Canadian Hit ‘Starbuck’ to Open Munich Film Festival

COLOGNE, Germany – Canadian comedy hit Starbuck, about a prolific sperm donor who finds out he has fathered 533 children, will open this year’s Munich Film Festival on June 29.

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The French-language laffer from Quebec director Ken Scott was a critical and commercial smash. Scott is adapting his own screenplay and will be directing the English-language remake of Starbuck with Vince Vaughn attached to star.

Munich also announced homages to Julie Delpy, Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn and late German comedian Loriot for its 30th edition, which runs June 29 – July 7.

For the Delpy homage, the Munich fest will screen Richard Linklater’s Before Sunset and Before Sunrise as well as the Delpy-directed 2 Days in Paris. The Refn retrospective will include the director’s famed Pusher trilogy as well as Luis Prieto’s Pusher, an English-language remake of Refn’s Danish original. In addition, the Munich fest will screen Refn’s latest, the critically-acclaimed L.A. noir Drive starring Ryan Gosling, and Black’s Game, an Icelandic crime drama which Refn executive produced. To honor beloved German comedian Vicco von Bulow, better known as Loriot, who died last summer, Munich will screen the two feature films he wrote, directed and starred in: Odipussi and Pappa Ante Portas.

Munich previously announced a number of other sidebars, including a tribute to Oscar-nominated actress Melanie Griffith and director Todd Haynes and a retrospective of the work of Munich-based director Rainer Werner Fassbinder, who died 30 years ago this month.

Munich’s full line up was announced Monday. It includes several titles that premiered at last month’s Cannes Film Festival, including Walter Salles’ On The Road, Leos Carax’s Holy Motors and Jacques Audiard’s Rust and Bone as well as a sampling of this year’s festival favorites, among them Sundance winner Beasts of the Southern Wild and Toronto Film Fest entries Twixt from Francis Ford Coppola and Terence Davies’ The Deep Blue Sea.