Kampf to be UFA Cinemas first film

New company adapts Tabori's Hitler play BERLIN Mein Kampf, an adaptation of George Taboris grotesque theatrical work, has become the first film announced by the newly launched producer-distrib UFA Cinema.

New company adapts Tabori's Hitler play

BERLIN — “Mein Kampf,” an adaptation of George Tabori’s grotesque theatrical work, has become the first film announced by the newly launched producer-distrib UFA Cinema.

Urs Odermatt is directing the film, which focuses on Adolf Hitler as a young man in Vienna.

Pic, which starts shooting in the Austrian capital next week, will explore Hitler’s life as he moves from the Austrian province to the big city with the hopes of becoming an artist.

Popular young thesp Tom Schilling plays Hitler, who, upon arriving in Vienna, moves into a hostel with two Jews who will have a long-lasting impact on the neurotic outsider’s future.

German star Goetz Georg toplines as Schlomo Herzl, a traveling bookseller who is in the process of writing his own book, entitled “My Life.” Unimpressed with the title, his fellow roommate Lobkowitz suggests “My Struggle” (“Mein Kampf”), a title that impresses the young Hitler.

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Oliver Berben and Thomas Peter Friedl of UFA Cinema are co-producing “Mein Kampf” with Berlin-based Schiwago Film, Hugofim and Vienna-based Dor Film in cooperation with pubcaster ZDF’s theater outlet ZDFtheaterkanal and fellow pubcasters 3Sat, ARTE, Austria’s ORF and Switzerland’s SRG SSR.

Pic is funded by German, Austrian and Swiss subsidy orgs, including the FFA and BKM, regional orgs MDM, Hessian Film Fund, Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg, the Federal Film Fund (DFFF), the Austrian Film Institute and the Swiss Federal Office of Culture.

UFA Cinema will release the film in Germany next year, with Filmladen Filmverleih handling Austrian rights.

UFA Cinema has some 40 projects in development but has so far only announced “Mein Kampf” for its upcoming lineup. Company is looking to produce up to eight films a year with budgets ranging from E4 million to E15 million ($6 million-$24 million).

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