Prominent Polish documentarist Michał Marczak – a Sundance Film Festival prizewinner with “All These Sleepless Nights” – is set to make his narrative feature debut with “Perfection,” a buzzy drama about hipster millennials in Berlin, based on Italian author Vincenzo Latronico’s eponymous novel that was shortlisted for the 2025 International Booker Prize.
German producer Roman Paul, of Razor Film (“Quo Vadis, Aida?”), Britain’s Andrea Calderwood, head of prominent London-based indie Potboiler Productions, and Italy’s Marta Donzelli, partner in Vivo Film (“The Last One for the Road”), have teamed up on the high-profile project. Donzelli was instrumental in winning the bidding war for the book’s rights that were negotiated with Claire Sabatié-Garat, who is Latronico’s literary agent.
“Perfection” – which has been translated and sold in more than 40 countries – turns on a millennial expat couple named Anna and Tom who are living their dream during the 2010s in Berlin. “Their life as young digital creatives revolves around slow cooking, Danish furniture, sexual experimentation and the city’s 24-hour party scene – an ideal existence shared by an entire generation and tantalizingly lived out on social media,” says the synopsis of the book’s English-language edition.
“But beyond the images, dissatisfaction and ennui burgeon. Work becomes repetitive. Friends move back home, have children, grow up. Frustrated that their progressive politics amount to little more in practice than boycotting Uber, tipping in cash, or never eating tuna, Anna and Tom make a fruitless attempt at political activism,” it goes on to add. “Feeling increasingly trapped in their picture-perfect life, the couple takes ever more radical steps in the pursuit of an authenticity and a sense of purpose perennially beyond their grasp.”
“I’ve been living in Berlin since 1998 and with all the younger producers in my company – who are either expats or born there – we had long been looking for an original IP about what went on there in the 2010s when Berlin really meant something to the world,” Paul told Variety, speaking on the sidelines of the Rome MIA Market.
“In those early days of social media people were more idealistic about what it could achieve and how it allowed them to live the digital nomad life,” Calderwood said. “Because it is such a perfectly formed novel, we feel there is a way to make a perfectly formed film, which will have universal access and appeal,” she added.
Marczak, who won 2016 directing prize in the Sundance World Cinema – documentary category for “All These Sleepless Nights,” is known for his hybrid style that blurs the lines between documentary and fiction. His most recent work is multiple prize-winning “Closure,” about a teenager who disappears and his father’s relentless search for him, which also bowed at Sundance and will be released in U.S. theaters via 1-2 Special on Oct. 28.
Marczak’s films are “hybrid films, some of which focus on young people, for whom he has a very good eye and ear,” Paul noted, adding that “his sense of visuals is sublime.” He also pointed out that Marczak lived in Berlin and shot a film there, 2012 doc “Fuck for Forest” about a real-life Berlin-based non-governmental organization that raises money for environmental causes by producing and selling eco-pornography online.
Marczak will write the English-language screenplay for “Perfection” that, unlike Latronico’s atmospheric novel, will include dialogues.
The producers are “in constant dialogue” with Latronico who “has been very supportive of our choice of director,” though the book’s author will not be directly involved in the screenplay, they said.
The “Perfection” project is in early development with Marczak attached as director, the next step being the writing of a treatment, followed by a screenplay.
“We are taking a step-by-step approach, building the development package before we take it to the market,” said Calderwood, who noted that “there is plenty of interest in the IP.”