News

• Movie tells of 70s ascent of treacherous Pakistan peak

• Portrayal of sibling's death false, say team members

A film retelling mountaineer Reinhold Messner's legendary ascent of Nanga Parbat, in which his younger brother was killed, has reignited a bitter mountaineering row and prompted fellow climbers to attack as "false" the version of events being portrayed on the screen.

A group of climbers who accompanied Messner, now 65, and his brother Günther on the 1970 expedition have criticised the makers of Nanga Parbat for telling only one side of the story – and have threatened legal action.

The film, by the director Josef Vilsmaier, is being advertised under the slogan "two brothers, one mountain, their fate" and promises to reconstruct the events when Günther disappeared after apparently following Reinhold down Nanga Parbat in Pakistan, the ninth highest mountain in the world and one of the most treacherous to climb. From the start the film,...

Cologne, Germany -- Senator Entertainment, the German industry's comeback kid, has secured a new lease on life via a credit line from L.A.-based private equity group Winchester Capital International.

Senator did not disclose the size of the loan but said Winchester's cash injection will allow the German distributor/producer to bankroll its acquisition and marketing pipeline through 2010.

Winchester's parent company, Winchester Capital Management, is a major player in the indie film financing world and has backed recent features including George Clooney-starrer "The Men Who Stare at Goats," and "The Private Life of Pippa Lee," featuring Robin Wright Penn, Alan Arkin and Winona Ryder.

Senator came close to collapse last year but has pulled through after radically restructuring and outsourcing many of its key operations, including its production of German-language films, which is now handled by deutschfilm, a joint venture between Senator and former company executives Anatol Nitschke and Christoph Muller.

Cologne, Germany -- Joseph Vilsmaier, the German director credited by many with reinvigorating the Heimatfilm genre, will receive a lifetime achievement award at the Bavarian Film Prize gala Jan. 15.

Vilsmaier was one of the most successful German filmmakers of the 1990s -- his period dramas "Autumn Milk," "Brother of Sleep" and "Comedian Harmonists" were local boxoffice hits.

The 70-year-old filmmaker returned to form with his last feature, the comedy "Brandner Kaspar" which featured local comedy star Michael Herbig as death incarnate. Vilsmaier's latest, the real-life mountain climbing drama "Nanga Parbat," bows Jan. 14 in Germany. It follows the story of brothers Reinhold and Gunther Messner who, in 1970, set off to scale the Nanga Parbat, the infamous "Killer Mountain" of the Himalayas.

Cologne, Germany -- German indie producer-distributor Senator Entertainment squeezed back into black ink in the first half of 2009, earning net profits of €900,000 ($1.3 million) on revenue of €15.9 million ($22.7 million).

It's a ray of sunshine for the Berlin-based group, which pushed through a radical restructuring plan last year to avoid collapse. The shake-up saw Senator hand its U.S. operation Senator Entertainment Inc. back to founder Marco Weber; spin off production, acquisition and marketing duties to new joint venture deutschfilm and sign co-acquisition/distribution deals with Universum Films and France's Wild Bunch to provide much-needed cash flow.

"We're on the right track, but we're not out of the woods yet," said Senator CEO Helge Sasse, noting the company was still drawing down on its assets in order to keep the lights on.

Senator has had a huge hit in Germany with Stephen Daldry's "The Reader," which earned more than $20 million at the local boxoffice,...