European Films

Rivalling film projects are not only the stuff of Hollywood but can happen in Europe too, especially when women are in the director's chair. In Germany, two projects centre on a case of gruesome murders in a Bavarian farmstead in the 1920s that remains unresolved until today. Esther Gronenborn's film Kaifeck Murder, with a screenplay by Christian Limmer and Sönke Lars Neuwöhnerm just finished filming last month. Alexandra Maria Lara and Benno Fürmann star in the main roles of what is described as a mystery thriller. A second project will start shooting in April for Swiss director Bettina Oberli (Die Herbstzeitlosen / Late Bloomers), with Monica Bleibtreu (Vier Minuten / Four Minutes) in the lead. That project will be based on the eponymous bestseller Tannöd from Andrea Maria Schenkel.

 

Mexican director Alfonso Arau (Como agua para chocolate, A Walk in the Clouds) will start shooting on his Italian feature L'imbroglio nel lenzuolo ("A Cheat in the Sheets") on Monday. The film stars voluptuous Italian actress Maria Grazia Cucinotta (Il postino), who also produces the feature. Her sister Giovanna Cucinotta wrote the screenplay together with Franceso Costa, on whose eponymous novel the film is based. L'imbroglio nel lenzuolo tells the story of the arrival of the cinematograph in Naples in 1905, and how the superstitious local population deals with the curious moving images on the improvised screens of the time (the sheets of the title).