Face to Face with German Films Unveils the Six ‘Faces’ of 2019 (EXCLUSIVE)
By Leo Barraclough
LOS ANGELES (Variety.com) – Teutonic promotional organization German Films has announced that its annual initiative supporting German filmmaking internationally, Face to Face With German Films, will focus on actors and actresses as the campaign enters its fourth year.
Six of Germany’s leading thesps – Maria Dragus, Christian Friedel, Luise Heyer, Jonas Nay, Jördis Triebel and Fahri Yardim – will represent the German film and television industry’s recent accomplishments through activities at next month’s Berlin Film Festival, including a panel event in association with Variety and Drama Series Days, the European Film Market program focusing on serialized content.
The initiative launched in 2016 with six German actresses headlining the campaign – including “Toni Erdmann’s” Sandra Hüller, and Paula Beer of “Frantz” and the Golden Globe and Oscar-nominated “Never Look Away.” In 2017, the second phase of the initiative launched during Cannes and featured six of Germany’s most exciting actors, including established names such as Alexander Fehling (“Three Peaks,” “Homeland”) and Tom Schilling (“Woman in Gold,” “Oh Boy,” “Never Look Away”), as well as new faces such as Louis Hofmann (“Dark” and the Oscar-nominated “Land of Mine”).
Last year saw six German directors heading the campaign’s third phase, all of whom have garnered a great deal of international recognition for their work to date: Emily Atef, whose feature film “3 Days in Quiberon” was in competition at the Berlinale in 2018; Lars Kraume, whose “The Silent Revolution” (featuring one of the 2017 Faces Ronald Zehrfeld and this year’s Face Jördis Triebel) screened as a Berlinale Special Gala at the 2018 Berlin Film Festival; Anca Miruna Lazarescu, whose latest feature “Happiness Sucks” opened the 2018 Hof International Film Festival; Burhan Qurbani, whose highly-anticipated “Berlin Alexanderplatz” is already creating a lot of buzz; and David Wnendt, whose “The Sunlit Night” is premiering on Jan. 26 at Sundance.
This year’s actors and actresses are representative of the industry’s recent national and international successes, including Dragus, seen in “Mary Queen of Scots”; Friedel, known for Oliver Hirschbiegel’s “13 Minutes,” and most recently in the series “Babylon Berlin” and “Perfume”; and Heyer, who is in “Dark” and the German box office hit “That Boy Needs Fresh Air” by Oscar-winner Caroline Link.
Following the highly acclaimed television series “Deutschland 83,” which was sold to more than 20 countries, Nay reprised his break-out role as the show’s hero in the second season, “Deutschland 86,” which premiered on Amazon Prime in 2018; Triebel can be seen in two internationally acclaimed Netflix series, “Dark” and “Babylon Berlin”; while Yardim has starred in the television series “Jerks” since 2017, and also takes on one of the leading roles in Netflix’s second German-language series, “Dogs of Berlin.”
Mariette Rissenbeek, managing director, German Films, commented: “Since the first edition of Face to Face With German Films we’ve seen each year that the presentation of German film talent on the international stage has been embraced enthusiastically. In the past few years, TV series made in Germany especially have deeply impressed international audiences, and so it was a natural next step for us to put talents from current series at the heart of the new edition of the Face to Face With German Films campaign. On top of that, it is actually a wonderful reunion, as we know them from acclaimed feature films as well. So we are presenting the best of both creative worlds in this international campaign!”
