MAKING A SCENE - THE PHYSICIAN
64
THE PHYSICIAN: MADE IN ENGLISH BY A GERMAN TEAM USING GERMAN LOCATIONS
C
OMPLETE with a starry international cast, script adapted from a best-selling novel and exotic multinational locations, The Physician — in German, Der Medicus — is a sweeping historical epic that has been produced and filmed almost wholly in Germany. Though it comes in at under €30m, the film feels like a bigger and more expensive Hollywood production complete with cutting-edge special effects. It goes to show what can be done in a country filled with flexible and affordable film professionals that are the envy of other territories; and where a broad range of location and studio options allow producers and directors to develop film projects that move freely in time and space. “You could definitely say that the novel The Physician would also be suitable for a 20-hour HBO series, but we decided to make a feature film,” says the film’s producer, CEO of UFA Cinema, Wolf Bauer. But with a definite international feel to it “from the very beginning. The book is ideal for this. The Physician is a bestseller all over Europe, and for that reason we worked from the beginning to make an international film production. In English and with an appropriately high budget, in order to be able to guarantee attractive production values.” The Physician is a co-production of Potsdam-based UFA Cinema, ARD Degeto and Beta Cinema, distributed by Universal Pictures international. Producers are
THE PHYSICIAN 24TH+z.indd 64
Wolf Bauer and Nico Hofmann, executive producer is Sebastian Werninger. Filmed both in Germany and Morocco, the film tells the story of a young English healer, Robert Cole, who embarks on an epic search for knowledge amid war and plague in 11th-century Persia. The stellar cast includes up-comer Tom Payne (HBO’s Luck, Miss Pettigrew Lives For A Day) as the young physician, Ben Kingsley (Gandhi, Schindler’s List) as his eastern mentor, and Stellan Skarsgård (Good Will Hunting, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo) as the crude English barber-surgeon. The Physician joins Tom Tykwer’s Perfume: The Story Of A Murderer (2006), Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds (2009) and George Clooney’s The Monuments Men (2014) as one of a growing number of international movies with true global appeal to have been made in English, but using German locations, facilities, talent and finance. “It’s pretty unique,” says The Physician’s co-producer Dirk Schürhoff, who brought the world rights and organised the global distribution on behalf of Beta Cinema. “A production shot in English on that scale, the budget was around €26m, wholly financed in Germany. This is really outstanding, it doesn’t happen that often.” The Physician’s German director, Philipp Stoelzl (North Face, Young Goethe In Love), was confident that Germany had the facilities to handle a production that travels between early medieval England and distant Isfahan in Persia. He refers to very flexible crews that ensure films come in under budget — a very different
scenario from the US, he says — and to the numerous regional film bodies that provide important film finance in addition to diverse location facilities. Utilising funding (€900,000) and support from Leipzig-based MDM (Mitteldeutsche Medienförderung), Stoelzl shot most of The Physician’s early medieval England exteriors in the former East German state of Saxony-Anhalt. Stoelzl jokingly refers to Saxony-Anhalt as Sexy Anhalt, a moniker conceived during the filming of The Last Station (2009), a biopic about Tolstoy starring Helen Mirren that was also shot in the German state. Such smaller overseas productions have been tempted in to shoot on location in Germany, and to enter co-production deals with local film bodies, says Stoelzl. He adds that a growing staple of low-to-mid-budget arthouse films are utilising quality locations via Germany’s subsidy system. While some of The Physician’s more distant panoramas needed to be shot in Scotland for authenticity, it was mostly possible to recreate 11th-century England in the fields and forests of Saxony-Anhalt, an area that has remained relatively untouched because of its decades-long position on the border of East and West Germany. The area is also blessed with some ancient historical monuments, including remnants of centuries-old castles and a Roman-built road. “You have good pieces of Romanic architecture, which is obviously useful for a movie that is set in the 11th century,” Stoelzl tells Location Germany. “And you have a really nice landscape
24/01/14 15:02