DEDICATION – based upon a short story by Stephen King

Dedication is based on Stephen King’s short story of the same name and adapted with his permission through his Dollar Baby agreement.

Not unlike other works of his, Dedication is set in a hotel and deals with the dichotomy of the anonymity and the circumstantial intimacy between guests and staff. Hotels are homes away from home and yet there is a distinct solitude in those long hallways with identical looking doors, among which one can easily get lost. 

This film is both drama and mystery, as it tells a very personal story about Martha, who moves to Berlin in hopes of getting control of her own life. While she gets a job working as a maid in a prestigious hotel, her past catches up with her. As the skeletons in her closet threaten to overwhelm her, magic seems like the only way out for her.

Stephen King is often called the “Master of Horror” but we find much of his work to be more subtle in regards to this term and this notion also determined our approach to Dedication. Witches have been prominent figures in horror stories – many of which were used as inspiration and references to find a fitting look and feel for Dedication – but if you look more closely the magic is not the horror element of this story, but the reasons for Martha to resort to magic are.

With the remakes of Charmed and Suspiria on the horizon, we predict witches are about to make a comeback and our film will fit right into this niche. 

The visual style of this film is based on the interplay of light and darkness, shadows and contrast. The work of David Lynch has proven very inspirational to find a look that supports the eery elements of the story, as well as the films Stoker and Black Swan, where the camera knows more than the characters or the audience, which serves to create an uncanny feeling. 

The final film will have an estimated length of 15 minutes and is to be shot over 5 days in late August in Berlin. 

Like the city of Berlin itself, the cast and crew of this project are very international. We want to capture this cosmopolitan spirit in Dedication through multilingual dialogue, therefore we will be filming in both English and German.

Martha’s colleague and mentor at the hotel, Oktavia Zagomorova, will be played by Danielle Schneider.

Buenaventura Braunstein will play the mysterious Mama Delorme.

The Producers

Selina Sondermann was born in Linz, Austria and manifested an interest in storytelling early on. Ten years after her first play was performed (which she wrote at the age of 12), she graduated from Kingston University in 2015 and in the summer of the same year attended a summer course in Screenwriting at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. She is currently studying at Met Film School Berlin and Dedication is her graduation project.

Philip Reinking is originally from Frankfurt but this will be his first film shot entirely in Germany. He graduated with Selina from Kingston University London in 2015, then completed his Masters Degree at Bournemouth University in 2017. Since then he has been working in the UK as an independent cameraman and editor.