BETA CINEMA CLOSES FIRST DEALS FOR AWARD-WINNING DEBUT ONE LAST EVENING

Beta Cinema had discovered German up-and coming director Lukas Nathrath’s One Last Evening in Locarno last year, where it screened in the work in progress section and took the main prize, the First Look Award. The Munich-based sales team now is proud to announce it sold the inventive debut to Filmwelt for Germany and Austria, to September Film for Benelux, Aurora Films for Poland and Discovery for the former Yugoslavian territories. 

One Last Evening (original title Letzter Abend) draws a poignant and humorous portrait of the Generation Y, starting off from a young couple’s goodbye-dinner, in the standstill of the pandemic summer. Lisa is an on-the-rise doctor bracing herself for a new position, Clemens is a talented but unsuccessful singer-songwriter crippled by self-doubts. To say goodbye, they host a dinner party in their now empty flat. But good friends cancel — and uninvited guests show up. As the attendees begin to compare each other's achievements, the evening gradually escalates, leading to an emotional breakdown that exposes misunderstandings, rivalries, animosities, and anxieties.

The film had its premiere in the Tiger Competition at the International Film Festival Rotterdam and won the Best Director Award at the Max Ophüls Preis film festival. The cast features emerging young German actors Pauline Werner, Nikolai Gemel, Isabelle von Stauffenberg, Valentin Richter, Julius Forster, Nils Rovira-Muñoz, Amelle Schwerk, and Pascal Houdus, along with experienced theatre actress Susanne Dorothea Schneider and Sebastian Jakob Doppelbauer (Biohackers, The Legend of Wacken), who portrays the main character Clemens. Doppelbauer also co-wrote and co-produced the tragicomedy alongside Lukas Nathrath.

Lukas Nathrath studied directing at the Hamburg Media School. His graduation film Kippa screened at over 50 international film festivals, received the Studio Hamburg Young Talent Award and the European CIVIS Media Prize. One Last Evening marks his feature film debut. Lukas was one of the seven talents selected for German Film's "Face to Face" showcase at this year’s Berlinale. He is currently developing several feature film projects, including a new collaboration with Sebastian Jakob Doppelbauer and the team behind One Last Evening, which will be a blend of dark comedy and psychological thriller.

“We are thrilled to announce first deals for One Last Evening today,“ states Thorsten Ritter, EVP Acquisitions, Sales & Marketing at Beta Cinema. “Lukas Nathrath not only proofs his outstanding directing talent, but also opens the doors to an interesting world for us, granting us an evening with the open-minded, ambitious, competitive and maybe obsessively self-aware Generation Y. Audiences can look forward to a rewarding evening at the movies.”

One Last Evening was lensed by Philip Jestädt (Die Discounter) and edited by Silke Olthoff (Rammbock, Goliath96, Sleep). Lucie Bates (Go For Zucker!, Hanna, Effie Briest) created the costumes and the songs performed in the film were composed and performed by main actor Sebastian Jakob Doppelbauer. Nathrath and Doppelbauer started off the production independently but soon were joined by producer Linus Günther from klinkerfilm. Post-production was enabled with the support of Nordmedia, local sponsoring and the Cinegrell First Look Award.