Phases of the Project

Research was carried out between 1996 and 2001 in Prague, Bratislava, Banska Bystrica, Berlin, Stuttgart.

Scripts/Financing

There were several drafts from 1998 onwards; a finished script in 2000, a workable treatment in 2001. Project development funding from the MFG in Stuttgart played a large role in pushing the project. After the treatment was passed by the BKM jury in 2000, Malte Ludin reworked an important aspect of it (the narrator’s perspective) in 2001 on the advice of the editors from the Filmboard Berlin-Brandenburg 2001. The deciding approval of funds from the Filmboard went through in 2001. Esther Schapira and Georg Hafner ("Die Akte Brunner") of Hessische Rundfunk showed an interest in the project and joined it in 2001 as co-producers. They were able to pull in as consultants Vera Meyer-Matheis of SR and Gudrun El Ghomry of SWR along with financial support from their broadcasting organizations. The FFA and Filmfonds Wien also supported the project.

Filming

Began in February 2002 and continued, with many interruptions, until June 2002. The film was shot in Munich, Podere Tugliano, Italy, Bratislava and other locations in Slovakia, London, Johannesburg. In July 2003, filming in Kremsmünster, Austria, which had been postponed a year before, went ahead.

Post-production

Interviews in the film were recorded in video format 16:9 on a DVCAM, as this proved to be the best way of getting the content. Other parts were filmed for formal reasons on 35 mm, 1 : 1.85. This decision caused a lot of problems in post-production. The saying that turning a video-based project into something for the big screen will have post-production costs far exceeding the production costs turned out to be true. Editing and montage were carried out using FCP 3.X, then work was continued on AVID-Symphony. The cinema version was copied in several steps onto Digibeta color corrected and projected onto HD or 4 K. The original copy was finished in October 2004.