Julia Koschitz: Celebs Rumors

As a fresh batch of boot camp recruits moves through processing, a name keeps resurfacing like some kind of curse — as if its mere mention is enough to call down the power of its wrath.  “Classic case for Eismayer,” one experienced soldier remarks about a smart-mouthed inductee, while another explains his fake-illness strategy thusly: “Just trying to avoid drillmaster Eismayer.” A legend in the Austrian armed forces, Sergeant Major Charles Eismayer (Gerhard Liebmann) is equal parts bad-ass and martinet, yet what he is, more than anything else, is afraid, and it’s the exploration of this fear that serves as the backbone of “Eismayer.” A title card at the beginning of the film sets up the story as based on actual events — something that the brutalist architecture, bland color palette, and utilitarian nature of the military base setting reinforces right from the jump.

Marta Balaga Following their collaboration on short “When the Hurlyburly’s Done” and “Killing All the Flies,” Alex Eslam and Hanna Maria Heidrich share directorial duties on eight-episode German Sky Atlantic series “Souls,” which competed at Canneseries this week.Produced by Geißendörfer Pictures and Sky Deutschland, its complex plot combines the concept of reincarnation, the kind of love that cheats death and even sees one of its characters, played by Julia Koschitz, caught in a time loop à la Bill Murray in “Groundhog Day.”“It was always clear to me that this topic was way too big to focus on just one storyline,” explains Eslam, who created the series. His protagonists, who seemingly have nothing in common, represent the past, present and the future connected to one tragic event: a passenger plane accident that left many questions unanswered. Until teenage boy Jacob, fresh off a traumatic incident of his own, announces that in a previous life, he was actually the plane’s pilot.

EXCLUSIVE: Sky’s German original Souls has wrapped production and producer Geißendörfer Pictures has dropped first-look images of the eight-part series.