Bavaria Film is a German film production and distribution company based in Grünwald, Bavaria, in the district of Munich. With an annual turnover of 305.9 million euros, it is one of the largest film production companies in Europe and one of the leading production and distribution companies in the German film and television industry with around 30 subsidiaries. With the Bavaria Filmstadt, Bavaria Film operates a popular tourist attraction on the studio site, where visitors can see sets and props from The Neverending Story, Das Boot, Marienhof and other productions on a studio tour.

The studios were founded in 1919 as a result of political, artistic and economic aspirations in the Bavarian capital of Munich and are among the largest European film production facilities. Directors such as Alfred Hitchcock, Billy Wilder, Orson Welles, John Huston, Ingmar Bergman, Stanley Kubrick, Claude Chabrol, Fritz Umgelter, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Dominik Graf, Wolfgang Petersen and Wim Wenders as well as many famous actors such as Sophia Loren, Heinz Rühmann and Elizabeth Taylor have worked here. After 1945, Bavaria was shaped above all by the managing directors Helmut Jedele and Günter Rohrbach.

The Geiselgasteig film lot was purchased at auction by Wilhelm Kraus, who had already bought a large part of Emelka's shares in October 1930 and founded Bavaria Film AG on September 21, 1932.

After the National Socialist seizure of power in January 1933, a number of long-standing Emelka employees left the country, including the directors Ewald André Dupont, Karl Grune, Max Ophüls, the cameraman Franz Planer and the actors Therese Giehse, Kurt Horwitz and Fritz Kortner. Bavaria Film was nationalized by the Nazi regime in 1938 and placed under the control of the UFA as a production unit. After a period of dormancy after the Second World War, it was re-established as a private company in 1956.

Over the next few decades, Bavaria Film developed into Germany's largest television supplier and an internationally recognized film studio. Billy Wilder chose the “Bavarian Hollywood” as a film location twice: in 1961 with Eins, Zwei, Drei and in 1978 with Fedora. History was also made in the television sector - with productions such as “Tatort” with Commissioner Horst Schimanski, “Das blaue Palais”, “Auf Achse”, “Berlin Alexanderplatz” by Rainer Werner Fassbinder, “Der Fahnder”, “Rote Erde” and “Marienhof”. From 1990 onwards, the company also produced on a large scale for private broadcasters such as RTL, including the show “Gottschalk”. In 1965, the film site in Geiselgasteig became the property of Bavaria Atelier, which has also produced its own feature films since then, the most successful of which to date has been “Das Boot” from 1979/81. (Source: Wikipedia)