Markus Schleinzer, the Austrian director of the Berlinale title Rose, is developing a coming-of-age feature musical called Klaus, which will star actor and musician Christian Friedel.
The project has received €650,000 from the Vienna Film Fund.
Friedel will play German singer Klaus Nomi, an important part of New York’s East Village art scene in the 1970s, before his death from AIDS in 1983. Nomi was known for his bizarre theatrical live performances, heavy make-up and unusual costumes.
The film will incorporate animation elements, with a musical style described as “classic musicals meets new wave and opera”.
Schleinzer is co-writing the project with his Rose collaborator Alexander Brom. They are developing the project with Friedel, whose credits include Jonathan Glazer’s The Zone Of Interest and Michael Haneke’s The White Ribbon.
Klaus is being produced by Vienna-based Schubert Film, which was also behind Rose, the winner of the Berlinale best actress Silver Bear prize for Sandra Huller.
Schubert Film’s Johannes Schubert was also one of the producers of Jessica Hausner’s Club Zero.
Vienna Film Fund
In total, the Vienna Film Fund has awarded €3.4m to new cinema and TV projects in its second funding round of 2026.
Dor Film received €150,000 for the third instalment of the Woodwalkers series. The film will be directed by Florian Sigl, with a screenplay by Gerrit Hermanns, who previously wrote the script for The Flying Classroom (2023). It is a minority co-production between Vienna’s Dor Film, Munich-based Blue Eyes Fiction and South Tyrol’s Filmvergnügen.
The largest grant, €700,000, was awarded to Epo-Film for Catalina Molina’s The Rage That Remains, an adaptation of Mareike Fallwickl’s novel of the same name, which explores female exhaustion, systemic inequality, and the power of feminist solidarity.
Three projects received a total of €500,000 through the fund’s Talent LAB programme. Schubert Füm was again among the recipients, this time with Alva (Renaissance) by writer-director Elena Wolff, which received €225,000.
The same amount was awarded to Simon Maria Kubiena’s The Blossoming Of A Chimera, produced by Chimera Film, while Lisa Polster’s documentary Security, produced by Horse & Fruits Filmproduktion, has received €50,000.
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