Watch Johnny Klimek speak about the music in Babylon Berlin

Speculation and inflation are already tearing away at the foundations of the still young Weimar Republic. Growing poverty and unemployment stand in stark contrast to the excesses and indulgence of the city’s night life and its overflowing creative energy.

Gereon Rath, a young police inspector from Cologne, is transferred to Berlin in order to solve a criminal case – a porno ring run by the Berlin Mafia. What at first glance appears to be simply a matter of extortion soon reveals itself to be a scandal that will forever change the lives of both Gereon and his closest associates.

Together with stenotypist Charlotte Ritter and his partner Bruno Wolter, Rath is confronted with a tangled web of corruption, drug dealing, and weapons trafficking, forcing him into an existential conflict as he is torn between loyalty and uncovering the truth. And we are left wondering: in this story, who is friend and who is foe?

With the political unrest spurred by May Day demonstrations and rising National Socialism, even an institution like the “Rote Burg,” Berlin’s police headquarters and the centre of democracy and the constitutional state, is increasingly becoming the melting pot of a democracy whose days are numbered.

Watch the full trailer for Babylon Berlin below (in German):

The TV series

Since May 2016 and continuing on until the end of this year, X Filme Creative Pool,  ARD, SKY, and Beta Film are bringing the 1920´s back to life on original sites in Berlin, namely the back lot set  “Neuen Berliner Straße” at the Studio Babelsberg and in North Rhine-Westphalia.

© Babylon Berlin (Sky)

The novels

Back in 2007, just as author Volker Kutscher finished  „Der nasse Fisch“, the first entry in his series of novels about detective Gereon Rath, he broke new ground on the literary scene.  Historical crime novels set in Nazi-Germany had been written before, but a series dealing with the “golden” 1920´s had never been published until then.

An especially exciting phase of German history, the 1920´s were marked by radical changes in society, a fact Kutscher combines in his novels with classic noir elements, reminiscent of hard-boiled American writers such as Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler back in the day. This is an approach mirrored in the choice of making the protagonist a detective who is being transferred from Cologne to Berlin. Following this ambitious, yet politically indifferent anti-hero, the reader can explore the old “Chicago at the river Spree” and vicariously experience how a young, promising democracy with great progressive tendencies could descend into a rule of fascism.

Gereon Rath´s cases are meticulously researched history lessons during which the author confronts fictional as well as non-fictional characters with historic events while never losing sight of the detective story. Kutscher uses a gripping, scenic narrating style which presents the intoxicating world of a doomed Weimar Republic brought back to live in stunning detail and perfectly serves as a basis for a TV adaptation. Kutscher has stated that the ground-braking HBO series “The Sopranos” (1999-2007) served as an inspiration for him – and also the fact he had seen two movies in quick succession in 2002: Sam Mendes´ hard-boiled gangster film “Road to Perdition” set in 1931 and Fritz Lang´s 1931 masterpiece “M”, made in Berlin. The idea of blending both of those worlds in a crime novel was born.

© Babylon Berlin (Sky)

About Johnny Klimek

Johnny Klimek is a fourth generation film composer, equally comfortable in the electronic studio and on the recording stage with Simon Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic, as he was for Perfume: The Story of a Murderer. This dual-identity will assert itself again in the much-anticipated adaptation of Cloud Atlas (2012), on which Johnny is working with the Wachowski’s and his sturdiest collaborator, German auteur Tom Tykwer . His style is a genuine hybrid of the ambient soundscapes and propulsive grooves he mastered during his formative years in the Berlin underground and the classic film scoring tradition so much associated with Hollywood. Both worlds are in evidence in his career-defining work for Tykwer, beginning with the breakthrough hit, Run, Lola, Run, and continuing through Perfume, The International, and now, Cloud Atlas. These scores, along with much of his output over the last decade, were created in collaboration with his longtime partner, Reinhold Heil, but as of Fall 2011, Johnny, allied with WME composer agent Amos Newman, is breaking out on his own.

Born in Australia, Johnny paid his dues down-under with a series of gritty pub bands, but the genesis of his knife-edged electronics and lush, dreamy sound pictures was his baptism in the Berlin electronica under-ground. Initially migrating to Berlin to form the Eighties pop ensemble, The Other Ones with his siblings, he segued into the club music scene on his own in the Nineties, and out of the latter emerged his creative marriages to both Heil and Tykwer. The consummation of this three-way relationship was Run, Lola, Run, a game-changing exercise in both non-linear storytelling and the use of electronica as underscore. The worldwide success of the Lola score put Johnny on the map and catalyzed his move to Los Angeles and the establishment of his Echo Park studio. Since then, he has seen a steady stream of cinematically striking projects and has become something of a go-to composer for film and television involving parallel realities and slipping time frames. His hybrid style suits this zeitgeist genre well.

About Tom Tykwer

In 1985, he moved from his hometown of Wuppertal to Berlin, began studying philosophy at the Free University Berlin, and working as a projectionist in repertory theaters. In 1988, he took over programming of the Berlin cinema Moviemento and kept his head above water by editing screenplays and shooting portraits of a variety of film directors for German television. It was during this period that he met cinematographer Frank Griebe, with whom he’s worked on nearly every film he’s made to this day.

In 1994, along with Stefan Arndt, Wolfgang Becker, and Dani Levy, Tykwer co-founded the production company X Filme Creative Pool. Stefan Arndt, who had also co-produced Deadly Maria, and X Filme co-manager Maria Köpf, formed a producer team that would work closely with Tykwer over the years to come.

Tykwer spent 1995 and 1996 writing the screenplay for Life Is All You Get with Wolfgang Becker before directing his own second feature, Winter Sleepers (1997). The project introduced him to several new collaborators, among them the sound designer and mixer Matthias Lempert, with whom Tykwer has worked on every single one of his films since.

Run Lola Run followed in 1998, scoring X Filme its first great success abroad. Despite – or perhaps even because of – its unusual narrative structure, Run Lola Run was the most profitable German film of that year, and it’s since won over 30 prestigious awards around the world.

In 2008, Tykwer and his wife Marie Steinmann-Tykwer co-founded the non-profit organization One Fine Day, which fosters art education and development for young people in Kenya, East Africa. This work has led to the founding of the production company One Fine Day Films, which has been developing feature-length films in workshops since 2009. Among the projects have been Soul Boy (2010, by Hawa Essuman), Nairobi Half Life (2012, by David “Tosh” Gitonga), Something Necessary (2013, Judy Kibinge) and Veve (2014, Simon Mukali).

As a producer, Tykwer has helped realize such films as Gigantics (1999, directed by Sebastian Schipper), Soundless (2004, directed by Mennan Yapo), A Friend of Mine (2006, Sebastian Schipper), and The Heart is a Dark Forest (2007, Nicolette Krebitz).

About Volker Kutscher

Volker Kutscher was born 1962 in Lindar, North Rhine-Westphalia. After studying German literature, philosophy, and history, he worked as an editor for a daily newspaper. In 1996, he published his first crime novel „Bullenmord“, set in his native region Bergisches Land. His award-winning Gereon Rath series, published by Kiepenbauer & Witsch, consists at this point of “Der nasse Fisch” (2007), “Der stumme Tod” (2009), “Goldstein” (2010), “Die Akte Vaterland” (2012), and “Märzgefallene” (2014), all using Berlin during 1929-1931 as a scenic backdrop. Kutscher’s 6^th novel, “Lunapark”, will be released in November 2016 and will be set in summer 1934. At least three more entries in the series will follow.