Jeremy Strong will portray a Jewish businessman on the run in 1930s Berlin in The Passenger marking the English-language debut of The Girl With The Needle director Magnus von Horn. FilmNation will launch sales in Cannes next month.
Swedish-Polish Von Horn co-wrote the screenplay with Aleko Gotscheff based on the 1938 novel of the same name by Ulrich Alexander Boschwitz.
Strong will play the central character Otto Silbermann, who flee’s Berlin after the November 1938 Kristallnacht pogrom, also known as The Night Of Broken Glass. As Silbermann attempts to escape with his wealth, he drifts from train to train as his homeland becomes a cage and his identity dissolves.
Port au Prince Films’ Jan Krueger and Rosh Khodabakhsh and Lava Films’ Mariusz Włodarski are producing The Passenger, with Martina Valentina Baumgartner on board as an executive producer. FilmNation has acquired worldwide rights excluding German-speaking territories and Poland and is co-financing the project.
“Boschwitz wrote The Passenger as a 23-year-old refugee in 1938,” von Horn said. “He didn’t have the luxury of hindsight, and neither does Otto Silbermann, who moves through Germany over four days believing the next train, the next acquaintance, the next bank counter will return him to the life he knew. I want to make a film about that exact moment, the moment before someone admits the world has changed. I see it everywhere now: in headlines, in negotiations, in the rooms of people I love. We are extraordinary at staying.”
Alice Laffillé negotiated the deal on behalf of FilmNation with Włodarski on behalf of Lava Films and Krueger on behalf of Port au Prince Films.
The Girl With The Needle premiered in Cannes Competition in 2024.
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