmproduktion are also co-producing Kurdwin Ayub’s Stars which has received €100,000 in production funding. It is the final part of Ayub’s trilogy that also comprises Sun and Moon. Inspired by true events in the Iraqi city of Mosul in 2024, Ayub’s screenplay centres on a French journalist caught between the fronts when ISIS suddenly invades the country.
In addition, the Berlin outpost of Denmark’s Zentropa Entertainments received €150,000 for Nikolaj Arcel’s historical drama My Fairytale Life about the quest of Hans Christian Andersen in 19th-century Copenhagen to achieve recognition as an artist. It is from a screenplay written by Arcel and Anders Thomas Jensen based on Jens Andersen’s biography Eventyreren.
Zentropa Germany is run by new CEO Solmaz Azizi.
Finally, €175,000 apiece was granted to another two projects from Portugal and Israel: Frankfurt and Nuremberg-based Grandfilm Produktion will be a minority partner on Portuguese filmmaker Joao Pedro Rodrigues’ gay coming of age tale Afonso’s Smile, which has Lisbon-based Terratreme Filmes working as lead producer with Luxembourg’s Joli Rideau Media and Italy’s Frenesy Film Company
Meanwhile, Cologne outfit 2Pilots Filmproduction is joining Transfax Film Productions’ production of Israeli writer-director Ari Folman’s Thousand Yard Stare, a live-action and stop-motion animation hybrid feature spanning two wars between 1973 and 2023, with KinoElektron also onboard as a French minority co-producer.
Launched in 2024 under the auspices of the German Federal Film Board (FFA) with an annual budget of €1.2m, the minority co-production fund has supported German producers to be involved in projects by filmmakers such as Sally Potter (Alma), Karim Ainouz (Rosebushpruning), Carla Simon (Romería), Kleber Mendonça Filho (The Secret Agent) and Ryusuke Hamaguchi (All Of A Sudden).
The grants of up to €400,000 per project are awarded specifically to projects of “outstanding artistic quality and strong potential for festivals and distribution” .
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