Beta Cinema has sold I Is Another (Ich ist ein Anderer), Felix Randau’s drama starring Claes Bang as Heinrich Himmler’s massage therapist Felix Kersten, to eight territories, the Munich sales company said on Monday. No prices were disclosed.
All eight are all-rights deals: ARP Selection for France, Youplanet Pictures for Spain, Angel Films for Scandinavia, Vertigo Media for Hungary, Beta Film for Bulgaria, Red Cape for Israel, Big Tree Entertainment for India and Palace Films for Australia and New Zealand. Deadline carried the list as an exclusive the same day. The sales land two days before Beta Cinema screens the film for buyers at the American Film Market in Los Angeles.
Key facts
- Buyers: eight territories or territory groups, all rights, announced by Beta Cinema on 9 November
- Home markets: Port au Prince Pictures releases the film in Germany in early 2027; Filmladen handles Austria
- Public money: €1.04m ($1.17m) from the Austrian Film Institute’s ÖFI+ incentive, 26% of production costs by the institute’s figures
- Budget: about €4m ($4.5m), FilmBunch’s calculation from that share
- Next: AFM market screening at the AMC Century City, 11 November, 9am
How the film was financed
Public records show much of how the film was paid for. The Österreichisches Filminstitut (ÖFI) lists an ÖFI+ production award of €1,044,200 and says it covers 26% of total production costs. That implies a budget of roughly €4m; because the institute rounds the percentage, the true figure lies between about €3.9m and €4.1m. The institute classes the film as a minority Austrian co-production, with Leipzig’s ostlicht filmproduktion holding 67% and Vienna’s Wega Film, co-producer of Michael Haneke’s The White Ribbon and Amour, the rest.
Germany’s Mitteldeutsche Medienförderung (MDM) lists the project among its 2023 production awards with €800,000 ($895,000), and the same report shows a further €50,000 for the film. The two production awards, ÖFI+ and MDM, come to €1.84m, about 46% of the estimated budget. The Filmförderungsanstalt, the German Federal Film Fund, Thuringia’s state chancellery and Filmfonds Wien also backed the film, according to the producers and the institute, but their amounts are not published on the pages FilmBunch checked. Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk, Bayerischer Rundfunk and Arte are the broadcast partners.
The film
Set in the autumn of 1952, the drama follows Kersten on a night train to Oslo, where he hopes to win the Nobel Peace Prize for his claim that he used his access to Himmler to free thousands of concentration camp prisoners. Valerie Pachner plays Hedda, a journalist who suspects he is an impostor and sets out to unmask him during an interview on board. Susanne Wuest, Timocin Ziegler and Martin Müller, as Himmler, complete the main cast.
Randau, whose Iceman was a Piazza Grande selection at Locarno in 2017, wrote and directed. The film was shot over 24 days in Leipzig, Weimar and Vienna in the summer of 2025, with Sebastian Thaler as director of photography, and had its world premiere on the Piazza Grande in August.
Where it goes next
ARP Selection is presenting the film at the Augenblick festival in France ahead of a national release in 2027, Beta Cinema said. Beta’s screening comes in a market that has opened with twelve independent distributors forming the Lokia network and sellers leading with star-and-director packages.
What is not known
Beta Cinema has not announced buyers for the UK, Italy, Benelux or North America, or release dates outside France and Germany. The price of each deal is undisclosed, as is whether Big Tree plans a cinema release in India.
Our reading
This is a film that was financed before it was sold. With close to half of an estimated €4m budget covered by two public funds, and three broadcasters attached, the international sales look more like upside than gap finance, although Beta Cinema has not said whether any buyer paid a minimum guarantee before Locarno. The first deals favour independent European distributors, plus India and Australia. Beta’s pitch at the AFM this week will be the harder territories for a German-language drama with a Danish lead: the UK, Italy and the US.
Sources
- Beta Cinema, news release on international deals for I Is Another, 9 November 2026
- Deadline, I Is Another sells wide for Beta Cinema (exclusive), 9 November 2026
- Österreichisches Filminstitut, film page for Ich ist ein Anderer (ÖFI+ award, share of costs, co-production split)
- Mitteldeutsche Medienförderung, annual report 2023 (funded projects)
- Port au Prince Pictures, film page for Ich ist ein Anderer (German and Austrian distribution)
- MDR, press release on the start of filming, July 2025
- Beta Cinema, release adding I Is Another to its AFM slate