POTSDAM, Germany — The German craftsmen on Stage 15 in the Babelsberg studio were hard at work on a recent afternoon building a dystopian Korean slum, the thud of a nail gun and a whiff of sawdust in the air. Next door, Andy and Lana Wachowski, the American-born team behind the “Matrix” movies, were filming black-clad storm troopers from an imagined future for their latest feature, “Cloud Atlas.”

From its truly global parentage to its time-bending story told by three directors using two separate production crews, the movie is unabashedly strange. The narrative, which starts near New Zealand and circles the globe, is bewildering in its complexity, featuring characters in six eras who might share a soul migrating through time. And the project’s primary backers are from China, Korea and Singapore.

But “Cloud Atlas,” in all its glorious confusion, also serves as a guidepost to the future of the film business. Increasingly, sophisticated filmmakers who once relied on American studios for backing are turning to a globe-straddling independent finance system for their most expensive projects.

“Cloud Atlas,” with its $100 million budget and high-wattage cast, including the Academy Award winners Tom Hanks and Halle Berry, was an epic independent film too complicated, too expensive and perhaps too risky for any conventional studio to have backed.