Tom Tykwer, the director of “Babylon Berlin
German-language drama starring Lars Eidinger and Nicolette Krebitz is the director’s first picture since 2016’s “A Hologram for a King.”
Tom Tykwer is returning to the film industry.
With the German drama Das Licht (The Light), the filmmaker of Run Lola Run and Cloud Atlas, has declared his comeback to the big screen.
The film, which recently completed principal photography, tackles the big themes of the day “in a world that is reeling” and is characterized as a depiction of a family “between collapse and new beginnings.”
Following the release of Tom Hanks in A Hologram for the King in 2016, Das Licht is Tykwer’s debut feature picture. He has been producing television for the past seven years, co-creating and co-directing four seasons of the critically acclaimed and multiple award-winning German historical series Babylon Berlin alongside Henk Handloegten and Achim von Borries.
In the film Das Licht, actor/director Nicolette Krebitz (Wild, My Zoe) and former Babylon Berlin star Lars Eidinger play Tim and Milena Engels, a couple whose family is disintegrating. The family includes their illegitimate son Dio (Elyas Eldridge), nearly-grown twins Jon and Frieda (Elke Biesendorfer), and their twins Frieda and Jon (Julius Gause). The arrival of Farrah (Tala al Deen), a new maid from Syria, livens up and upends the Engels’ world.
“I can now return to the present day after spending a considerable amount of time with Babylon Berlin in the Roaring Twenties,” says Tykwer. Das Licht is a place of laughter, singing, and dancing in addition to fights, wrestling matches, and disagreements. The range of emotions and the accompanying story possibilities will be investigated and tested in the movie. I know these characters rather well. I want to make it concrete for the viewer by attempting to portray their conflict and connection at the same time.
The ménage à trois drama 3 from 2010 was Tykwer’s final German-language motion picture. Apart from his collaboration with the Wachowski siblings on the science fiction epic Cloud Atlas (2012), Tykwer has directed and co-written several other films, including The International (2009), Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (2006), Heaven (2002), The Princess and the Warrior (2000), Run Lola Run (1998), Winter Sleepers (1997), and Deadly Maria (1993).
Das Licht, which was shot in Germany and Kenya and was produced by Tykwer’s banner X Filme Creative Pool, will open in theaters in Germany on October 17, 2024, through X Filme’s distribution arm X Verleih in collaboration with Warner Bros. Germany.
Cinematographer Christian Almesberger, who has worked on Cloud Atlas and Babylon Berlin, is directing the movie, which is being produced by Uwe Schott. Tim Tamke (Dogs of Berlin) is the production designer, while Pierre-Yves Gayraud (Cloud Atlas, Perfume: The Story of a Murderer, and Babylon Berlin) is in charge of the costumes.
With financial assistance from the German DFFF Film Fund, the Federal Film Board (FFA), the Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg, and the Film and Medienstiftung NRW, as well as co-production partners ZDF, ARP Séléction, Gold Rush Pictures, Gretchenfilm, and B.A. Filmproduktion, Das Licht is being produced.