After my large-scale Bavarian science fiction project “Aliens in Upper Bavaria” last year surprisingly Screenplay funding through the FilmFernsehFonds Bayern the first thing I did was to write a long Research tour through Bavaria, my favorite Bavarian places from the wonderfully bizarre Raisting earth station to the incredibly beautiful Walhalla near Regensburg and asked numerous historians, archaeologists, traditional costume researchers and – it’s hard to believe – real and actual traditional costumers a lot of questions. I would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone for their patience, it really helped me a lot.

With this Bavarian groove, I sat down with the dramaturge Lasse Nolte in two long dramaturgy sessions, restructured the material, rebuilt it, radically purified it, modernized it and made it much younger and cooler in the process. Our approach was to leave the world of the aliens as it was described in the first version, but to explore it through the eyes of two young YouTubers who inadvertently stumble across Bavaria’s biggest secret. It took us a while to dig through the mountains of existing material and get to the heart of the story, but I’ll never forget the moment when we had the decisive flash of insight into how we could radically cut off the old threads of the first version and take a completely new look at the material. I would like to take this opportunity to thank Lasse once again for all his hard work and great advice on how to undo the “knobs” (known as “knots” outside Bavaria) in our heads. That helped a lot.

The result, after a lot of seat-of-the-pants wrangling, bloody typed fingers and various scribbled-on boards (see photos), is the first version of the script, which already has an insane appeal, an emotional tour de force of the two main characters Bene and Stefan across Bavaria in search of Bene’s missing little brother Falk, at the end of which is the answer to the question of all questions: are the Bavarians of this world?

With this version we are now going out, talking to potential partners, getting feedback, then in June I will write another polishing version together with Lasse and then may the Bavarian-Austrian gods have mercy on us that it will finally become a movie. Perhaps the Kini up there in the real Bavarian Valhalla will put in a merciful word for us, after all, the movie clears up the fairy tale about his alleged “suicide” on Lake Starnberg once and for all. The Kini didn’t kill himself – he just went home. The answer to where this “home” is, hopefully coming soon to a movie theater near you…