Conference The Power of Collaboration Managing Change
ON SITE Bertha-Benz-Saal Tuesday, April 23, 14:30

FRITZI & SOPHIE - A Boundless Friendship

Video on demand

"Fritzi & Sophie" is a series - but it is also great cinema. In 8x22 minutes, author Beate Völcker spans a wide dramaturgical arc - a gripping, emotional and funny story about a girl's friendship against the backdrop of German reunification. Directors Ralf Kukula, Matthias Bruns and Thomas Meyer-Hermann paint a genre picture of the year 1989. Hundreds of characters and true-to-life locations in East and West take us back to the last weeks before reunification. This includes a production value that one would expect from a movie - a novelty in the German animation landscape. Can the desired opulence and authenticity of the animated images be achieved within the tight financial framework of a television series? Our answer is a special pipeline: Motion capture / CGI with Blender / cartoon shading. The three studios Balance Film, TrickStudio Lutterbeck and Studio Film Bilder are doing pioneering work by realizing a project of this size entirely in Germany with a young team.

Ralf Kukula

Ralf Kukula, Director & Producer, Balance Film

Ralf Kukula, born in Dresden in 1962, has his roots in the DEFA studio for animated films. He founded Balance Film GmbH in 1993 and has been making animated, feature and documentary films for cinema and TV ever since. He has been an honorary member of the DEFA Foundation, the Saxon Cultural Senate, the German Film Academy and various professional organisations such as AG Animationsfilm for decades.

Anke Lindemann

Anke Lindemann, Editor & Co-Producer, MDR

Anke Lindemann studied at the Bauhaus University Weimar and at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. After working as a project manager, art director and producer in the independent film and media industry in the fields of animated film and series, fiction and non-fiction for children and adults, Anke Lindemann joined KiKA via SWR. She worked there for several years as an editor in fiction and programme acquisition. In June 2018, she took over as head of the "Children and Family" editorial department at Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk (MDR).

Matthias Bruhn

Matthias Bruhn, Director & Producer, Trickstudio Lutterbeck

Matthias Bruhn was born in 1962 in Bielefeld. He studied Graphic-Design in Dusseldorf and worked as a freelancing animator and director from 1992 to 1998. Since 1998 he is CEO (together with Richard Lutterbeck), Art Director and Director of TrickStudio Lutterbeck GmbH in Cologne.He directed over 25 short films, as well as TV-Specials, series & commercials. He co-directed the animated features “Molly Monster – the Movie” (2016) and “Fritzi – A Revolutionary tale” (2019). His productions were awarded with dozens of national and international awards. Matthias is member of the German Film Academy.

Thomas Meyer-Herrmann

Thomas Meyer-Herrmann, Director & Producer, Studio FILM BILDER

Thomas Meyer-Hermann was born 1956 in Cologne, Germany. He studied Graphic-Design at the Academy of Arts in Stuttgart and directed six prize winning animated shorts. Since 1989 he produces personal shorts, music videos, commissioned films, and TV series at Studio FILM BILDER in Stuttgart. He is the producer and the main character of Andreas Hykade’s series „TOM & the Slice of Bread with Strawberry Jam & Honey“. From 2000 to 2019, he worked as an animation professor at the Art University in Kassel. At the moment, he is preparing several children’s series as well as an animated feature film for adults.