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Munich, 22 March 2012. Beta Film is coming to the spring TV trade fair MIP TV in Cannes with a line-up of 200 hours of superior international programming, including series such as Tom Fontana’s new project Copper, Arctic Air and Grand Hotel, award-winning feature films like Hell and the Oscar nominee In Darkness, extraordinary TV movies such as Munich ‘72 and A Day for a Miracle as well as event miniseries which include Mary and Odyssey of Heroes.
Following the great international success of Tom Fontana’s series Borgia, Beta Film presents his new project of the multiple Emmy Award-winning showrunner: Copper (10 x 1 h) is a gripping crime series set in 1860s New York City, and centers on Kevin Corcoran (Tom Weston-Jones, “MI-5”), an intense, rugged Irish-immigrant cop working the city’s notorious Five Points neighborhood and struggling to maintain his moral compass in a turbulent world. His friendship with two Civil War compatriots – the wayward son of a wealthy industrialist and an African American physician who secretly assists Corcoran with his work – takes him to the contrasting worlds of elegant Fifth Avenue and rural Harlem. The three men share a secret from their experience on the battlefield that inextricably links their lives forever. Also starring in Copper are Franka Potente („Laconia“, „The Bourne Supremacy“), Kyle Schmid (“Blood Ties”) and Anastasia Griffith (“Royal Pains”, “Damages”), co-creator is Will Rokos (“Monster’s Ball”), producers are Cineflix in association with BBC America, Shaw Media and Beta Film.
Exceptionally high-quality visuals and great story-telling enhance the two international series Arctic Air (10 x 1 h) and Grand Hotel (25 x 1.5 h). The team of pilots of the private airline Arctic Air based near the Polar circle can deal with the most extreme problems in the air and on the ground – but not with keeping Arctic Air from grounding. Adam Beach (“Cowboys & Aliens”, “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit”) plays the lead role in the Omni Film production. In Grand Hotel, a young man infiltrates the lives of the rich and superrich as a valet in the luxurious Grand Hotel after his sister, a chambermaid there, mysteriously disappears. During his undercover investigations, the young man opens doors which would have better been kept shut forever. The Spanish series is produced by bambu producciones and Antena 3.
In the feature-film domain, Beta Film presents, among others, Agnieszka Holland’s Holocaust film In Darkness with Robert Wieckiewicz, Benno Fürmann (“North Face”) and Maria Schrader (“Aimee & Jaguar”) about the struggle for survival of a group of Jews in the sewers of the Polish city of Lodz, which was nominated for the Academy Award as best foreign-language film. The thriller Hell is Tim Fehlbaum’s theatrical debut about a mighty, unending heat wave that is drying up the world and pushing humans to their limits. With the big-city comedy Men in the City II, Simon Verhoeven delivered his second box-office hit in a row, which drew nearly 1.4 million viewers into the theaters in Germany alone.
Among the good dozen of TV movies in the Beta Film lineup are high-caliber productions such as Munich ‘72 and A Day for a Miracle. The attack at the Munich Olympics in 1972 is considered by many as the birth of international terrorism, and the helplessness of the German authorities is incredible not only from our present-day perspective. Israeli director Dror Zahavi shot the temWorx-production (90’) with German, Israeli and Palestinian actors and with the support of Ex-General Ulrich Wegener, a key figure in the events of that time and the founder of the special unit GSG9. A Day for a Miracle (90’, Rowboat/Graf Filmproduktion) tells the true story of the unparalleled and successful battle of a young doctor (Ken Duken, “Laconia”) to save the life of a clinically dead little girl, who lay nearly 30 minutes in an ice-cold pond. In the culture-clash comedy Trouble à la Carte (90’) by U5 Filmproduktion for ARD Degeto, a celebrity chef suddenly finds himself on a farm surrounded by animals he usually only sees in his frying pans and realizes that life in the boondocks can have its advantages.
The miniseries Mary (2 x 90’) portrays the life of the Virgin Mary, a remarkable woman who realized that she was to give birth to God’s Son and had to reconcile a clash of loyalties in her soul: loyalty to Jesus Christ as a loving mother and as a faithful disciple (Lux Vide for RAI /Tellux for ARD). Among the superior miniseries is the nine-million-euro production Odyssey of Heroes (2 x 90’), a round-the-world journey based on true events. During WWI, the German cruiser Emden was sunk in the Indian Ocean. Only a landing party on a lost atoll survived and fought its way on sea and on land to Berlin, 13,000 kilometers away. Starring Ken Duken (“War and Peace”) and Felicitas Woll (“Dresden”), Odyssey of Heroes was produced by Berengar Pfahl Film.
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