Wes Anderson’s The Phoenician Scheme has been awarded the lion’s share of the more than EUR20m paid out by the German Federal Film Fund (DFFF) to 25 film projects in the first four months of 2024.
Studio Babelsberg’s service production arm Zweite Film Service Babelsberg received a grant of over EUR10.4m from the DFFF II fund for Anderson’s film which has been shooting on sound stages at the studios near Potsdam as well as in the surrounding region since the beginning of March.
The fund, which focuses on supporting production service providers if their film’s budget exceeds EUR20m and the German production costs are more than EUR 8m also allocated a EUR2.38m grant to Rat Pack/Westside Filmproduktion for Christian Ditter’s adaptation of Michael Ende’s fantasy novel Momo, with an international cast including Alexa Goodall, Araloyin Oshunremi, Kim Bidnia and Martin Freeman.
In addition, around EUR584,000 went to the Stuttgart branch of the German VFX studio Rise FX for its work on visual effects for Jake Kasdan’s Christmas action-adventure MEA (previously known as Red One), starring Dwayne Johnson, Chris Evans and Lucy Liu.
Meanwhile, more than EUR7m was distributed to 22 projects by the DFFF I fund which supports the producers of feature, documentary or animated films spending at least 25% of their budgets in Germany.
The largest single amount of EUR 1.4m went to Hungarian director Ildiko Enyedi’s Silent Friend, starring China’s Tony Leung, which began shooting in the university town of Marburg in April.
Among the other projects supported by DFFF I include Ulrich Kohler’s Gavagai , produced by Cologne-based Sutor Kolonko with France’s Good Fortune Films at locations in Berlin and Dakar/Senegal, Eva Trobisch’s family drama Etwas Ganz Gesonderes as a production between Trimafilm, if… Productions Film and Komplizen Film, and Swiss filmmaker Stefan Haupt’s adaptation of the Max Frisch novel Stiller, co-produced by Studiocanal as German distributor and sales agent.
In addition, the DFFF I incentive has been accessed by the producers of Andres Veiel’s feature documentary Riefenstahl, which was recently picked up by Beta Cinema for international sales, and Jorg Adolph’s Game Over which follows a group of young people out of their computer game addiction by attending a psychosomatic clinic in the idyllic surroundings of a former monastery.
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