‘Babylon Berlin’ Director Tom Tykwer Returns to Moviemaking With ‘Das Licht’

Scott Roxborough
·2 min read

Tom Tykwer is coming back to the movies.

The German director of Run Lola Run and Cloud Atlas has announced his return to filmmaking with the German drama Das Licht (The Light).

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The feature, which has just wrapped principal photography, is described as a portrait of a family “between collapse and new beginnings” and deals with the major issues of our time “in a world that is reeling.”

Das Licht is Tykwer’s first feature film since 2016’s A Hologram for the King, starring Tom Hanks. He has spent the past seven years on TV, co-creating and co-directing, with Henk Handloegten and Achim von Borries, four seasons of the acclaimed and award-winning German historic series Babylon Berlin.

Das Licht stars Babylon Berlin alum Lars Eidinger and actor-director Nicolette Krebitz (Wild, My Zoe) as Tim and Milena Engels, a couple whose family, including nearly grown twins Frieda (Elke Biesendorfer) and Jon (Julius Gause) and their illegitimate son Dio (Elyas Eldridge), is falling apart. The world of the Engels is enlivened and disrupted when a new housekeeper, Farrah (Tala al Deen), from Syria enters their life.

“After quite a long time spent in the roaring ’20s with Babylon Berlin, I can finally return to the present day,” says Tykwer. “There are arguments, wrestling and fighting in Das Licht, but there is also laughter, singing and dancing. The film will explore and test the spectrum of emotions and the corresponding narrative possibilities. The characters are very familiar to me. I want to try to reflect their conflict and simultaneous connection for the audience and make it tangible.”

Tykwer’s last German-language film was the 2010 ménage à trois drama 3. In addition to the 2012 sci-fi epic Cloud Atlas, which Tykwer co-wrote and co-directed with the Wachowski siblings, his previous features include 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).

Produced by Tykwer’s shingle X Filme Creative Pool, Das Licht, which was shot in Germany and Kenya, will roll out theatrically in Germany via X Filme’s distribution arm X Verleih together with Warner Bros. Germany on Oct. 17, 2024.

Uwe Schott is producing the film, with Babylon Berlin and Cloud Atlas cinematographer Christian Almesberger behind the camera. Production designer is Tim Tamke (Dogs of Berlin), and Pierre-Yves Gayraud, who has worked with Tykwer on Cloud Atlas, Perfume: The Story of a Murderer and Babylon Berlin, handled the costume design.

Das Licht is being produced in co-production with ZDF, ARP Séléction, Gold Rush Pictures, Gretchenfilm and B.A. Filmproduktion with subsidy support from Germany’s DFFF film fund, federal film board the FFA and regional subsidies from the Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg and the Film and Medienstiftung NRW.

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