German Talents More Talk Effects Of Production Boom (Video)

With the European Film Market kicking off next week, Deadline sat down yesterday with four top German talents to talk about the major issues facing the German film and television sector as part of industry event Face to Face with German Films 2023: The Filmmakers, held in partnership with German Films.

We were joined by actor Welket Bungué, who has appeared in Berlin Alexanderplatz and David Cronenberg’s Crimes of the Future, The Case You director-actor-writer Alison Kuhn, We Children from Bahnhof Zoo actor Lena Urzendowsky and Reza Memari, writer-director of upcoming animated title The Last Whale Singer.

“A lot of people are interested in telling stories from a very particular perspective which made me think that German cinema and the German industry has space for many more people, either the creatives or those who are the technicians coming into the country to collaborate,” Bungué told Deadline in the panel.

He added that the boom of content has set the bar high for creatives. “During the pandemic we had to reinvent ourselves as an industry and I can say that the quality standards and the audiences is wider than we are used to.”

Kuhn said that she’s noticed trends in the marketplace which are seeing platforms become more open to alternative storylines that wouldn’t have been considered some years ago.

“I think that society changed so much and the film industry follows this change I think a lot of films that I’ve seen or shot myself would not have found a platform a few years ago, for example films about power abuse and films about sexuality,” she said. “I feel that now in the last few years, there’s a big openness in the film industry for new topics so actually it’s a very good starting point for a young filmmaker in the industry.”

For Urzendowsky, she’s been encouraged by the openness of the German market as well and hopes that this will lead to her being able to be involved in more projects that can have greater social impact.

“I think for me it’s important to watch but also to be part of films that leave some lasting impressions on its viewers because I think through films, be it good fiction or documentary, really have the chance or the power to influence our behavior or the way we think,” she said. “That’s why I think art is such a platform to create lasting, systemic change.”

Memari, whose company Telescope Animation is using real-time animation produced by Unreal Engine, shed some light on the experience and how its rendering engine is amplifying the amination sector and is increasing the quality of animated films.

“We can do way more with our time than we used to,” he says, referring to the technology. “We are raising the quality.”

Check out the video above.