Background
Max Topas – The Miracle from Citadellstraße
The production is a spin-off of the film club at the Max-Grundschule in Düsseldorf. After a first short film project, the idea of making a feature film for children developed there. Michael W. Driesch, who most recently shot the feature film "The Eylandt Investigation" in 2008 and is the honorary director of the film club, developed a story based on motifs from Baldío's novel that could be realised on a small budget. After the first twenty minutes had been completed, Driesch presented the beginning of the film to a group of colleagues from the film industry. The resonance was so good that the full-length completion was a done deal: The way from primary school directly to the cinema became possible!
The film was shot between July 2016 and April 2017 with a budget of only 536,000 euros, which came exclusively from private investors, grants from an association and for the most part from the producers' own contributions.
In November 2017, the team premiere of the film took place in front of more than 300 spectators at the UCI cinema in Düsseldorf. The reactions were thoroughly positive: "The Miracle from Citadellstraße", as one premiere viewer put it, alluding to the extraordinary genesis of the film and the location of the Max School where the project began.