Munich – Oliver Hirschbiegel’s 13 Minutes (aka Georg Elser) has been among the top sellers at this year’s AFM with a wide range of deals closed for all continents. After securing an all-rights-agreement from Beta Cinema for UK and Ireland, Studiocanal also locked the rights for Australia and New Zealand. Furthermore Beta Cinema sold the emotional portrait of the resistance fighter who tried to assassinate Hitler to Japan (Gaga Communications), France (Sophie Dulac Distribution), Scandinavia (Svensk Filmindustri), Benelux (September Film Rights), Brasil (Mares Filmes), Greece (Feelgood Entertainment), and Colombia (Cine Colombia).
Beta Cinema’s AFM promo reel raised also strong interest from distributors in the U.S., amongst others.
13 Minutes relates the background of the failed attack on Hitler on 8 November 1939 in the Munich Bürgerbräukeller, where Hitler left the scene only 13 minutes before the explosion – leaving Elser to fail catastrophically. Painting a suspenseful, emotional portrait of “Georgie”, how he was called in his hometown, the story takes us from Georg Elser’s early years in the Swabian Alps – when National Socialism arose – to his last days at the Dachau concentration camp, where he was killed shortly before the end of the war.
Academy Award-nominated Hirschbiegel (Downfall) is supported by high-ranking talents before and behind the camera: Christian Friedel (The White Ribbon), Katharina Schüttler (Generation War) and Burghart Klaußner (The White Ribbon) take the leads; among the crew members are author Fred Breinersdorfer (Sophie Scholl), DOP Judith Kaufmann (Four Minutes) and the set-designer duo Benedikt Herforth (Rommel) and Thomas Stammer (Generation War). The Hirschbiegel film is a production of Lucky Bird Pictures in coproduction with SWR, ARD Degeto, BR, WDR, ARTE, Delphi Medien, Philipp filmproduction and Broth Film. Producers are Oliver Schündler, Boris Ausserer (Lucky Bird) and Fred Breinersdorfer (Delphi). NFP (The Lunchbox, Hannah Arendt) will release the feature in April in Germany.
