European cinema has a new production boutique. Austrian producer Johannes Schubert, whose last work with compatriot Jessica Hauser, Club Zerowill be screened in this year’s Cannes competition, has launched a stand-alone production outfit simply called Schubert.
The company’s first slate includes new features from Austrian Markus Schleinzer, director of the 2011 Cannes competition entry Michaeland that of 2018Angelo, which premiered in San Sebastian; Egyptian-Austrian writer/director Abu Bakr Shawky, a 2018 Palme d’Or contender withYomeddine ; and the new project by the German Franz Böhm, whoseDear future children won the 2021 Audience Award at Toronto’s Hot Docs fest.
Rose,Schleinzer’s new film is a 17th-century historical drama set in the aftermath of the Thirty Years’ War, in which a mysterious soldier appears in a remote Protestant village claiming to be the heir to a long-abandoned estate. The soldier tries to fit in and even considers an arranged marriage to a wealthy farmer’s daughter, but the villagers and an old servant on the estate doubt his true identity. The project, inspired by hundreds of documented cases of transgender figures in European history, is in the funding phase, with Germany’s Karsten Stöter of Row Pictures on board as co-producer and supported by the Austrian Film Institute and the Vienna Film Fund. Packaging is underway and Schubert expects to unveil a cast of a major German actress to play the lead role soon.
Bohm’sKeep her quiet, which has received pre-production funding from the German MFG Film Fund, the Austrian Film Institute and the Vienna Film Fund, is a fictionalized thriller based on the true story of the journalists who first reported on the existence of internment camps for the Uyghur Muslim minority in West -China. The film follows a Uyghur journalist from Washington DC who risks everything to uncover the truth about China’s policy of “cultural genocide” and follows the escape of a young Uyghur woman from the camps.
Schubert develops Abu Bakr Shawky’s for something completely differentRamses, a political satire/road movie set against the attempt to build the first car ‘made in Egypt’ in the 1960s. But when the car breaks down on a test drive through the Austrian Alps, Selma, a young motoring journalist, discovers the truth behind the vehicle’s origins and finds herself at the forefront of a diplomatic crisis. The project is still in the scripting stage.
Operating in Austria and Germany, Schubert also wants to get on board projects as a co-producer, hoping to take advantage of Austria’s new manufacturing boost, which includes a potentially groundbreaking 60 percent tax cut in addition to a 35 percent tax boost. up to $5.5 million (€5 million) per project on an international local spend of at least $109,000 (€100,000) above Austrian funding.
