Berlin 2013: Radiant Films Takes 'Run Boy Run'

BERLIN - Mimi Steinbauer's Radiant Films International has taken over worldwide sales for Run Boy Run, a holocaust biopic from German director Pepe Danquart (Hell on Wheels) based on the best-selling novel of the same name by Uri Orlev.

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The film tells the true story of nine-year-old Jurek who, in 1942, escaped from the Warsaw ghetto into the woods, where he survives on his own until the end of the war. Newcomer Andy Tkacz plays Jurek together with a cast that includes Katarzyna Bargielowska (The Pianist), Rainer Bock (The White Ribbon), Jeanette Hain (Poll) and Itay Tiran (Lebanon).

"I never saw this as a holocaust film,” Danquart told THR. “It is a story of a child in war - which makes it more relevant today than ever.”

The $8 million (€6 million) co-production between Danquart's Bittersuess Pictures and French shingle Cine-Sud/Vandertastic together with Berlin-based A Company is currently in post-production. Release in Poland via Kino Swiat and in Germany through NFP is scheduled for late this year.

I think it will be a very controversial film, in a good way in Poland,” said A Company head Alexander van Dulmen. “Not just because this is a German filmmaker shooting a Polish WWII story in Poland but because – like with Agnieszka Holland's In Darkness – it addresses the question of Polish guilt (for the holocaust).

"What set this apart, for me, from other holocaust films is the fact that it is a children's story - the story of this boy's survival and the fact that he does survive and go on to life a long, happy life," Steinbauer told THR. "It's very uplifting, in the end."

Radiant will be screening footage of Run Boy Run to select buyers at the EFM this week.