EXCLUSIVE: Ilker Çatak, whose The Academics’ Lounge was nominated for an Oscar as Germany’s Worldwide Function Movie submission, accomplished capturing his new movie Yellow Letters in Hamburg on Wednesday evening, the manufacturing’s producer Ingo Fliess has revealed to Deadline.
Yellow Letters was filmed below strict safety precautions due to what Fliess known as the movie’s cultural and political “delicate nature,” including that “I wish to defend my actors and crew, and I wish to defend our working scenario.”
However now with the movie being shot and everybody leaving city at this time [Thursday], “I feel we will simply open the doorways a bit wider,” Fliess mentioned throughout a break from the Hamburg studio set. The movie additionally shot in areas within the surrounding space, and briefly in Berlin.
Filming started in Berlin within the final week of Might. Fleiss mentioned that Yellow Letters is about “a wedding below strain.” Turkish stars Özgü Namal (Kizil Goncalar, Merhamet, Hanimin Çiftligi) and Tansu Bicer (Midnight on the Pera Palace, The Pit, The Membership) play the couple, Derya and Aziz, a well-known actress and a professor of dramatic arts on the college in Ankara.
Newcomer Leyla Cabas of Istanbul, who was found following a large search in Turkey and Germany, makes her function debut as Ezgi, their 13-year-old daughter.
Attributable to what Fleiss termed “state arbitrariness,” the couple lose their jobs, and since they’re unable to pay lease, they journey to the professor’s mother and father in Istanbul.
“They must redefine their lifestyle and see the erosion of their non-public lives in that course of,” Fliess defined.
The change in circumstances is fairly rotten for his or her teenager too.
Yellow Letters, written by Çatak, Ayda Meryem Çatak and Enis Köstepen, has been shot in an summary style. Although the movie is ready in Turkey it has been intentionally shot in two German cities representing Turkey.
“We shot the movie in Berlin being Ankara and Hamburg being Istanbul. So we despatched the entire movie, the entire set to exile,” Fliess defined. “That’s how we put it. And that made it, in our opinion, extra summary and made it extra a common story about how to deal with the scenario the place you might be below strain and must redefine your values and your morals.”
And the couple, Fliess famous, “reacts in a really completely different option to this, every of them. So the lady is extra pragmatic than the person, who’s being extra idealistic.”
These dynamics add “taste,” mentioned Fliess, whose Munich-based If…Productions Movie GmbH is producing with Haut et Courtroom (Paris) and Liman Movie (Istanbul) along with arte/ZDF.
Carole Scotta, Köstepen and Nadir Öperli are co-producers.
There are some 70 talking roles within the movie. “It’s an enormous forged as a result of that small household is touring by society and thru completely different cultural and political and society milieus,” Fliess mentioned. “And so we now have folks from the theatre, we now have folks from the state theatre, we now have folks from the college, we now have folks on the magistrates court docket the place they’re put within the dock. Now we have folks from the taxi driving union the place he has to search out work.
“Now we have an enormous forged with many alternative elements of society, which I feel makes the movie very wealthy.”
It’s a movie “wealthy in depth” about individuals who must be taught “easy methods to dwell your life when you’re bankrupt principally. So when you don’t have any cash, how do you defend your values, your ethical philosophy and idealistic view on the world,” he argued.
Key creatives from The Academics’ Lounge returned for Yellow Letters. They embody director of pictures Judith Kaufmann, manufacturing designer Zazie Knepper, costume designer Christian Rõhrs and composer Marvin Miller.
(L-R) İpek Bilgin, Enis Köstepen, Leyla Cabas, İlker Çatak, Özgü Namal, Judith Kaufmann, Tansu Biçer and Ingo Fliess
If… Productions Movie GmbH / Ella Knorz
Fliess mentioned he’s “thrilled” to have Brussels-based gross sales firm Be For Movies dealing with Yellow Letters after working with them on The Academics’ Lounge.
The producer anticipated post-production to be performed by late December “after which we can see what comes subsequent.”
The distributor Alamode will launch Yellow Letters in 2025. The film’s additionally supported by BKM (kulturelle Filmförderung des Bundes), MOIN (Filmförderung Hamburg Schleswig-Holstein), FFF Bayern and Medienboard (Berlin-Brandenburg).
There’s a heck of plenty of curiosity on this film.
