Film: Film adaptation of Rietzschel novel: Author plays a small role

The writer Lukas Rietzschel will take on a small role in the film adaptation of his debut novel "Batch into the world with my fist".

Film: Film adaptation of Rietzschel novel: Author plays a small role

The writer Lukas Rietzschel will take on a small role in the film adaptation of his debut novel "Batch into the world with my fist". "It will be interesting to see which scene he appears in," said director Constanze Klaue of the German Press Agency. The 37-year-old has been shooting for the film in Görlitz and the surrounding area since the end of February, for which she also wrote the screenplay. According to the MDR as co-producer, the nationwide theatrical release is planned for autumn 2024.

As in the novel, it is about the radicalization of two brothers growing up in an East Saxon village. Her childhood is characterized by the lack of prospects in an otherwise very wide landscape, as the description of the plot says. Recordings for the film are also made in Berlin and Brandenburg. A day of shooting in the forest pool in Bernstadt near Löbau (Görlitz district) is scheduled for May 15th. Extras are still being sought for this.

Constanze Klaue met Lukas Rietzschel for the first time in Görlitz in 2020, as she reports. She quickly found out: "We speak a similar language." The writer was open to purely technical or dramaturgical changes and gave her the freedom to incorporate her own experiences into the material. "He was able to accept that different laws prevail in literature than in film," the director sums up.

Born in East Berlin, the director grew up in Brandenburg. In Rietzschel's bestseller she found many similarities to her own biography. "The novel was above all a confirmation of my memories of post-reunification Germany," reveals Klaue. It seemed almost uncanny to her how some scenes and details coincide without ever having known about each other before. For them it was clear that the collective experience of an entire generation urgently needed to be told.

Press release on the start of filming, call for extras

NEXT NEWS