A Portrait of Producer Markus Halberschmidt

In autumn 2016, Markus Halberschmidt and his partner Maria Tsigka spent a lot of time chilling on their living room sofa, watching an entire series. Then, suddenly, the couple said to each other: “Why don’t we do something like this?” The question was not without justification. After all, Halberschmidt had produced classic art–house cinema with his company busse & halberschmidt, while Maria Tsigka had realised some commercial projects with the Greek company Argonauts Productions. This joint realisation had its consequences, ultimately leading to up-and-coming German director Tilmann Singer landing in the top 10 of the American cinema charts with his arthouse horror CUCKOO in August 2024.

In 2017, the couple founded the company Fiction Park – with the catchy motto: “Entertainment is not a bad word”. Or to put it another way: “We wanted to reach audiences.” As they had planned originally, they began to develop series, but then two projects for cinema “muscled their way in”, as Halberschmidt puts it. This resulted in a co-production with the Netherlands – the dramatic thriller THE MAN FROM ROME. The film celebrated its German premiere at Hof Film Festival this year. Markus Halberschmidt met Tilmann Singer, a student of direction at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne, back in 2016. A year later, he saw Singer’s 20-minute graduation film LUZ, a stylish, experimental mystery horror film that soon caused a stir internationally: “We realised that this was someone who was well-suited to us, and we really wanted to make something with him.” In summer 2019, Singer delivered the script for his feature film debut CUCKOO. In spring 2021, the American distribution and production company Neon came on board.

Despite this renowned partner, the production funding and preparation phases were not without complications. Covid-19 and the limited availability of EUPHORIA actress Hunter Schaefer led to delays. In turn, these ruled out participation by John Malkovich, who was replaced by Dan Stevens (I AM YOUR MAN). In addition, the production lost its initially planned locations when the North Rhine-Westphalian state government requisitioned the envisaged premises for Ukrainian refugees. And because the intended production manager cancelled a week before filming started, Markus Halberschmidt had even more tasks to handle.

The production was finally realised in NRW and Hessen between May and July 2022, and celebrated its world premiere at the 2024 Berlinale. The Anglo-American press was particularly enthusiastic. On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has garnered an impressive 78 per cent rating. This also led to respectable success in US cinemas, where the horror tale had grossed over 6 million USD by the beginning of October. In Germany, where unusual genre cinema tends to reach only a niche audience, the film has found things rather more difficult. For Tilmann Singer, this opened the door to a US career. The Fiction Park producers, on the other hand, are continuing along their path of realising original films with audience appeal. These include INHERITANCE (working title), a modern Haitian ghost story based on a book by Fedna Jacquet, which is currently being developed by Haitian director Guetty Felin. Halberschmidt and Tsigka met the filmmaker at the 2023 Berlinale, where a brief meeting turned into three hours: “We realised there was a marvellous dynamic between us.” The Fiction Park bosses aim to finance the project primarily with private equity and to shoot it in the Caribbean. Talks with interested investors are already underway.

However, the company is not focussing solely on genre material, by any means. A German-Namibian road movie, a “Serbian hardcore drama” and a Cypriot feel-good film are in the pipeline. A fantasy story written by Maria Tsigka will be realised as an animated film. Various funding and financing decisions are currently being awaited. However, purely German-language productions are not planned right now, especially as Fiction Park cannot complain about a lack of offers: “We receive project proposals from the USA on a weekly basis,” says Halberschmidt. There are also contacts with “exciting directors who want to work with us, and we want to work with them.” Markus Halberschmidt is delighted to have ventured away from the pure arthouse sector: “I used to have to make all sorts of films in order to survive. Now, I can choose what I really want to do. And that feels great.”

Rüdiger Sturm