The best way to annoy film and series fans is to tell them secrets. This sometimes takes on absurd proportions, since any information is perceived as a betrayal of secrets. Contemporaries who are particularly allergic to spoilers should therefore not continue reading: Florian David Fitz is currently shooting his first Netflix series in Munich. “Hello” is the working title, it is a four-part drama with science fiction, mystery and thriller parts. The movie star Fitz (“The Perfect Secret”) plays a man whose wife doesn’t come home anymore. Your plane doesn’t land, has just disappeared from the face of the earth. So he waits in vain at the gate with their daughter. His subsequent search goes far beyond our world: Because his wife was an astronaut on the International Space Station ISS, she found something there. Or maybe not.
The creators of the series, which has been filming since the end of September, are also mysterious, but so far everyone involved has kept quiet about it. Even the otherwise well-informed specialist magazines were not aware of the project. Something like this only works because it’s a pure streaming production, because there are no broadcasters, distributors or film funders involved. On a gray November day, producers Amir Hamz and Christian Springer talk about the project on the grounds of Bavaria Studios in Geiselgasteig. Next to them, in a car, Fitz and his film daughter Yuna Bennett are being flipped through the air, repeatedly upside down. An accident is being filmed at the moment, explains Hamz, and the aim is to show what is happening inside the car. In this case, you see a startled child, paper cups and pieces of art glass flying through the frame.
The outdoor shots in space were taken in the film studios in Penzing
The hall next door is also supposed to be flown, even if it doesn’t look like it at the time of the set visit: there, craftsmen are rebuilding the interior of the ISS, a complete space station, with monitors, modules, locks and sleeping chambers. The actors are to be pulled through on steel cables, simulating weightlessness. That’s why this plywood ISS has no roof. Peri Baumeister plays the role of the astronaut and missing mother. In a pause she talks about signals in space that her character encounters and that may indicate something more. She pays close attention to her choice of words, she shouldn’t reveal too much. On the other hand, it is no secret that the shooting in the film studios in Penzing has already been completed, where the outdoor shots in space were taken in the so-called Hyperbowl.
How the audience will take the series will be decided in about a year, then “Hello” can be accessed worldwide on Netflix. The German film industry is changing, where in the past almost only comedies, thrillers or literary adaptations were produced, now genres such as “Blood Red Sky” (horror), “Souls” (mystery), “Der Greif” (fantasy) or “1899 ” (science fiction), for streaming or pay TV. The orientation is international, the films and series are seen worldwide. “It was originally supposed to be a feature film,” says Florian David Fitz about his new project, for which he also co-wrote the screenplay and which directors Sebastian Hilger and Philipp Leinemann are still producing in Munich until Christmas.
German genre films have a hard time in cinemas, the list of flops is long. However, there is an interest in such substances, which is also shown by the most recent streaming successes. And so the planned film became a four-hour mini-series. “It just had to be told differently, with more mystery and suspense,” says Fitz, “so that people want to stay tuned in and keep watching.” So the great betrayal of secrets hasn’t even started yet.