Érik Canuel, director of all-time top-grosser Bon Cop, Bad Cop, has lined up his next project, My Oma, with actress Marianne Sägebrecht (Baghdad Café) in the lead. Julia Rosenberg of Toronto-based January Films set up the project as a Canada/Germany coproduction with Germany’s Andro Steinborn, who recently left Berlin-based X Filme International.

Rosenberg tells Playback Daily that an Italian partner may yet be part of the equation.

Written by Canadians Claudia Casagrande and Andrea Blundell, the story follows Sägebrecht as an idiosyncratic grandmother who travels to Rome to surprise her granddaughter and hatches a plan to visit the Pope. The film is slated for production in Germany, Italy and Canada in the spring of 2010.

Rosenberg says of Canuel, ‘Even though he’s an amazing visual stylist, Érik is first and foremost all about the actors. He’s perfect for this. We’re so lucky to have him on board.’ She adds that casting director Kerry Barden is assisting the production in casting the role of the granddaughter, Martina.

Rosenberg, who got her start with Robert Lantos’ Serendipity Point Films, most recently produced the documentary The Bodybuilder and I and was a coproducer on Jeremy Podeswa’s Fugitive Pieces.