The German international sales sector has seen some movement with the news that the German TV distributor peppermint is to launch a feature film distribution arm at the forthcoming MIFED market with eight titles, including Ralf Huettner's romantic comedy Moonlight Tariff (Mondscheintarif) and Stefan Jaeger's digitally shot Birthday.

As part of the company's expansion into selling feature films, peppermint's managing director Michael Knobloch has appointed former EM.TV executive Katja Neufingerl to join the new film division to spearhead internationals sales, with responsibility for the negotiation of licenses, licensor contracts and sales of new rights.

The film line-up - including four market premieres - will also feature Klaus Gietinger's comedy Sawed Off , Peter Gersina's romantic comedy Vienna, the Bulgarian mystical drama The Devil's Tale, Lutz Lemke's 15-minute short The Last Blow Job, Detlev Buck's Bundle Of Joy (Liebesluder) and the thriller Butterflies In The Night.

The slate is available worldwide excluding German-speaking territories, except for The Devil's Tale which has all territories available excluding Japan, Rusisa and all former USSR territories.

peppermint was founded in March 2000 by Knobloch, former Head of International Sales at the KirchGroup's BetaFilm, with Helkon Media taking a 51% stake and Knobloch holding the remaining 49%.

By the end of last year, peppermint had a programme portfolio of over 15,000 hours including 4,000 titles from the Russian state archive. Moreover, thanks to Knobloch's long-standing connections to the Asian market (a branch office of peppermint is also based in Kuala Lumpur), the company was able to conclude a distribution agreement with ZDF Enterprises for at least 4,500 programme hours of TV series and TV movies for Asia.