Patra Spanou Film Acquires San Sebastian Competition Title ‘Blue Moon’ (EXCLUSIVE)

Christopher Vourlias Sebastian Meise’s “Great Freedom,” a prison drama about a gay man repeatedly incarcerated under a draconian law outlawing homosexuality in West Germany, won the award for best feature film at the Sarajevo Film Festival.The Austrian director took home the Heart of Sarajevo at Thursday night’s ceremony, while leading man Georg Friedrich won the award for best actor for a film that won the runner-up prize in Cannes’ Un Certain Regard sidebar.

Annika Pham German sales outfit The Playmaker Munich, formerly ARRI Media International, has shared with Variety the international trailer of psychological thriller “Wolka,” produced by leading Icelandic banner Sagafilm with Poland’s Film Produkcja.The feature will bow as a market premiere at Haugesund’s New Nordic Films, Scandinavia’s major film showcase which runs Aug.

Anna Marie de la Fuente Koch Media has acquired German and Italian VOD rights to Russian filmmaker Anna Zaytseva’s feature debut “#Blue_Whale” ahead of its Aug. 17 world premiere at the 25th Fantasia Int’l Film Festival.“Searching” and “Profile” creator and Screenlife format pioneer TimurBekmambetov is a co-producer of “#Blue_Whale.”The cautionary tale is inspired by a news story Zaytseva came upon years ago which was later presented to her as a treatment.

Annika Pham Swiss-based sales outfit First Hand Films has added major territories to Tribeca and Haugesund entry “A-ha: The Movie” doc, helmed by Thomas Robsahm (“Modern Slavery,” “Punx”) together with Aslaug Holm (“Generation Utøya”).Lighthouse Entertainment has snapped rights for the U.S., Modern Films for the U.K., A Contracorriente for Spain, Periscoop for Benelux, Pannania for Hungary and Side Project Production for Taiwan.Earlier distribution deals were closed with Germany (Salzgeber),

EXCLUSIVE: Blood Red Sky is now officially Netflix’s most successful German content to date, film or TV, having been watched by more than 50 million households around the world in its first 28 days on the platform. That surpasses the historical series Barbarians, which previously held the record.

France and Germany, which limit foreign ownership in the media.

John Hopewell Chief International CorrespondentCurrently shooting “Sisi” for the RTL Group and Beta Film, Germany’s Story House Pictures has added N’Gone Thiam to the core writing team of six-hour suspense drama “Mozart/Mozart,” another powerhouse IP production, currently in development, which it will unveil an Series Mania.“We’re super proud to have a young German writer of African heritage writing with us,” said Andreas Gutzeit, showrunner and managing director at Story House Pictures.He

John Hopewell Chief International CorrespondentHBO Europe and Berlin-based Dreamer Joint Venture Filmproduction have boarded “Trust Me,” Joanna Ratajczak’s probing doc feature on a real life couple’s experimentation with an open relationship.“Trust Me” will be presented at Locarno’s Match Me networking event by Stanislaw Zaborowski, at Warsaw’s Silver Frame, the project’s lead producer.

Director Chad Stahelski is a busy man, he’s currently shooting “John Wick 4” in Germany with Keanu Reeves back in the lead role, and Lionsgate already has plans for “John Wick 5.” But he’s lining up even more beyond the world of ‘Wick.’ Deadline reports that Warner Bros. and Stahelski are teaming to develop a new incarnation of the 1979 novel “Shibumi” written by Trevanian (“The Eiger Sanction“) with the possibility that it could turn into a directing vehicle.

Naman Ramachandran Warner Bros. International Television Production Germany (WBITVP Germany) has acquired the exclusive international rights to bestselling Icelandic author Ragnar Jónasson’s “Dark Iceland” series of crime novels and will co-produce with Herbert L.

traffic light system has been updated with new travel restrictions on popular summer hotspots. The latest rules, which apply to Scotland, come into effect at 4am on Sunday, August 8, with changes to the green, amber and red lists.

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Naman Ramachandran Following an option deal with ITV Studios, Germany’s ProSieben has commissioned a local season of MTV reality format “True Love or True Lies?” This is the first local adaptation of the format since the original launched on MTV in 2018 and the first time ProSieben has adapted an original MTV format. Shot on the Spanish island of Mallorca and locally titled “How Fake Is Your Love?,” the series will premiere Sept.

Rebecca Davis editorTop Chinese social media platform Weibo has banned the official account of the German consulate in Guangzhou for “violating community standards” after it posted information about a LGBTQ film festival jointly hosted with 16 other foreign governments.The ban, which has now been in effect for more than two full days, was instated after nationalist Weibo users flooded the platform’s censors with reports that the German consulate’s message was politically problematic.All of the

Manori Ravindran International EditorFormer Tele München Group managing director Herbert Kloiber’s Night Train Media has taken a majority stake in London-based non-scripted distributor BossaNova as it looks to align its documentary and drama businesses.Under the deal, BossaNova — founded last year by non-scripted veterans Paul Heaney and Dina Subhani — will have access to an acquisition fund to fulfil the company’s mission of co-creating and co-funding projects by matching producers with the