 After a long and muddled pre-production history with several changes of director and lead actress, a start date has finally been set for Die Päpstin (Pope Joan), the big-screen adaptation of the bestselling Donna Cross novel of the same name. German director and former professional football player Sönke Wortmann ( Das Wunder von Bern / The Miracle of Bern) is now at the helm of medieval epic, with rising German star Johanna Wokalek ( Barfuss / Barefoot) taking on the title role. The project had initially been in the hands of director Volker Schlöndorff ( Der neunte Tag / The Ninth Day) with star actress Franka Potente ( Elementarteilchen / Atomised) cast in the lead role. The story recounts how the young German-English girl Johanna von Ingelheim rises through the ecclesiastical ranks disguised as a male scholar. She is finally crowned successor of Saint Peter in 853. The Vatican has always maintained that the story is a fabrication. Shooting on the film is now scheduled to start in August for a release sometime in 2009. (photo: Johanna Wokalek as Johanna von Ingelheim, (c) Constantin Film) |
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A favourite of francophone children everywhere and the first experience of French literature for many French students abroad, writer René Goscinny and illustrator Jean-Jacques Sempe's classic Le petit Nicolas (Nicholas) will finally get the big screen treatment. The film project will be directed by Laurent Tirard (Molière) and will star Kad Merad (Bienvenue chez les Ch'tis / Welcome to the Sticks) and Valérie Lemercier (Les fauteuils d'orchestre / Avenue Montagne) as Nicolas's parents. The title role of the mischievous little pupil -- who tells the story from his unique point of view -- still remains to be cast. (source: allocine)
Antichrist, the much-anticipated return to the horror genre of director Lars von Trier (Manderlay) will be filmed over 25 to 35 days at the tail end of the summer in Germany. It tells the story of a wedded couple who retreat to an isolated forest cabin after the woman starts suffering from an anxiety neurosis following the death of their 3-year-old son. Her husband, who is an experienced psychologist and seems to suffer less from the loss, hopes his isolation experiment will help his wife. The screenplay of Antichrist, a co-production involving Denmark, Germany, France and Italy, was co-written by the prolific Anders Thomas Jensen. (source: Filmstiftung NRW) |
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 After his 1980s-set pansexual drama Les témoins (The Witnesses), French veteran director André Téchiné returns to the present for his latest project, tentatively titled La fille du RER ("The Girl on the Train"). The film will start shooting next month and is based on a true story of a mythomaniac young woman who told the French media in 2004 that she had been the victim of an anti-semitic attack on one of the Paris-area urban trains (the "RER" of the French title). The star of the Dardenne brothers' Rosetta, Émilie Dequenne, will play the young woman (called Alice in the film), while veteran actress Catherine Deneuve will play Alice's overbearing mother Louise. It will mark Deneuve's 6th collaboration with Téchiné; more than any other director in history. |
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