The Women of Rosenstrasse, Margarethe von Trotta's first feature film since 1994's The Promise, is to be the first project to be co-produced by Studio Hamburg's feature film production arm Studio Hamburg Letterbox Filmproduktion (SHLF) with Herbert Kloiber's Tele-Muenchen Group (TMG) as part of their recently signed three-picture deal.

The Trotta project, which has been in development for several years and was once mooted as a feature for her former husband Volker Schloendorff, recounts the true case in 1943 of a protest by a group of German women outside of the Gestapo headquarters in Berlin's Rosenstrasse to successfully secure the release of their Jewish husbands who had been arrested by the Nazis.

"The film is not only about the past", von Trotta comments on the film's subject matter. "I think it could give people heart today as well".

The film will be produced by Richard Schoeps, whose credits include Rolf Schuebel's award-winning Gloomy Sunday, and Henrik Meyer, who produced Rainer Kaufmann's Talk Of The Town (Stadtgespraech) and Miguel Alexandre's Gran Paradiso, and will be von Trotta's first feature since The Promise, the opening film for the Berlin Film Festival in 1996.

Another project being lined up by SHLF with TMG as part of the three-picture deal is an adaptation of Hilke Rosenbohm's novel Adam Und Ewig, slated to shoot at the end of 2001 (Screen Daily, February 2001).