Production is underway today (Monday, April 22) in Hamburg on Fatih Akin’s Second World War drama Amrum, with Jasper Billerbeck, Laura Tonke and Diane Kruger leading the cast.
Beta Cinema has boarded the film and will launch international sales in Cannes next month. The film is produced by Akin’s own company bombero international with Warner Bros Film Productions Germany, in co-production with Rialto Film.
Warner Bros Pictures will release the film in Germany in September 2025.
Written by Akin and his In The Fade co-writer Hark Bohm, Amrum is set on the eponymous German island in spring 1945, as a 12-year-old boy helps his mother feed their family in the final days of the Second World War, until the arrival of peace brings new conflicts.
The story is based on German filmmaker Bohm’s own memories. Billerbeck is the young boy, Tonke is his mother, and Kruger plays the wife of the local farmer. Further cast includes Lisa Hagmeister, Detlev Buck, Matthias Schweighofer, Lars Jessen and Bohm himself.
Screen was first to report on the project in 2022; it is the first title under Akin’s multi-year first-look deal with Warner Bros, signed earlier that year.
Filming will take place on Amrum, in Hamburg and in Denmark. Backers include the German Federal Film Board, German Federal Film Fund, Moin Filmforderung Hamburg Schleswig-Holstein, the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and Media, Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg, MFG Baden-Wurttemberg and the Bavarian Film Prize.
Akin’s previous productions through bomber international include Venice 2014 title In The Cut and Cannes 2016 entry In The Fade, for which Kruger won best actress on the Croisette.
Akin said Amrum “began as a Hark Bohm film [and] now becomes my 12th feature film and an extraordinary mission”.
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