Wickie’s Viking ship during the shooting on the Walchensee, which in some places looks more Scandinavian than Scandinavia.
(Photo: Marco Nagel/Constantin Film Distribution)
Attention, attention, if you don’t want to be robbed of your cinematic illusions, you should stop reading at this point. Vicky, the clever little son of Halvar from Flake, is actually a child of Lake Walchen. Because the two films “Wickie and the strong men” and “Wickie on a great journey” by Michael Bully Herbig were by no means shot somewhere in the very far north, but on the very Upper Bavarian lake, which sometimes makes one think more of the Caribbean than the Scandinavian coast. There are good reasons why Herbig and his team were stranded in the Sachsenbach Bay of all places and set up the wooden house scenery there: the crew had searched all over Europe for a film location. After all, it should look authentic when the film Vikings dock their ship in Flake at the fjord. But perfect conditions were only found at Walchensee. How practical, because it was not far to Grünwald in the Bavaria Filmstadt, in whose studios a number of scenes were also shot.
The fact that Lake Walchensee looks even more Scandinavian than Scandinavia itself can be seen where the toll road branches off into Jachenau. “The water shimmers turquoise blue, behind it the banks covered with mixed forest. The mountain slopes of Herzogstand and Fahrenkopf are reflected in the lake for several kilometers. Red boat hats on the elongated Zwergern peninsula (…) reinforce the Nordic flair.” With this flowery description, the marketing office “Bayern Tourismus” advertises the popular destination. Because tourism professionals have long recognized that the Free State not only has folklore to offer, but also great film backdrops that appear in numerous TV, film and now also streaming service productions.
For vacationers there are guided tours through the film village Flake in the Sachsenbach Bay.
(Photo: private)
Vacationers can definitely be lured with it, says destination manager Josephine Müsgen, who runs the portal for “Bayern Tourismus”. experience.bayern.de responsible. Seeing where blockbusters or well-known TV series were filmed is a “source of inspiration” for vacationers. That’s why the film village Flake has remained on Lake Walchensee, in Bad Tölz you can follow in the footsteps of the Bull von Tölz and in Wolfratshausen an app with a quiz guides you through the world of Hubert with and without Staller.
In order to get the information and pour it into an attractive program for holidaymakers as well as for day trippers, the tourism experts have been working together with the Bavarian Film and Television Fund (FFF) since 2014. This is also where the Film Commission Bayern is located, which serves the industry as the first point of contact for national and international productions. Oliver Stone, for example, shot the film biography of whistleblower Edward Snowden in cooperation with the Film Commission. Scenes from it were created in Tutzing, but also in Munich’s Ludwigstrasse.
“Hubert without Staller” determined around Wolfratshausen. The city has turned it into a tourist attraction.
(Photo: ARD/TMG/Jenrick Mielke; ARD/oh)
Anyone planning a shoot can look around in the Film Commission’s motif database, for which Kathrin Winter is responsible. “Our motifs must all be publicly accessible,” says Winter. In addition to well-known Munich locations such as the Müller’schen Volksbad or the airport, you will also find the Starnberger Hotel Vier Jahreszeiten, the Ainhofen outdoor pool near Markt Indersdorf, the Flugwerk Feldkirchen, Gut Hartschimmel am Ammersee, a log cabin in Oberpframmern or the Fürstenfeld event forum. But anyone who wants to make their terraced house available for the next crime scene has no luck being included in the database. “We send private individuals to our location scouts,” says Kathrin Winter.
Upper Bavaria with the Munich area is equally suitable for film and holidays. Whether Hollywood or “Dahoam is dahoam”, the landscape can cover a lot, says Anja Metzger, head of the Film Commission. Every year, 24 to 30 cinema productions and 110 to 130 TV formats are created. And the trend is rising, thanks to Netflix, Amazon and Apple Plus. At the same time, the path to the future of digital film has been paved. In Penzing in the district of Landsberg am Lech, a digital film city is currently being built at the former air base. “This will revolutionize the film world,” Metzger is convinced.