Drugs and doppelgangers
DQ hears from the creative teams behind two forthcoming German dramas: Westend Girl, which tells the real-life story of a young girl who discovers her parents are drug traffickers, and Die Düsteren (The Dark Ones), a supernatural mystery series set on a remote island.
One series is described as a grounded domestic drama, while the other is a mystery thriller with more than a touch of the supernatural – and both are coming to screens in Germany and beyond very soon.
Westend Girl tells the story of 19-year-old Ronja, who is forced to grow up overnight when her parents are arrested for drug trafficking. It comes from Flare Film in coproduction with broadcasters WDR and Arte, with Beta Film handling distribution.
Die Düsteren (The Dark Ones), meanwhile, is set on a remote island in the North Sea, where a crack between dimensions leads dangerous beings to seep into our world. But they are neither monsters nor demons. They are human – and they are the worst possible versions of ourselves. They are shady doppelgangers who have made the wrong decisions at crucial moments in their lives and would do anything to start all over again. Now they are here to swap places with us – and the only one who can stop them is Soma, a young woman who is searching for her own origin story.
The Dark Ones is produced by Studio Zentral with Network Movie Film- und Fernsehproduktion. ZDFneo is the German broadcaster of the show, which is backed by the New8 coalition of European public broadcasters, meaning it will also air in Sweden on SVT, Denmark (DR), Finland (YLE), Iceland (RÚV), Norway (NRK), Belgium (VRT) and the Netherlands (NPO).
Both series were previewed during the Next Up: Germany session at the recent Berlinale Series Market, where DQ heard from the creators behind the projects.
Westend Girl
A six-hour thriller based on real events, Westend Girl stars Helen Zengel as Ronja, who has just moved into her first apartment and is about to begin medical school. But the day after her 18th birthday party, everything changes when her seemingly perfect parents are arrested and accused of running the largest cocaine ring in the region. Ronja also comes to realise the police see her not just as a witness, but a potential accomplice.
Fifteen years in the making, the series comes from creator Pola Beck, who first learned of the true story when she was encouraged to dramatise it by the real Ronja.
“It started out with an email I wrote to my friends when I had a creative crisis,” Beck remembers. “After my debut film [2012’s Breaking Horizons], I was a bit like, ‘Well, what am I gonna do now? What do people want to see in cinemas?’ I wrote an email asking those questions to my friends, and then my friend from school wrote back and said, ‘Well, something happened in my family and maybe we should meet.’
“We hadn’t seen each other in a long time and then we met, and this was the starting point. It was very overwhelming for me because I knew the family, her friends and their home, and I knew the parents, and I was quite shocked. But then I thought, ‘Wow, what a diamond of story.’ In the beginning, it was maybe more of a therapy session. She said that a lot of times – ‘I felt like [I was] in a film.’”
Their original plan had been to dramatise the story as a movie, but after a producer pulled out of the project, Beck partnered with Flare Film’s Martin Heisler to turn it into a series. And despite the time it has taken to bring Westend Girl to the screen, the filmmaker never lost hope that it could be done.
“I really believed it’s in the story,” she says. “It’s both family drama and thriller, and it’s funny sometimes as well, because all the stories my friend told me were also kind of absurd. I thought, ‘Well, it’s worth telling the story,’ and I really think people should see it. I felt like I owed this to my friend – ‘I have to do this. I can’t tell her I failed.’”
Heisler similarly believed in the story, which places an epic tale within a domestic setting. But the show wasn’t financed “in a minute” – it took several years to assemble the necessary partners.
“We managed to finance it because we put together that bunch, and we decided to make a series out of it,” he says. “Then Stefan [Schaller, director] was attached and we were able to convince Helena to play the lead. Then it became easier. Beta Film helped a lot in making it possible. So we were just lucky to have momentum, even though times are difficult, the market is difficult.”
Head writer Richard Kropf was instantly drawn in by the show’s premise and put together the scripts with a writers room comprising Luisa Hardenberg, Katharina Brauer, Alexander Lindh and Julian Gaupp-Maier.
“The original story took place in Berlin, and I’m from West Berlin, so I was immediately hooked,” he says. “Pola told me the story and, shortly after, I was able to meet with the original father and daughter. We had long conversations and I was intrigued, not only by the true events but also because I got to know the characters and their personalities.”
The writers decided not to recreate true events scene by scene. Instead, they found they had the freedom to step away from the original story and develop new twists and turns and to heighten some of the conflicts. “When I look back, I’m not sure what was real and what was made up by us in the writers room,” Kropf says. “It blurs, but I think it doesn’t matter.”
Schaller, who directs with Beck, found the completed screenplays offered him the chance to tell this story from a “very unique perspective” – that of Ronja.
“It was also a thriller, where the timelines blur,” he says, “so we had this possibility to make present and past blur. Before Ronja finds out that her father is actually guilty – at the end of episode two – she still believes in the innocence of her parents. [But then she] finds out her father lied and is one of the biggest drug dealers in North Rhine-Westphalia.
“It was so beautiful to explore the idea that there’s a certain form of traumatisation when you were lied to for your whole childhood. All these memories come up for only brief moments and Pola and I didn’t want to stylistically separate the present from the past. We just wanted to have these moments flash up for only short moments and intrude into the present and overcome Ronja.”
Casting the role of Ronja, the two directors wanted an actor with a “certain toughness” and thought of Zengel’s breakout performance in 2019 feature film Systemprenger (System Crasher), after which she starred alongside Tom Hanks in 2020’s News of the World.
There was one problem: Zengel was only 17, which meant her schedule would be limited by child working hours. Yet so convinced were Beck and Schaller that she was right for the role that they hired her anyway.
“We had a pretty long casting process because they weren’t supposed to cast someone under 18, so I had a long time to think about the project,” Zengel says. “When I first went to the casting, I didn’t know it was based on a true story. So when I found out, I was kind of shocked, because it’s such an intense story, and I was really excited to meet the real Ronja, to talk to her and get to know her and get to know her story.”
That experience proved to be “very intense and beautiful,” the actor continues. “We became friends and we started to share our stories – and [she was] on set a lot of the time. From the first moment, I loved Ronja and I loved playing the role. We had a great ensemble.”
“It’s such a different experience from doing something fictional, because it’s very emotional and close, because someone has actually been through that,” Zengel adds. “I really wanted to do a good job, because I wanted her to like it. Then at the same time, it’s such an intense and also sad story. But we had good laughs on set. I feel like we all got really close because it was so real.”
Die Düsteren (The Dark Ones)
For several years, Jan-Martin Scharf and Arne Nolting had an idea for a mystery thriller built around the notion of alternative lives. What might happen, they wondered, if the worst versions of ourselves existed in another universe – and then appeared in our world?
But they never thought there was any potential for a series – until production company Network Movie alerted them to a call from German broadcaster ZDF for a “very dark, smart mystery thriller” set on an island. “We said, “Oh yes, actually…” Scharf says.
In The Dark Ones (also pictured top), dangerous doppelgangers emerge from mud flats on a remote island, with Soma (Lisa-Marie Koroll), the show’s young protagonist, at the centre of this otherworldly drama.
Those mud flats, where figures literally climb out of the ground, were actually filmed in a studio in Brussels, where 200 tons of sand was used to recreate the Wadden Sea. In fact, the whole show was shot in Belgium, as the production sought to take advantage of the generous tax breaks offered by Germany’s neighbour.
“We have a great, unique hook in the story and we filmed in an iconic landscape, with a very universal conflict. So we truly believe this is something that will speak to audiences worldwide,” says producer Andi Wecker from Network Movie. “We had a decent budget, but we felt like we needed some more. Plan A was to find twice the money – not gonna happen. Plan B was to take the money and run to your friendly neighbour who gives you a 30% [tax break] on top. Then you’re still not at twice the money, but with 30% plus and some very smart decisions by some very good creatives, we were able to create the standard we were looking for.”
With just a skeleton team brought from Germany – including director Lea Becker, the writers, the DOP and an assistant director – most of the people working on the project were based in Belgium. That meant Network Movie had to rely on expertise from coproduction partner Studio Zentral, which also secured the additional financing.
“We didn’t have to set up anything there besides finding the right coproducer,” Wecker says. “They found money. They also helped apply for the Screen Flanders fund, which came in. Then we had a little bit of funding for VFX in Berlin and a little bit of funding through FISA+ in Austria for post-production. This all together brought us the budget we needed.”
For Becker, who directs all six episodes, there are pros and cons to producing internationally. “I really enjoyed it. I thought the cultural exchange was interesting,” she says. “I really love my creatives, but I also felt a little bit sad and a little bit absurd to go to a different country to tell a specifically German story and tell my creative friends from Germany that I wouldn’t be able to hire them. I’m really hoping we will bring more tax incentives to Germany and [we] don’t always have to go to Belgium, Austria and Prague, as nice as it is. That’s really something that has to happen.”
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tagged in: Andi Wecker, Arne Nolting, Arte Beta Film, Die Düsteren, Flare Film, Jan Martin Scharf, Martin Heisler, Network Movie, Network Movie Film- und Fernsehproduktion, New8, Pola Beck, Richard Kropf, Studio Zentral, The Dark Ones, WDR, Westend Girl, ZDFneo