New films by actor-director Matthias Schweighofer, Marco Kreuzpaintner, Robert Glinski, and Bettina Oberli are among the titles being lined up by German sales agents Global Screen and Picture Tree International (PTI) for the Marché du Film in Cannes next month.

Joy of Fatherhood

Munich-based Global Screen will be unveiling five market premieres:

  • actor-director/producer Schweighofer’s third directorial outing, the romantic comedy Joy Of Fatherhood (Vaterfreuden), adapted from Murmel Clausen’s novel Frettsack, was released by Warner Bros. Pictures Germany in February, has been seen by more than 2.3 million cinemagoers and taken more than €17.7m ($24.5m) to date.

  • the 2D and 3D versions of the English-language animated feature The Seventh Dwarf (Der 7bte Zwerg), directed by Harald Siepermann and actor Boris Aljinovic, to be released by Universal Pictures in Germany this autumn.
The film was also presold to many territories, including

  • Christian Bach’s feature debut, the coming of age/family drama Flights Of Fancy (Hirngespinster), which received Bavarian Film Awards this January for lead actor Tobias Moretti and newcomer Jonas Nay. Movienet will release the Roxy Film/Glory Film production in German cinemas on October 8.

  • Anna Justice’s partly animated family entertainment film Pinocchio, starring Mario Adorf as Gepetto, Sandra Hüller and Ulrich Tukur, which was originally aired as a two-part TV mini-series by ARD last Christmas.

  • Marco Kreuzpaintner’s latest feature film, the Berlin-based pacy comedy Coming In, starring Kostja Ullmann and Aylin Tezel, which will be released by Warner Bros. Pictures Germany in German cinemas this autumn.

A reworking of Thomas Bahmann’s 1996 TV comedy of the same name, Kreuzpaintner transfers the action to the world of hairdressing salons with a hip celebrity snipper falling in love with the quirky owner of a neighbourhood salon. The only ‘problem’ is that she’s a woman, and he’s gay. 

Kreuzpaintner announced his intention to make the film back in 2010, but it appeared that the project had been put on the back burner when his planned biopic on the legendary film-maker Rainer Werner Fassbinder came into sight. However, the unwillingness of German television to become a partner of Rainer scotched those plans, which consequently saw Coming In coming back into the picture and going into production at the end of last year.

Bahmann was a co-screenwriter of Kreuzpaintner’s 2004 gay coming of age film Summer Storm (Sommersturm), which also starred Ullmann.

Coming In twice

A film with the same title was announced during this year’s Berlinale by France’s Gaumont - ahead of Global Screen’s own news that it acquired the international distribution rights for Kreuzpaintner’s romantic comedy.

Paris-set comedy Coming In by Noémie Saglio and Maxime Govare, starring Pio Marmai and Franck Gastambide, centres on a gay man who wakes up with a blonde Swedish bombshell on the eve of his wedding to his long-term partner. Delivery of the film, which was shot in Paris last autumn, is planned for the second half of 2014.

However, Global Screen is not worried that its buyers might be confused by there being two films called Coming In on offer in the market.

Evelyn Holzendorf of the Munich-based company told ScreenDaily that the producers of Kreuzpaintner’s film had their title protected in all of the important territories during development of the screenplay.

“It was only in France that this wasn’t possible as the title was already registered,” she explained. “So, our distributors will be able to use the title in their countries and Gaumont’s film will have to be renamed in all countries except for France.”

Global Screen will also present a showreel of English-language family entertainment film The Legend Of Longwood, directed by Irish director Lisa Mulcahy and starring Lucy Morton, Thekla Reuten, and Miriam Margolyes. The €5m ($6.9m) Irish-Dutch-German co-production shot at locations in Dublin and Wicklow towards the end of 2013.

Picture Tree picks up six for Cannes

Fledgling Berlin-based sales company Picture Tree International (PTI) will attend its second Cannes Marché with six brand new titles from Germany, Poland, Switzerland and Austria in its line-up.

PTI will have market premieres of:

  • producer Sigrid Hoerner’s directorial debut, the comedy Miss Sixty, starring Iris Berben and Edgar Selge, which was released by Edition Senator in German cinemas last Thursday (April 24);

  • Polish director Robert Glinski’s historical drama Stones For Rampart, based on the 1943 novel of the same name by author and resistance fighter Aleksander Kaminski;

  • Swiss film-maker Bettina Oberli’s lighthearted comedy, the Swiss-German co-production Lovely Louise, with Stefan Kurt and Nina Proll;

In addition, PTI will showcase a further three pick-ups currently in post-production:

  • Florian Mischa Böder’s German-French comedy A Hitman’s Solitude Before The Shot, with Benno Fürmann and Mavie Hörbiger;

  • Austrian director David Ruehm’s vampire comedy Therapy For A Vampire, with Tobias Moretti and Jeanette Hain, to be released in Austrian cinemas in autumn 2014;

  • Swiss film-maker Simon Jaquemet’s feature debut, the nightmarish drama War (Chrieg), produced by Hugofilm Productions.

Market screenings are also lined up by PTI for Bora Dagtekin’s German box office hit Suck Me Shakespeer (Fack Ju Göhte); Christian Schwochow’s East-West drama West (Westen); and Petra Volpe’s Dreamland.

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