THE GRAND Budapest Hotel received funding from the Medienboard BerlinBrandenburg (MBB), €450.000; the Mitteldeutsche Medienförderung (MDM), €900.000; Medien- und Filmgesellschaft Baden Württemberg (MFG), €450,000; the German Federal Film Fund (DFFF), €3,239,564; and the Filmförderungsanstalt (FFA) of €750,000.
MAKING A SCENE - THE GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL
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PAUL SCHLASE, TONY REVOLORI, TILDA SWINTON AND RALPH FIENNES IN WES ANDERSON’S THE GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL
THE GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL THE GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL IS A PERIOD COMEDYDRAMA SET BETWEEN THE WARS, ITS A-LIST CAST PLAYING OUT A BIZARRE STORY OF THEFT AND DECEIT IN THE CONTEXT OF A RADICALLY CHANGING EUROPE. THE FILM WAS SHOT ENTIRELY IN GERMANY AND OPENED THE 2014 BERLINALE. DEBBIE LINCOLN REPORTS MAKING A SCENE
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ES ANDERSON’s whimsical comedy-mystery The Grand Budapest Hotel, features an impressive ensemble cast, including Ralph Fiennes, Saoirse Ronan, Bill Murray, Jeff Goldblum, Harvey Keitel, Owen Wilson, Edward Norton, Tilda Swinton and Jude Law. The film follows the adventures of Gustave H (Fiennes), the concierge at a famous European hotel, and Zero Moustafa (Tony Revolori), the hotel’s lobby boy and Gustave’s most trusted friend.
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When a former guest of the hotel (Swinton) is found dead and a valuable painting that belonged to her is left to Gustave, questions are raised and the police, led by Edward Norton’s character Henckels, get involved. A melodramatic tone and lavish costumes and backdrops give the film a stylised feel. It is set in 20th-century Budapest, and shot entirely in Germany — but not before the crew looked closely at a number of possible European locations. “We explored Hungary,
the Czech Republic as well as other regions of Germany,” producer Jeremy Dawson says. “It was the Görlitz location that became our hotel that was the final factor in deciding where we would base the film. We settled on Germany largely because of the locations we found. Of course funding was a bonus, but not the deciding factor. We were also confident that the crew and workmanship in Germany would be excellent.” The most eastern town in Germany, Görlitz is located in Saxony on the Lusatian Neisse river. “The hotel was created mainly in a bankrupt department store in the town,” Dawson says. “It’s a Jugendstil space [Germany’s equivalent of art nouveau] that had lots of historic detail. We added to it and created a hotel lobby in there. We had to be careful as the building is under historic protection so we added without touching the best details.” Other buildings used to make up the hotel included the Stadthalle Görlitz, an indoor arena that was shot mainly for the dining room scenes. Dawson and his team first met representatives of Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg (MBB) and Mitteldeutsche Medienförderung (MDM) — the film office of the Thuringia, Saxony and Saxony-Anhalt region which includes Görlitz — at the Cannes Film Festival. “They were very helpful in the region,” Dawson says. “They helped us secure important locations like the department store
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