Film Archive

Buddenbrooks - The Decline of a Family (Buddenbrooks)

Buddenbrooks – The Decline of a Family is the gripping cinematic adaptation of Thomas Mann's Nobel Prize-winning novel of 1900, starring Academy Award®-nominee Armin Mueller-Stahl in the lead role. In loving, compassionate detail and cinematic scope, Emmy® Award-winner Heinrich Breloer portrays the rise and decline of a merchant family in the bourgeois aristocracy in Luebeck in their fight and sacrifice for the economic survival of the family and their pursuit of happiness and impossible love.

While Thomas is willing to fill the void of their father, Consul Jean, and to steer the firm through the times of modernization and rising competition, his brother Christian is trying to break away from any responsibility. We find him in dubious company, marrying a woman from a vaudeville show, rebelling against everything their father stood up for. It is left to their sister, Tony, who sacrifices her true love for the sake of the family’s fortune, to hold the family ties together. But when their competitor Hagenstroem proves to have the better instinct for the changing needs of the market, even her influence seems to vanish...

Heinrich Breloer was born in 1942 in Gelsenkirchen. Active as a writer and director, a selection of his films includes: Das Beil von Wandsbek (TV, 1982), Kampfname: Willy Brand (TV, 1984), Todesspiel (TV, 1997), the Emmy award-winning Die Manns - Ein Jahrhundertroman (2001), Speer and Hitler(2005), and Buddenbrooks (2008).
 

Genre Drama, Literature
Category Feature Film Cinema
Year of Production 2008
Director Heinrich Breloer
Screenplay Heinrich Breloer, Horst Koenigstein
Director of Photography Gernot Roll
Editor Barbara von Weitershausen
Music by Hans P. Stroeer
Production Design Goetz Weidner
Producers Matthias Esche, Michael Hild, Jan S. Kaiser, Uschi Reich, Winka Wulff, Burkhard von Schenk
Production Company Bavaria Film/Geiselgasteig, in co-production with Pirol Film Production/Munich, Colonia Media/Cologne, WDR/Cologne, NDR/Hamburg, SWR/Baden-Baden, BR/Munich, Degeto Film/Frankfurt, ORF/Vienna, ARTE/Strasbourg
Principal Cast Armin Mueller-Stahl, Jessica Schwarz, August Diehl, Mark Waschke, Iris Berben, Léa Bosco, Justus von Dohnányi, Martin Feifel, Fedja van Huêt
Casting Dorothee Weyers
Length 152 min
Format 35 mm, color, cs
Original Version German
Subtitled Versions English
Sound Technology Dolby Digital
Festival Screenings Cambridge 2009, Sao Paulo 2009, Kolkata 2009
With backing from FilmFernsehFonds Bayern, FilmFoerderung Hamburg, Filmstiftung NRW, MEDIA
German Distributor Warner Bros. Pictures Germany/Hamburg

World Sales
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Thorsten Ritter
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82031 Geiselgasteig/Germany
phone +49-89-64 99 26 86
fax +49-89-64 99 37 20
email: international@bavaria-film.de
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