German production company Weydemann Bros. has unveiled two projects in the works, including an English-language drama written and directed by one of Germany’s most prolific young actresses.
Aylin Tezel is making her directorial debut with “Falling Into Place,” a love story set in Scotland and London that follows a romance between Kira and Ian, two 30-somethings who meet while on the run from themselves.
Tezel, a film and television actress who has starred in ARD’s hit “Tatort” crime drama franchise and Showtime’s “Homeland,” next appears in Patrick Vollrath’s upcoming airplane thriller “7500,” alongside Joseph Gordon-Levitt.
Producer Jakob Weydemann said the script, written by Tezel, offers a portrait of today’s restless generation as it struggles with such existential questions as: “How do we use the time that is given to us? Who do we share it with? And do we have to chase, escape or let life happen in order to be happy?”
Jakob and brother Jonas Weydemann are in Cannes packaging and financing the film and aim to start principal photography next year.
Weydemann Bros. is also producing “Niemand ist bei den Kälbern” (“No One Is Watching the Cows”), German-Iranian director Sabrina Sarabi’s sophomore feature.
Based on the successful novel by young German author Alina Herbing, the film follows a young woman living with her boyfriend on a dairy farm in a rural eastern German village who becomes increasingly desperate to break free and move to the city. German weekly Der Spiegel called Herbing’s 2017 novel “one of the most important debuts this year.”
“It’s a very contemporary story about the young generation in Germany’s former East, and about a young woman,” Jakob Weydemann says. “We already received script funding from regional German funder Filmbüro Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and are now financing and casting the project, to be shot in the German language next [summer].”
Sarabi’s debut pic, “Prelude,” a coming-of-age story of about an ambitious young pianist who begins to lose control of his life amid mounting pressure, starring Louis Hofmann (“Dark”) and Liv Lisa Fries (“Babylon Berlin”), will premiere at the upcoming Munich Film Festival. Johannes Nussbaum (“A Hidden Life”), Saskia Rosendahl (“Never Look Away”) and Ursina Lardi (“The White Ribbon”) also star. Co-produced by Markus Kaatsch’s About: Film, “Prelude” hits German theaters this summer.
Jakob and Jonas Weydemann are among Variety’s 2019 Producers to Watch, who will be feted in Cannes.