Germany's Henrik Meyer, one of the producers of Margarethe von Trotta's Venice prize-winner Rosenstrasse, has joined Elizabeth Yake's British Columbia-based production outfit True West Films as a vice president and partner.

Speaking to ScreenDaily.com at this year's Mannheim Co-Production Meetings, Yake explained that they had both been looking for international partners to work with over the past couple of years.

"The strategy is that we will have two companies: firstly, True West Films to make independent, director-driven niche films, and secondly, we will set up a larger company to do more commercial, bigger budget American films with stars attached", Yake said

Meyer, who expects to move to Vancouver next spring to set up True West Films' office there, added that True West's business model "would also see me as a contact person on the ground for German producers. I know the needs and demands of the German producers, directors and actors, and Elisabeth knows the Canadian side. That advantage is something we want to offer both as a service producer and as a co-producer."

As a President/founder of Toronto-based Subjective Eye, Yake has produced seven feature films and documentaries since 1995, including the Canadian-German co-production Desire which garnered two 2002 Genie Award nominations.

In 2000, she then relocated to British Columbia to set up True West. Her latest film, It's All Gone Peter Tong, co-produced with the UK's Vertigo Films, has just wrapped principal photography in Spain.

Meyer worked for ten years for Studio Hamburg, first as a producer and later as president of its feature film subsidiary Letterbox Filmproduktion (Talk Of The Town, Gran Paradiso).

Independently of True West Films, Meyer is currently developing the family entertainment feature Kid City with Warner Bros. Pictures Germany and Vancouver-based Crescent Entertainment, to be directed by Gran Paradiso's Miguel Alexandre.