European Films

 

After portraying a modern-day rebel in Die fetten Jahre sind vorbei (The Edukators) and the titular Nazi-era hero in Sophie Scholl - Die letzten Tage (Sophie Scholl - The Final Days), more rebellion is on the way for German actress Julia Jentsch, who will next star as the iconic Effi Briest. The film will be directed by Hermine Huntgeburth, whose Die weisse Massai (The White Masai) was a phenomenal success in Germany and was also widely screened outside of the country. Effi Briest is  a creation of novelist Theodor Fontane and is one of the most famous women in German literature; she is often seen as the German equivalent of Anna Karenina and Madame Bovary and like them she is stuck in a suffocating 19th century marriage and sees adultery as the only way out. 

 

Also like Anna Karenina and Madame Bovary, Effi Briest has inspired several film adaptations. The most famous one is also the most recent and already dates from 1974: Rainer Werner Fassbinder's Effi Briest cast Hanna Schygulla as the titular heroine. In Huntgeburth's adaptation, written by Volker Einrauch and simply titled Effi, Jentsch will play the titular girl in 19th century Prussia who is married off to the rather boring Baron Geert von Instetten, a man often away on business, leaving the household in her sole care. Effi then falls under the spell of another married man: Major Crampas.

 

The latter role is the only major role that remains to be filled. As the conservative Baron, Das Leben der Anderen (The Lives of Others) and Zwartboek (Black Book) star Sebastian Koch has been cast, while Effi's mother Luise von Briest will be played by Juliane Köhler, who played Eva Braun in Der Untergang (Downfall) and who is currently filming another true WWII story: Anonyma - Eine Frau in Berlin.

 

Filming on Effi is scheduled to start in September on location in Berlin and the surrounding Brandenburg area. The film will be released in Germany in 2008.

 

Julia Jentsch was last seen in the Czech tragicomedy Obsluhoval jsem anglického krále (I Served the King of England), which was part of this year's Berlinale competition.