12-12-2011

Lithuanian Russian German coproduction Last November to Shoot in 2012

By Anna Franklin

    {mosimage}TALLINN: Last November is the working title for a new 3.5-4m EUR Lithuanian, Russian, German coproduction currently in development and due to start shooting in autumn 2012. The project which will be directed by Benjamin Quabeck is being produced by Amselfilm Productions in Germany and coproduced by Vilnius based UAB Era Film (www.erafilm.lt) and CTB in Russia. According to the Lithuanian producer Rasa Miskinyte speaking at the recent Baltic Event (www.be.poff.ee) the film will shoot mostly in Vyborg, Kronstadt and Kalingrad in Russia with some shooting also in Lithuania.

    The script is by Armen Gasparyan, Benjamin Quabeck, Franziska Mueller. It's 1947 and the Soviets are sending Russians to repopulate the destroyed city of Koningsberg which became present day Kalingrad. A young Russian couple in their twenties whose home was destroyed by the Germans come to Kalingrad to start a new life. But they find that living in the new home they are to occupy is a starving German couple that somehow survived the war. The film centers on the relationship between the two couples and how them finally find a way to live together.

    Miskinyte said the feature film is fiction but it's based on the real based on meomories of the people of the former German region of East Prussia.

    She said: "It's a history that not many people outside our region know about and it is very relevant to understanding what is going on here today."

    The project has development support in all three countries plus MEDIA funds and is not in the process of raising the necessary funds.