The much-awaited history mini-series on the life and reign of legendary 18th-century Habsburg Empress-Queen Maria Theresia is set to be broadcast in Hungary as well as in Austria, Czech Republic and Slovakia, in December 2017 and January 2018.
Directed by Oscar-nominated Austrian director Robert Dornhelm, the €4,7 million Austrian-Czech-Hungarian-Slovak cooproduction is produced by Beta Film (Germany), MR Film (Austria) and Maya Production (CZ) and MAYA Production (SK) and coproduced by four European public broadcasters: Slovak RTVS , Czech TV, Austrian ORF and Hungarian MTVA.
According to filmneweurope.com, the shooting of Maria Theresia’s coronation ceremony in Pozsony (Bratislava) took 45 days. “It was one of the most challenging parts of the production”, the site quoted RTVS produced Vladimír Burianek as saying. There were 220 extras on set, 13 costume designers and 24 make-up artists from Bratislava, Brno and Prague, he said.
The main characters are played by the Austrian actress Marie Luise Stockinger as Maria Theresia and the Czech actor Vojtěch Kotek as her husband Franz Stephan von Lothringen. Hungarian actors, namely Réka Tenki, Ervin Nagy, Bálint Adorján and Zoltán Rátóti, also appear in the film as members of the historic Esterházy family.
The film marks to the 300th anniversary of the birth of Maria Theresa, who ruled huge parts of Central Europe for 40 years, from 1740 to 1780. Mother of 16 children, she was the Empress of the Holy Roman Empire, Archduchess of Austria, Queen of Hungary and Croatia, sovereign of Bohemia, Transylvania, Mantua, Milan, Lodomeria and Galicia as well as Duchess of Lorraine and Grand Duchess of Tuscany.
via MTI, filmneweurope.com and imdb.com; featured photo: betafilm.com