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Barbara Hordych, Munich
Basically, the family entertainment film business can be divided into two categories: either you take up well-known material such as a popular children’s book series or you establish your own “brand” based on an original idea. The Munich producer duo Ewa Karlström and Andreas Ulmke-Smeaton have already taken both paths very successfully. With their company Sam Film they have produced film adaptations of Enid Blyton’s “Famous Five” adventure series and Joachim Masannek’s footballer book series “Wilde Kerle” in recent years. With the horse film saga “Ostwind” they created their own brand, “only after the first film did the books, mostly written by Lea Schmidbauer, appear, which not so many Ostwind fans are aware of,” says Ewa Karlström.