Oliver Hirschbiegel’s 13 Minutes, the story of would-be Adolf Hitler assassin Georg Elser, is a hit with international distributors.
Germany’s Beta Cinema, which is handling worldwide sales on the film, closed multiple territories at the American Film Market earlier this month on the strength of a promo reel of the upcoming project.
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StudioCanal, which earlier secured U.K. and Irish rights for 13 Minutes, also signed on to distribute the film in Australia and New Zealand. Gaga picked up rights for Japan, Svensk for Scandinavia and Sophie Dulac Distribution for France. Other deals include ones for Brazil (Mares Filmes), Greece (Feelgood Entertainment) and Colombia (Cine Colombia).
13 Minutes follows the fateful assassination attempt on Hitler on November 8, 1939, when Elser, a German carpenter turned Nazi resistance fighter, planted a bomb in a Munich beer hall aimed at killing the Fuhrer. Had Hitler not left the scene 13 minutes early, just before the explosion, Elser’s plan would have been successful. Hirschbiegel, who directed the Oscar-nominated drama Downfall about Hitler’s final days, tracks Elser’s life from his Alpine home where he watched the rise of Nazism, to his final days, after the failed attack, in the Dachau concentration camp, where he was killed shortly before the end of the war.
German actor Christian Friedel (Amour Fou) stars as Elser alongside Burghart Klaussner (The White Ribbon) and Katharina Schuttler (Generation War).
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