Fandango Sales takes on Venice opener The Girl With the Leica
Alina Marazzi’s Gerda Taro drama will open Venice’s Horizons section, with Fandango Sales handling international sales.
By Bianca Rossi · Entertainment Editor
3 min read
Fandango Sales has picked up international sales for The Girl With the Leica, Alina Marazzi’s drama about war photographer Gerda Taro, Variety reports.
The film has just been named the opening title of the Venice Film Festival’s Horizons section, putting a spotlight on a story built around one of 20th-century photography’s under-credited figures.
The Girl With the Leica follows Taro, the German-Jewish anti-fascist photographer whose work and reputation were long tangled with that of her partner, Hungarian photographer André Friedmann. Together, according to the film’s account cited by Variety, they created the invented identity “Robert Capa,” a name used by Friedmann as Europe’s politics grew more hostile and as he sought access to the American market.
Variety reports that photographs credited for years to Capa were, in some cases, actually taken by Taro. She died while covering the Spanish Civil War, becoming the first female photojournalist killed on a battlefield.
A final day in Paris
The story is set in Paris on July 14, 1937, as Taro spends the day before her return to the Spanish front with Capa and the friends who fled Nazi Germany with her.
The film moves through her life as memories surface: her activism in Leipzig, her first love, her Paris exile, her relationship with Capa, her turn toward photography and her belief that the Leica camera could be used in the fight for freedom and resistance.
Raffaella Di Giulio, Fandango Sales’ managing director of international sales and acquisitions, said in comments reported by Variety that the company is pleased to work again with Vivo Film and to collaborate with Marazzi for the first time. She described the film as a mix of archival material and fiction that brings Taro back into view for audiences.
Producers Marta Donzelli and Gregorio Paonessa of Vivo Film and Jonas Dornbach of Komplizen Film said, according to Variety, that Taro’s story has gained urgency since the project began development years ago. They also pointed to Marazzi’s focus on women’s lives, archival imagery and the links between history and the present.
Cast, book and production team
Emilia Schüle stars as Taro. Her credits include the Canal+ and BBC series Marie Antoinette, Netflix’s Der Parfumeur, ZDF’s Ku’damm series, the Berlinale title The Trial of Hein and the German hits Wunderschön and Wunderschöner.
The cast also includes Aaron Altaras, Luna Wedler, Lucas Englander, Thomas Schubert, Sebastian Schneider, Idan Weiss, Lia von Blarer, Hans-Christian Hegewald, Jeremy Mockridge and Joel Basman.
The film was shot by Chilean-Danish cinematographer Manuel Alberto Claro, whose credits include Lars von Trier’s Melancholia and Nymphomaniac. Variety reports that the drama incorporates images taken by Taro as well as rarely seen archive footage.
Marazzi and Valia Santella wrote the screenplay, freely adapting Helena Janeczek’s 2017 novel The Girl With the Leica. The book won Italy’s Premio Strega and Premio Bagutta, and has been translated into several languages and published in 15 countries, according to Variety.
The Italian-German co-production is produced by Vivo Film with Rai Cinema and Komplizen Film, in co-production with ZDF/ARTE, with Eolo Film Productions, Film i Väst and Zentropa Sweden also involved. BIM Distribuzione will release the film in Italy, with a date still to be announced, while Port au Prince will distribute it in Germany.
This story draws on original reporting from Variety.