Ulrich Seidl Wrapping Follow-Up to Berlin Competition Entry ‘Rimini’ (EXCLUSIVE)

variety.com:

Christopher Vourlias Austrian director Ulrich Seidl, whose latest feature “Rimini” plays in the main competition at this year’s Berlin Film Festival, is winding down production on his next film, Variety can reveal.“Sparta” is a companion piece to Seidl’s competition entry and revolves around the brother of that film’s protagonist, the washed-up singer Richie Bravo. “[‘Rimini’] actually originated as a much larger story,” the director told Variety. “This original story that I started writing was about the two brothers and their father.” Though Seidl wouldn’t share further details about the plot of “Sparta,” he noted that “both protagonists are caught up by their past.”Marking the director’s return to the Berlinale’s main competition since 2013’s “Paradise: Hope,” “Rimini” is the story of a faded middle-aged crooner trying to make ends meet in the titular Italian resort town during a bleak, blustery off-season.

His precarious world is suddenly turned upside down with the arrival of a figure from his past. The film, which is being sold by Coproduction Office, offers a candid portrait of “a man whose time has passed, and who’s trying desperately to hold on, trying desperately to remain relevant and a figure of adulation,” says Seidl. “But he’s failed at that.

He’s a has-been and his time is up.”Lead actor Michael Thomas, who starred in Seidl’s 2007 Cannes competition selection “Import Export,” fully inhabits the role of the bearish Bravo, trudging through the elements from one hotel foyer performance to the next and dialling up his schmaltzy charms as he sings to — and beds — admirers of a certain age.Sex — explicit, full-frontal, ungainly sex, so often the case in Seidl’s work — plays a central role in the film. “Richie.