German Cinema in 100 Names
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F.W. Murnau was a German film director. He was greatly influenced by Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Shakespeare and Ibsen plays he had seen at the age of 12, and became a friend of director Max Reinhardt. During World War I he served as a company commander at the eastern front and was in the German air force, surviving several crashes without any severe injuries.
One of Murnau's acclaimed works is the 1922 film Nosferatu, an adaptation of Bram Stoker's Dracula. Although not a commercial success due to copyright issues with Stoker's novel, the film is considered a masterpiece of Expressionist film.
He later emigrated to Hollywood in 1926, where he joined the Fox Studio and made three films: Sunrise (1927), 4 Devils (1928) and City Girl (1930). The first of these three is widely regarded as one of the greatest films ever made.
In 1931 Murnau travelled to Bora Bora to make the film Tabu (1931) with documentary film pioneer Robert J. Flaherty, who left after artistic disputes with Murnau, who had to finish the movie on his own. A week prior to the opening of the film Tabu, Murnau died in a Santa Barbara hospital from injuries he had received in an automobile accident that occurred along the Pacific Coast Highway near Rincon Beach, southeast of Santa Barbara. Only 11 people attended his funeral. Among them were Robert J. Flaherty, Emil Jannings, Greta Garbo and Fritz Lang, who delivered the eulogy.
Of the 21 films Murnau directed, eight are considered to be completely lost.
In July 2015 Murnau's grave was broken into, the remains disturbed and the skull removed by persons unknown. Wax residue was reportedly found at the site, leading some to speculate that candles had been lit, perhaps with an occult or ceremonial significance. As this disturbance was not an isolated incident, the cemetery managers are considering sealing the grave.- Actor
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Klaus Kinski was born as Klaus Günter Karl Nakszynski in Zoppot, Free City of Danzig (now Sopot, Poland), to Susanne (Lutze), a nurse, and Bruno Nakszynski, a pharmacist. He grew up in Berlin, was drafted into the German army in 1944 and captured by British forces in Holland. After the war he began acting on the stage, quickly gaining a reputation for a ferocious talent and an equally ferocious temper. He started acting in films shortly afterward, showing an utter disregard for the quality of the productions he appeared in and churning out so many that a complete filmography is almost impossible to assemble.
However, he did turn out memorable work for director Werner Herzog, a similarly driven and obsessive character. Herzog and Kinski pushed each other to extremes over a 15-year working relationship, which finally ended after filming Cobra Verde (1987), a production plagued by volcanic clashes between the star and director, involving--among other things--violent physical altercations and mutual death threats. He subsequently directed and starred in the notorious Paganini (1989), his only film as director and which was marked by (again) clashes between Kinski and his producers, who accused him of turning their movie into a pornographic film and sued him in court. His autobiography, "All I Need is Love", a vicious attack on the film industry, was withdrawn for legal reasons and subsequently re-released as "Kinski Uncut" in the US & UK, "Ich brauche Liebe" in Germany, and in various other languages.- Director
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Fritz Lang was born in Vienna, Austria, in 1890. His father managed a construction company. His mother, Pauline Schlesinger, was Jewish but converted to Catholicism when Lang was ten. After high school, he enrolled briefly at the Technische Hochschule Wien and then started to train as a painter. From 1910 to 1914, he traveled in Europe, and he would later claim, also in Asia and North Africa. He studied painting in Paris from 1913-14. At the start of World War I, he returned to Vienna, enlisting in the army in January 1915. Severely wounded in June 1916, he wrote some scenarios for films while convalescing. In early 1918, he was sent home shell-shocked and acted briefly in Viennese theater before accepting a job as a writer at Erich Pommer's production company in Berlin, Decla. In Berlin, Lang worked briefly as a writer and then as a director, at Ufa and then for Nero-Film, owned by the American Seymour Nebenzal. In 1920, he began a relationship with actress and writer Thea von Harbou (1889-1954), who wrote with him the scripts for his most celebrated films: Dr. Mabuse, the Gambler (1922), Die Nibelungen: Siegfried (1924), Metropolis (1927) and M (1931) (credited to von Harbou alone). They married in 1922 and divorced in 1933. In that year, Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels offered Lang the job of head of the German Cinema Institute. Lang--who was an anti-Nazi mainly because of his Catholic background--did not accept the position (it was later offered to and accepted by filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl) and, after secretly sending most of his money out of the country, fled Germany to Paris. After about a year in Paris, Lang moved to the United States in mid-1934, initially under contract to MGM. Over the next 20 years, he directed numerous American films. In the 1950s, in part because the film industry was in economic decline and also because of Lang's long-standing reputation for being difficult with, and abusive to, actors, he found it increasingly hard to get work. At the end of the 1950s, he traveled to Germany and made what turned out to be his final three films there, none of which were well received.
In 1964, nearly blind, he was chosen to be president of the jury at the Cannes Film Festival. He was an avid collector of primitive art and habitually wore a monocle, an affectation he picked up during his early days in Vienna. After his divorce from von Harbou, he had relationships with many other women, but from about 1931 to his death in 1976, he was close to Lily Latte, who helped him in many ways.- Actress
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Her father was a police lieutenant and imbued in her a military attitude to life. Marlene was known in school for her "bedroom eyes" and her first affairs were at this stage in her life - a professor at the school was terminated. She entered the cabaret scene in 1920s Germany, first as a spectator then as a cabaret singer. In 1923, she married and, although she and Rudolf Sieber lived together only 5 years, they remained married until his death. She was in over a dozen silent films in increasingly important roles. In 1929, she was seen in a Berlin cabaret by Josef von Sternberg and, after a screen test, captured the role of the cabaret singer in The Blue Angel (1930) (and became von Sternberg's lover). With the success of this film, von Sternberg immediately took her to Hollywood, introducing her to the world in Morocco (1930), and signing an agreement to produce all her films. A series of successes followed, and Marlene became the highest paid actress of her time, but her later films in the mid-part of the decade were critical and popular failures. She returned to Europe at the end of the decade, with a series of affairs with former leading men (she had a reputation of romancing her co-stars), as well as other prominent artistic figures. In 1939, an offer came to star with James Stewart in a western and, after initial hesitation, she accepted. The film was Destry Rides Again (1939) - the siren of film could also be a comedienne and a remarkable comeback was reality. She toured extensively for the allied effort in WW II (she had become a United States citizen) and, after the war, limited her cinematic life. But a new career as a singer and performer appeared, with reviews and shows in Las Vegas, touring theatricals, and even Broadway. New success was accompanied by a too close acquaintance with alcohol, until falls in her performance eventually resulted in a compound fracture of the leg. Although the last 13 years of her life were spent in seclusion in her apartment in Paris, with the last 12 years in bed, she had withdrawn only from public life and maintained active telephone and correspondence contact with friends and associates.- Director
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Director. Writer. Producer. Actor. Poet. He studied history, literature and theatre for some time, but didn't finish it and founded instead his own film production company in 1963. Later in his life, Herzog also staged several operas in Bayreuth, Germany, and at the Milan Scala in Italy. Herzog has won numerous national and international awards for his poetic feature and documentary films.- Producer
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Leni Riefenstahl's show-biz experience began with an experiment: she wanted to know what it felt like to dance on the stage. Success as a dancer gave way to film acting when she attracted the attention of film director Arnold Fanck, subsequently starring in some of his mountaineering pictures. With Fanck as her mentor, Riefenstahl began directing films.
Her penchant for artistic work earned her acclaim and awards for her films across Europe. It was her work on Triumph of the Will (1935), a documentary commissioned by the Nazi government about Adolf Hitler and the Third Reich, that would come back to haunt her after the atrocities of World War II. Despite her protests to the contrary, Riefenstahl was considered an intricate part of the Third Reich's propaganda machine. Condemned by the international community, she did not make another movie for over 50 years.- Actor
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His real name was Theodor Friedrich Emil Janenz, and in the early 1900s, he was already working in the theater under Max Reinhardt's company. Important movies where he defined himself as a convincing actor were Passion (1919) and Quo Vadis? (1924), followed by The Last Laugh (1924) (aka The Last Laugh) in 1924 and Variety (1925) (aka Variety) in 1925. In 1928, he became the first male leading actor to receive the academy award for The Last Command (1928) directed by Josef von Sternberg. In 1929, Stenberg directed him in his world famous movie The Blue Angel (1930) (aka The Blue Angel) co-starring the young Marlene Dietrich (her first role). Later on, he concentrated on theater and dedicated his acting skills to the Nazi regime and also took part in the realization of Ohm Krüger (1941) in 1941, an expensive anti-British film production. When the Second World War ended, the US government cleaned his image, and he converted to Catholicism. He played in a few more German movies, but his career never recaptured its brilliance.- Writer
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Above all, Rainer Werner Fassbinder was a rebel whose life and art was marked by gross contradiction. Openly homosexual, he married twice; one of his wives acted in his films and the other served as his editor. Accused variously by detractors of being anticommunist, male chauvinist, antiSemitic and even antigay, he completed 44 projects between 1966 and 1982, the majority of which can be characterized as highly intelligent social melodramas. His prodigious output was matched by a wild, self-destructive libertinage that earned him a reputation as the enfant terrible of the New German Cinema (as well as its central figure.) Known for his trademark leather jacket and grungy appearance, Fassbinder cruised the bar scene by night, looking for sex and drugs, yet he maintained a flawless work ethic by day. Actors and actresses recount disturbing stories of his brutality toward them, yet his pictures demonstrate his deep sensitivity to social misfits and his hatred of institutionalized violence. Some find his cinema needlessly controversial and avant-garde; others accuse him of surrendering to the Hollywood ethos. It is best said that he drew forth strong emotional reactions from all he encountered, both in his personal and professional lives, and this provocative nature can be experienced posthumously through reviewing his artistic legacy.
Fassbinder was born into a bourgeois Bavarian family in 1945. His father was a doctor and his mother a translator. In order to have time for her work, his mother frequently sent him the movies, a practice that gave birth to his obsession with the medium. Later in life, he would claim that he saw a film nearly every day and sometimes as many as three or four. At the age of 15, Fassbinder defiantly declared his homosexuality, soon after which he left school and took a job. He studied theater in the mid-sixties at the Fridl-Leonhard Studio in Munich and joined the Action Theater (aka, Anti-Theater) in 1967. Unlike the other major auteurs of the New German Cinema (e.g., Schlöndorff, Herzog and Wenders) who started out making movies, Fassbinder acquired an extensive stage background that is evident throughout his work. Additionally, he learned how to handle all phases of production, from writing and acting to direction and theater management. This versatility later surfaced in his films where, in addition to some of the aforementioned responsibilities, Fassbinder served as composer, production designer, cinematographer, producer and editor. [So boundless was his energy, in fact, that he appeared in 30 projects of other directors.] In his theater years, he also developed a repertory company that included his mother, two of his wives and various male and female lovers. Coupled with his ability to serve in nearly any crew capacity, this gave him the ability to produce his films quickly and on extremely low budgets.
Success was not immediate for Fassbinder. His first feature length film, a gangster movie called Love Is Colder Than Death (1969) was greeted by catcalls at the Berlin Film Festival. His next piece, Katzelmacher (1969), was a minor critical success, garnering five prizes after its debut at Mannheim. It featured Jorgos, an emigrant from Greece, who encounters violent xenophobic slackers in moving into an all-German neighborhood. This kind of social criticism, featuring alienated characters unable to escape the forces of oppression, is a constant throughout Fassbinder's diverse oeuvre. In subsequent years, he made such controversial films about human savagery such as Pioneers in Ingolstadt (1971) and Whity (1971) before scoring his first domestic commercial success with The Merchant of Four Seasons (1972). This moving portrait of a street vendor crushed by the betrayal and his own futility is considered a masterpiece, as is his first international success Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (1974) (Fear Eats the Soul). With a wider audience for his efforts, however, some critics contend that Fassbinder began to sell out with big budget projects such as Despair (1978), Lili Marleen (1981) and Lola (1981). In retrospect, however, it seems that the added fame simply enabled Fassbinder to explore various kinds of filmmaking, including such "private" works as In a Year with 13 Moons (1978) and The Third Generation (1979), two films about individual experience and feelings. His greatest success came with The Marriage of Maria Braun (1979) (The Marriage of Maria Braun), chronicling the rise and fall of a German woman in the wake of World War II. Other notable movies include The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant (1972), Fox and His Friends (1975), Satan's Brew (1976) and Querelle (1982), all focused on gay and lesbian themes and frequently with a strongly pornographic edge.
His death is a perfect picture of the man and his legend. On the night of June 10, 1982, Fassbinder took an overdose of cocaine and sleeping pills. When he was found, the unfinished script for a version of Rosa Luxemburg was lying next to him. So boundless was his drive and creativity that, throughout his downward spiral and even in the moment of his death, Fassbinder never ceased to be productive.- Director
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Josef von Sternberg split his childhood between Vienna and New York City. His father, a former soldier in the Austro-Hungarian army, could not support his family in either city; Sternberg remembered him only as "an enormously strong man who often used his strength on me." Forced by poverty to drop out of high school, von Sternberg worked for a time in a Manhattan store that sold ribbons and lace to hat makers. A chance meeting in Prospect Park, Brooklyn, led to a new career in the cleaning and repair of movie prints. This job provided an entrée to the film production industry, then flourishing in Fort Lee, New Jersey. As an apprentice film-maker, from around 1916 to the early 1920s, von Sternberg developed a lasting contempt for most of the directors and producers he worked for (an exception was Emile Chautard, who acted in some of Sternberg's films of the 1930s), and was sure that he could improve on their products. Staked to a few thousand dollars -- even then an absurdly small budget -- von Sternberg proved himself right with The Salvation Hunters (1925), which became a critical and financial hit. For the next couple of years he seesawed between acclaim and oblivion, sometimes on the same project (for instance, he received the rare honor of directing a film for Charles Chaplin, but it was shelved after only one showing and later disappeared forever). His commercial breakthrough was Underworld (1927), a prototypical Hollywood gangster film; behind the scenes, von Sternberg successfully battled Ben Hecht, the writer, for creative control. With The Last Command (1928), starring the equally strong-willed Emil Jannings, von Sternberg began a period of almost a decade as one of the most celebrated artists of world cinema. Both his film career and his personal life were transformed in the making of The Blue Angel (1930). Chosen by Jannings and producer Erich Pommer to make Germany's first major sound picture, von Sternberg gambled by casting Marlene Dietrich, then obscure, as Lola Lola, the night-club dancer who leads Jannings' character into depravity. The von Sternberg-Dietrich story, both on-screen (he directed her in six more movies) and off (he became one of her legions of lovers, more in love with her than most) is a staple of film histories. His films of the mid-'30s are among the most visionary ever made in Hollywood, but in spite of their visual sumptuousness, contemporary audiences found them dramatically inert. The films' mediocre box office and a falling-out with Ernst Lubitsch, then head of production at Paramount Pictures (Sternberg's employer), meant that after The Devil Is a Woman (1935) he would never again have the control he needed to express himself fully. In his sardonic autobiography, he more or less completely disowned all of his subsequent films. In spite (or perhaps because) of his truncated career and bitter personality, von Sternberg remains a hero to many critics and filmmakers. His best films exemplify the proposition, as he put it, that in any worthwhile film the director is "the determining influence, and the only influence, despotically exercised or not, which accounts for the worth of what is seen on the screen."- Director
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Georg Wilhelm Pabst is considered by many to be the greatest director of German cinema, in his era. He was especially appreciated by actors and actresses for the humane way in which he treated them. This was in contrast to some of his contemporaries, such as Arnold Fanck, who have been characterized as martinets.- Actor
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Bruno Ganz was an acclaimed Swiss actor who was a prominent figure in German language film and television for over fifty years. He is internationally renowned for portraying Adolf Hitler in the Academy Award-nominated film Downfall (2004).
Ganz was born in Zürich, to a Swiss mechanic father and a northern Italian mother. He decided to pursue an acting career by the time he entered university. He debuted at the theatre in 1961, and gained a reputation as a reflective, charismatic and technically brilliant stage actor. In 1970, he and Peter Stein founded the theatre company 'Schaubühne' in Berlin, Germany. On stage, Ganz portrayed Dr. Heinrich Faust in Peter Stein's staging of Faust, Part One and Faust, Part Two in 2000.
In cinema, Ganz became one of the best-known and most acclaimed actors in the German language, collaborating with many of the most respected European actors and directors of his time. He also starred in international features that reached a global audience. His film debut was The Gentleman in the Black Derby (1960). He also starred in Unknown (2011), The Counselor (2013), and The Party (2017).
Ganz died from cancer on 16 February 2019 at his home in the village of Au, in Wädenswil, Switzerland.- Writer
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Robert Wiene was born on 24 April 1873 in Breslau, Silesia, Germany [now Wroclaw, Dolnoslaskie, Poland]. He was a writer and director, known for The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920), Das wandernde Licht (1916) and The Knight of the Rose (1925). He died on 17 July 1938 in Paris, France.- Director
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Has studied economy and political sciences as well as at the Institut des Hautes Etudes Cinematographique (IDHEC) in Paris, France. Worked as an assistant director with Louis Malle, Jean-Pierre Melville and Alain Resnais. Founded his own production company Bioskop Film together with Reinhard Hauff and Eberhard Junkersdorf in 1973. Has directed several operas in Frankfurt a/M, Berlin (Germany) and Paris, France. Since 1992 chief executive of the german production company Sudio Babelsberg GmbH (former UFA/DEFA).- Director
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Born in Hamburg, Germany, in 1957. In his teens he left high school and worked as a cooker in a boat.
Then he studied painting and graphism in the Academy of arts in Hamburg where he also started experimenting with video and photography. Those experimental movies attracted the attention of some producers of the German TV.
Hirschbiegel became popular thanks to his tv movies (especially dramas and thrillers). In 2001 he shot his first movie for cinema: "Das Experiment" that won several awards in many festivals all around the world. That movie is an intense investigation of the aggressive behaviour in a simulated prison environment.
His second movie, "Mein letzter Film", released in 2002, is a 90 minutes' monologue about a woman in her fifties who wants to re-start his life.
In 2004 "Downfall" was released, his third movie, and till now his greatest success. "Downfall" is about the last 12 days of life of Adolf Hitler narrated out of the sight of her young secretary, Traudl Junge. That movie has stirred up much controversy because it portrays Hitler and the Nazis as human beings and not just as evil.
Hirschbiegel has demonstrated in all his movies to be an specialist of dramas set in claustrophobic environments.- Director
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Wim Wenders is an Oscar-nominated German filmmaker who was born Ernst Wilhelm Wenders on August 14, 1945 in Düsseldorf, which then was located in the British Occupation Zone of what became the Bundesrepublik Deutschland (Federal Republic of Germany, known colloquially as West Germany until reunification). At university, Wenders originally studied to become a physician before switching to philosophy before terminating his studies in 1965. Moving to Paris, he intended to become a painter.
He fell in love with the cinema but failed to gain admission to the French national film school. He supported himself as an engraver while attending movie houses. Upon his return to West Germany in 1967, he was employed by United Artists at its Düsseldorf office before he was accepted by the University of Television and Film Munich school for its autumn 1967 semester, where he remained until 1970. While attending film school, he worked as a newspaper film critic. In addition to shorts, he made a feature film as part of his studies, Summer in the City (1971).
Wenders gained recognition as part of the German New Wave of the 1970s. Other directors that were part of the New German Cinema were Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Werner Herzog. His second feature, a film made from Peter Handke's novel The Goalie's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick (1972), brought him acclaim, as did Alice in the Cities (1974) and Kings of the Road (1976). It was his 1977 feature The American Friend (1977) ("The American Friend"), starring Dennis Hopper as Patricia Highsmith's anti-hero Tom Ripley, that represented his international breakthrough. He was nominated for the Palme d'Or at the 1977 Cannes Film Festival for "The American Friend", which was cited as Best Foreign Film by the National Board of Review in the United States.
Francis Ford Coppola, as producer, gave Wenders the chance to direct in America, but Hammett (1982) (1982) was a critical and commercial failure. However, his American-made Paris, Texas (1984) (1984) received critical hosannas, winning three awards at Cannes, including the Palme d'Or, and Wenders won a BAFTA for best director. "Paris, Texas" was a prelude to his greatest success, 1987's Wings of Desire (1987) ("Wings of Desire"), which he made back in Germany. The film brought him the best director award at Cannes and was a solid hit, even spawning an egregious Hollywood remake.
Wenders followed it up with a critical and commercial flop in 1991, Until the End of the World (1991) ("Until the End of the World"), though Faraway, So Close! (1993) won the Grand Prize of the Jury at Cannes. Still, is reputation as a feature film director never quite recovered in the United States after the bomb that was "Until the End of the World." Since the mid-1990s, Wenders has distinguished himself as a non-fiction filmmaker, directing several highly acclaimed documentaries, most notably Buena Vista Social Club (1999) and Pina (2011), both of which brought him Oscar nominations.- Director
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Fatih Akin was born in 1973 in Hamburg of Turkish parentage. He began studying Visual Communications at Hamburg's College of Fine Arts in 1994. His collaboration with Wueste Film also dates from this time. In 1995, he wrote and directed his first short feature, "Sensin - You're The One!" ("Sensin - Du bist es!"), which received the Audience Award at the Hamburg International Short Film Festival. His second short film, "Weed" ("Getürkt", 1996), received several national and international festival prizes. His first full length feature film, "Short Sharp Shock" ("Kurz und schmerzlos", 1998) won the Bronze Leopard at Locarno and the Bavarian Film Award (Best Young Director) in 1998. His other films include: "In July" ("Im Juli", 2000), "Wir haben vergessen zurückzukehren" (2001), "Solino" (2002), the Berlinale Golden Bear-winner and winner of the German and European Film Awards "Head-On" ("Gegen die Wand", 2003), and "Crossing the Bridge - The Sound of Istanbul" (2005).- Writer
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Director, writer, producer and composer Tom Tykwer was born in 1965 in Wuppertal, Germany. He showed an interest in film-making from childhood, making super 8 films from the age of 11. Among his first jobs was working at a local art-house cinema. Tykwer eventually relocated to Berlin, first working as a film projectionist and then becoming head of programming at the Moviemento Theater.
Tykwer's friend, the director Rosa von Praunheim, encouraged him to experiment with film-making and the result was the short Because (2001). Other short films followed, and in 1993 Tykwer made his first full length feature Deadly Maria (1993). Tykwer's international breakthrough came in 1998 with Run Lola Run (1998), which was a hit with both audiences and critics alike. The film garnered many awards and was the most successful German film of the year.
Subsequent projects include Heaven (2002), Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (2006), The International (2009) and the ambitious epic Cloud Atlas (2012).- Actress
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Margarethe von Trotta was born in Berlin in 1942. In the 1960s she moved to Paris where she worked for film collectives, collaborating on scripts and co-directing short films. She also pursued an acclaimed acting career, starring in films by well known German directors such as Rainer Werner Fassbinder, and Volker Schlöndorff. In 1971, von Trotta divorced her first husband Juergen Moeller (with whom she had a child) and married Schlöndorff. She co-wrote many of the scripts for his films, and in 1975 the two of them co-directed The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum (1975). In 1977, von Trotta directed her first solo feature The Second Awakening of Christa Klages (1978). With her third film, Marianne & Juliane (1981), von Trotta's position as New German Cinema's most prominent and successful female filmmaker was fully secured.
Her films feature strong female protagonists, and are usually set against an important political background. Themes in her work include the effect of the political on the personal, and vice versa, as well as the relationships between female characters, often sisters.- Bernhard Goetzke was born on 5 June 1884 in Danzig, West Prussia, Kingdom of Prussia, Germany [now Gdansk, Poland]. He was an actor, known for Salamander (1928), Dr. Mabuse, the Gambler (1922) and Die Nibelungen: Siegfried (1924). He died on 7 October 1964 in West Berlin, West Germany.
- After school, Jentsch turned to acting. She attended the Ernst Busch Academy of Dramatic Arts in Berlin. Jentsch then began her acting career in the theater. In 2001 she joined the ensemble of the Munich Kammerspiele, where she masterfully interpreted Desdemona in Shakespeare's "Othello", Sophocles' "Antigone" and other classic stage roles. After she had already received the Max Reinhardt Prize in 2000 for her participation in the Berlin production of "The Persians", Jentsch was named the best young actress by the magazine "Theater aktuell" in 2002 for her acting achievements on stage.
In the meantime, Jentsch had already made her cinema debut in Judith Kennel's successful film "Angry Kisses" in 2000. In addition to her theater work, she was also featured in several television productions such as an episode of "Praxis Bülowbogen" (2000), in the film "And the Bride knew of nothing" (2002) and in the "Tatort" episode "Bitteres Brot" ( 2003). The actress continued to shine in the cinema in "Julietta" (2001) by Christoph Stark and in Sven Taddicken's "My Brother, the Vampire" (2001). She then appeared in the internationally acclaimed Hitler film "Downfall" (2004) under the direction of Oliver Hirschbiegel. Jentsch then played the leading role in Hans Weingartner's "The Fat Years Are Over" (2004), for which she won the Bavarian Film Prize for Best Young Actress.
This was followed by another leading role in "Schneeland" (2004) by Hans Wilhelm Geißendörfer. Under the direction of Marc Rothemund, Jentsch continued to play the leading role in the semi-documentary drama "Sophie Scholl - The Last Days" (2005), which was shown for the first time at the 55th Berlinale in February 2005 as one of the three German competition entries. For her performance in this film, Jentsch was awarded the "Silver Bear" as best actress. At the 55th German Film Awards in July 2005, Jentsch received the award for Best Leading Role. A little later, "Sophie Scholl" was nominated for an Oscar as a German contribution. - Director
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From Ernst Lubitsch's experiences in Sophien Gymnasium (high school) theater, he decided to leave school at the age of 16 and pursue a career on the stage. He had to compromise with his father and keep the account books for the family tailor business while he acted in cabarets and music halls at night. In 1911 he joined the Deutsches Theater of famous director/producer/impresario Max Reinhardt, and was able to move up to leading acting roles in a short time. He took an extra job as a handyman while learning silent film acting at Berlin's Bioscope film studios. The next year he launched his own film career by appearing in a series of comedies showcasing traditional ethnic Jewish slice-of-life fare. Finding great success in these character roles, Lubitsch turned to broader comedy, then beginning in 1914 started writing and directing his own films.
His breakthrough film came in 1918 with The Eyes of the Mummy (1918) ("The Eyes of the Mummy"), a tragedy starring future Hollywood star Pola Negri. Also that year he made Carmen (1918), again with Negri, a film that was commercially successful on the international level. His work already showed his genius for catching the eye as well as the ear in not only comedy but historical drama. The year 1919 found Lubitsch directing seven films, the two standouts being his lavish Passion (1919) with two of his favorite actors--Negri (yet again) and Emil Jannings. His other standout was the witty parody of the American upper crust, The Oyster Princess (1919) ("The Oyster Princess"). This film was a perfect example of what became known as the Lubitsch style, or the "Lubitsch Touch", as it became known--sophisticated humor combined with inspired staging that economically presented a visual synopsis of storyline, scenes and characters.
His success in Europe brought him to the shores of America to promote The Loves of Pharaoh (1922) ("The Loves of Pharaoh") and he become acquainted with the thriving US film industry. He soon returned to Europe, but came back to the US for good to direct new friend and influential star Mary Pickford in his first American hit, Rosita (1923). The Marriage Circle (1924) began Lubitsch's unprecedented run of sophisticated films that mirrored the American scene (though always relocated to foreign or imaginary lands) and all its skewed panorama of the human condition. There was a smooth transition between his silent films for Warner Bros. and the sound movies--usually at Paramount--now embellished with the flow of speech of Hollywood's greats lending personal nuances to continually heighten the popularity at the box office and the fame of Lubitsch's first-rate versatility in crafting a smart film. There was a mix of pioneering musical films and some drama also through the 1930s. The of those films resulted in Paramount making him its production chief in 1935, so he could produce his own films and supervise production of others. In 1938 he signed a three-year contract with Twentieth Century-Fox.
Certainly two of his most beloved films near the end of his career dealt with the political landscape of the World War II era. He moved to MGM, where he directed Greta Garbo and Melvyn Douglas in Ninotchka (1939), a fast-paced comedy of "decadent" Westerners meeting Soviet "comrades" who were seeking more of life than the mother country could--or would--offer. During the war he directed perhaps his most beloved comedy--controversial to say the least, dark in a tongue-in-cheek sort of way--but certainly a razor-sharp tour de force in smart, precise dialog, staging and story: To Be or Not to Be (1942), produced by his own company, Romaine Film Corp. It was a biting satire of Nazi tyranny that also poked fun at Lubitsch's own theater roots with the problems and bickering--but also the triumph--of a somewhat raggedy acting troupe in Warsaw during the Nazi occupation. Jack Benny's perfect deadpan humor worked well with the zany vivaciousness of Carole Lombard, and a cast of veteran character actors from both Hollywood and Lubitsch's native Germany provided all the chemistry needed to make this a classic comedy, as well as a fierce statement against the perpetrators of war. The most poignant scene was profoundly so, with Felix Bressart--another of Reinhardt's students--as the only Jewish bit player in the company. His supreme hope is a chance to someday play Shylock. He gets his chance as part of a ruse in front of Adolf Hitler's SS bodyguards. The famous soliloquy was a bold declaration to the world of the Axis' brutal inhumanity to man, as in its treatment of and plans for the Jewry of Europe.
Lubitsch had a massive heart attack in 1943 after having signed a producer/director's contract with 20th Century-Fox earlier that year, but completed Heaven Can Wait (1943). His continued efforts in film were severely stymied but he worked as he could. In late 1944 Otto Preminger, another disciple of Reinhardt's Viennese theater work, took over the direction of A Royal Scandal (1945), with Lubitsch credited as nominal producer. March of 1947, the year of his passing, brought a special Academy Award (he was nominated three times) to the fading producer/director for his "25-year contribution to motion pictures." At his funeral, two of his fellow directorial émigrés from Germany put his epitaph succinctly as they left. Billy Wilder noted, "No more Lubitsch." William Wyler answered, "Worse than that - no more Lubitsch films."- Art Director
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Paul Leni was born on 8 July 1885 in Stuttgart, Germany. He was an art director and director, known for The Man Who Laughs (1928), Das Rätsel von Bangalor (1918) and The Last Warning (1928). He died on 2 September 1929 in Los Angeles, California, USA.- Director
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Hans-Jürgen Syberberg was born on 8 December 1935 in Nossendorf, Pomerania, Prussia [now Mecklenburg-Vorpommern], Germany. He is a director and producer, known for Ludwig - Requiem for a Virgin King (1972), Die Nacht (1985) and Scarabea - wieviel Erde braucht der Mensch? (1969).- Writer
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- Actress
Dörrie completed her schooling at a humanistic high school, from which she graduated in 1973 with her Abitur. In the same year he spent two years in the USA. There she studied film and acting at the Drama Department at the University of the Pacific in Stockton, California. This was followed by studies at the New School of Social Research in New York. She also worked in cafés and as a projectionist in the Goethe House in New York. In 1975 she returned to Germany. She then studied at the University of Television and Film in Munich. At the same time, she worked as a film critic journalist for the Süddeutsche Zeitung.
Her final film is entitled "The First Waltz" and was broadcast on Bavarian television as "Max and Sandie". Doris Dörrie made various documentaries until 1982. In 1983 she made her first feature film in Munich called "Mitten ins Herz". Three years later she had a cinema hit with the title "Men". The well-known actors Uwe Ochsenknecht and Heiner Lauterbach star in the chaotic relationship comedy. The play became the most successful German film of 1986. Doris Dörrie was married to Helge Weindler from 1988 to 1996. Their daughter Carla was born in 1990.
In 1991 she had another cinema success with the title "Happy Birthday, Turk". She filmed the novel by the German writer Jakob Arjouni, a novel in the Kayankaya series. The witty film is in the tradition of classic detective films and tells the story of the search for a missing person in the Frankfurt milieu. The Turkish private detective Kayankaya, played by Hansa Czypionka, experiences police corruption. In 1994, Doris Dörrie shot the comedy film "Nobody Loves Me" with Maria Schrader. This production is about personal happiness. The work was honored with the silver film ribbon, the leading actress Maria Schrader with the gold film ribbon.
Her other film works include "No Trace of Romanticism" from 1980, "Between" from 1981, "Love in Germany" from 1989 and "Enlightenment Guaranteed" from 1999. Among all her film works The director also wrote the script herself. The films were often cast with well-known actors such as Senta Berger, Gottfried John or Uwe Ochsenknecht. She also shot the documentary entitled "What can it be?" In addition to her role behind the camera, she also performed guest roles in front of the camera. For example, she played in the film "The Leading Man" from 1977 or in "King Kong's Fist" and in "Back to Go" from 2000.
In addition to her film work, Doris Dörrie realized literary projects. This is how the short stories entitled "Love, Pain and All the Damned Stuff" and "What Do You Want from Me?" were created. She also wrote the short story "The Man of My Dreams" and the novel "What Do We Do Now?" In 1991 her collection of short stories entitled "Forever and Ever" was created. The 300-page work was well received by critics. In 2002 her film work entitled "Naked" and her novel "Happy" followed. In 2005 she staged Giuseppe Verdi's opera "Rigoletto" at the Bavarian State Opera in Munich under the musical direction of Zubin Mehta.
In the same year, 2005, she directed Giacomo Puccini's "Madame Butterfly" at the Gärtnerplatztheater. At the Salzburg Festival in 2006 she staged Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's "La finta Giardiniera".- Writer
- Director
Thea von Harbou was born on 27 December 1888 in Tauperlitz, Döhlau, Bavaria, Germany. She was a writer and director, known for Metropolis (1927), M (1931) and Woman in the Moon (1929). She was married to Fritz Lang and Rudolf Klein-Rogge. She died on 1 July 1954 in Berlin, Germany.- Director
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Born in Ludwigshafen, Germany, Wilhelm Dieterle was the youngest of nine children of parents Jacob and Berthe Dieterle. They lived in poverty, and when he was old enough to work, young Wilhelm earned money as a carpenter and a scrap dealer. He dreamed of better things, though, and theater caught his eye as a teen. By the age of 16 he had joined a traveling theater company. He was ambitious and handsome, both of which opened the door to leading romantic roles in theater productions. Though he had acted in his first film in 1913, it was six more years before he made another one. In that year he was noticed by producer/director/designer/impresario Max Reinhardt, the most influential proponent of expressionism in theater; while in Berlin, Reinhardt hired him as an actor for his productions. Dieterle resumed German film acting in 1920, becoming a popular and successful romantic lead and featured character actor in the mix of German expressionist/Gothic and nature/romanticism genres that imbued much of German cinema in the silent era. He was interested in directing even more than acting, however, and he had the iconic Reinhardt to provide inspiration. Dieterle had acted in nearly 20 movies before he also began directing in 1923, his first female lead being a young Marlene Dietrich.
With his wife Charlotte Hagenbruch he started his own film production . He was said to have tired of acting; he appeared in nearly 50 films over the course of his career, mainly in the 1920s, and in several of his films he also functioned as director. As an actor he worked with some of the greatest names in German film, such as directors Paul Leni (in Waxworks (1924) [Waxworks]) and F.W. Murnau (in Faust (1926)) and actors Conrad Veidt and Emil Jannings. By 1930, however, he had emigrated to the US--now rechristened as William Dieterle--with an offer from Warner Brothers to direct their German-language versions of the studio's popular hits for the German market. In that capacity he made Those Who Dance (1930), The Way of All Men (1930) and Die heilige Flamme (1931) (aka "The Holy Flames"). He even stood before the camera for another of these, Dämon des Meeres (1931) (aka "Demon of the Sea", a version of "Moby Dick") in 1931, in which he played Capt. Ahab. The film was directed by another European who was soon to become one of Warners' most successful directors: the Hungarian Michael Curtiz.
Having taken to the Hollywood brand of filmmaking with ease--helped by his own brilliance in defining and executing the telling of a story--into 1931, he was soon promoted to directing some of Warners' "regular" films (his first, The Last Flight (1931), is now regarded as a masterwork) and he wold average directing six pictures a year for the studio through 1934. In that year Reinhardt came to the US, the Nazi threat finally having driven him off the Continent. He arrived with a flourish, ready to stage William Shakespeare's "A Midsummers Night's Dream"--an extravaganza at the Hollywood Bowl that would become legend. It was impressive enough to interest the execs of Warner Bros. They opted for a film version in 1935 with the great Reinhardt--even studio boss Jack L. Warner knew who he was--reunited with his disciple, Dieterle, as co-director. Reinhardt knew nothing about Hollywood and had to learn via Dieterle's diplomacy the differences between the overemphasis of stage and the subtlety of the camera. He learned from other directors as well about the realities of making films, in particular ratchet down the tendency that stage directors had to let their actors perform "too" much. It was all for naught, however, as the film was a major box-office flop, but it was one of the great moments in the evolution of film. Dieterle would direct Paul Muni for Warners in three first-rate bio movies: The Story of Louis Pasteur (1936), The Life of Emile Zola (1937) and Juarez (1939) and all received Oscar nominations. After that Dieterle moved on to do The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939) at RKO with Charles Laughton as Quasimodo. This was one of Dieterle's best efforts, both in its romantic style and the great dark scenes of the Parisian medieval underworld with dramatic minimal lighting that gave vent to his expressionist roots.
Through the 1940s Dieterle moved around among Hollywood's studios, turning out vigorously wrought pictures, such as his two 1940 bios with Edward G. Robinson at Warner's. He became associated with independent producer David O. Selznick and actor Joseph Cotten, first with his direction of I'll Be Seeing You (1944). His romantic fires as a director had been restoked, as it were, and kept burning in the subsequent series of films with them which included the wonderful acting talents of Selznick's soon-to-be-wife (1949), Jennifer Jones: Love Letters (1945), Duel in the Sun (1946)--for which he shared directing but not credit with King Vidor--and the ethereal Portrait of Jennie (1948). "Jennie" was one of Dieterle's masterpieces, bringing into play a fusion of all his artistic fonts. The romantic fantasy with edges of darkness from the novel by Robert Nathan was just the vehicle to challenge Dieterle. His use of light and dark and gauzed--at one point the textured field of a painting canvas--backdrops conveyed the dreamlike state and netherworld atmosphere of the story of lovers from different times. Certainly the film influenced others to follow with similar themes.
Through the 1950s Dieterle's work--two more with Joseph Cotten--though sturdily in the director's hands, came off like good Hollywood fare, but were inspired more by the films' tight shooting schedules than by any artistic pretensions. His output during that decade was small, and that was partly due to bane of McCarthyism. He was never blacklisted as such, but his film Blockade (1938) was too libertarian to keep him completely away from the shadow of suspicion as a "socialist" / "communist" sympathizer. In 1958 he returned to Germany and directed a few films there and in Italy before retiring in 1965.
Though regrettably not as well known as his German and European directorial compatriots in Hollywood, he had great artistic style and worked with much energy in providing some of Hollywood's and the world's crown jewels of cinematic art.- Actress
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- Music Department
A strikingly beautiful German lead actress, Barbara Sukowa broke into TV and films as the protégée of famed director Rainer Werner Fassbinder with his masterpiece mini-series Berlin Alexanderplatz (1980) and the moody film drama Lola (1981) in the title role. In the latter, Barbara won critical kudos portraying a cynical, manipulative singer/hooker who sets her sights on an unsuspecting town politician played by Armin Mueller-Stahl. Following Fassbinder's sudden death in 1982, Barbara was gloriously displayed in a couple of stark, brilliant, politically-motivated films by director Margarethe von Trotta. In Marianne & Juliane (1981), Barbara won both the Venice Film Festival and German Film awards and as _Rosa Luxemburg (1986)_ , she copped the Cannes Film Festival award. A number of international productions, notably Lars von Trier's Europa (1991), brought Barbara to the attention of Hollywood. Although not well known here by name, this fascinating figure has added her exotic allure to a number of American films including The Sicilian (1987), M. Butterfly (1993), Johnny Mnemonic (1995), Cradle Will Rock (1999) and the just-completed Romance & Cigarettes (2005), which was written and directed by John Turturro. Barbara started up a second career as a concert vocalist in recent years, performing works by such classical composers as Arnold Schönberg, among others.- Director
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Caroline Link was born on 2 June 1964 in Bad Nauheim, Hesse, Germany. She is a director and writer, known for Nowhere in Africa (2001), Beyond Silence (1996) and Annaluise & Anton (1999).- Actor
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Daniel Brühl was born in Barcelona, Spain. His father was German TV director Hanno Brühl (1937-2010), who was born in São Paulo, Brazil. His Spanish mother was a teacher. He also has a brother and a sister, Oliver and Miriam. Shortly after his birth, his family moved to Cologne, Germany, where he grew up and attended the Dreikönigsgymnasium. Brought up in a fully multilingual home, he speaks fluent German, English, Portuguese, Spanish, French and Catalan.- Actor
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Armin Mueller-Stahl is a German actor with a relatively long film career. He was once nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, for his role as an abusive father in the biographical drama "Shine" (1996).
In 1930, Mueller-Stahl was born in Tilsit, East Prussia. The town developed around the castle of Schalauer Haus, which had been founded by the Teutonic Knights. Tilsit was annexed by the Soviet Union in 1945, and renamed to Sovetsk. It is currently part of the Kaliningrad Oblast, an exclave of Russia located in Central Europe. The town is located close to the Oblast's borders with Lithuania, and has long had an ethnic Lithuanian minority.
Mueller-Stahl's father was bank teller Alfred Müller (who later changed the family name to Mueller-Stahl) ,and his mother was university professor Editha Maaß. Editha was born to a Baltic German family from Estonia. During World War I, the Maaß lived in Petrograd (Saint Petersburg). They moved to Tilsit in 1918.
Mueller-Stahl was born in Germany's Weimar Republic period, and spend his childhood and early adolescence in Nazi Germany. In 1938, he moved with his family to the town of Prenzlau in Brandenburg. During World War II, Mueller-Stahl parted with his father. Alfred was drafted into military service, and later fought on the Eastern Front of World War II. In 1945, Alfred died in a military hospital in Schönberg , Mecklenburg.
In 1945, Editha briefly moved her family to Goorstorf, located near Rostock, the largest city of Mecklenburg. They returned to Prenzlau following the end of World War II. Armin continued his school education there. He graduated from school in 1948, at the age of 18.
Mueller-Stahl initially aspired to become a professional violinist. In 1948, he moved to Berlin. There he attended the city conservatory in West Berlin, where he studied violin playing and musicology. He graduated in 1949, and acquired qualifications to work as a music teacher. At this point, he decided to become an actor instead.
After a few years of studies, Mueller-Stahl made his professional debut at the "Theater am Schiffbauerdamm" of Berlin in 1952. In 1954, he started performing in the Volksbühne ("People's Theatre") , a prestigious theater in East Berlin. For the next 20 years, he was primarily a theatrical actor. During the 1960s, he started a side career as a character actor in East German films. By the 1970s, he repeatedly appeared in polls as East Germany's most popular actor.
From 1973 to 1976, Mueller-Stahl played the Stasi agent Werner Bredebusch in the spy thriller television series "The Invisible Visor" (1973-1979). Bredebusch was initially the series' main character, a Stasi agent who impersonates deceased fighter pilot Achim Detjen and infiltrates West Germany. The series achieved high ratings, and Mueller-Stahll received acclaim. He left the series in 1976, and its ratings soon declined.
In 1976, Mueller-Stahl signed an open letter, protesting against East Germany's decision to exile singer-songwriter Wolf Biermann (1936-). Consequenly, Mueller-Stahl found himself blacklisted in East Germany. After a few years of being unable to find roles in his country, Mueller-Stahl migrated to West Germany.
In 1981, Mueller-Stahl played Von Bohm, the male lead in the romantic drama "Lola" (1981). The film depicted Von Bohm as a building commissioner who struggles against widespread corruption in the town of Coburg, while falling in love with brothel-employed singer Lola (played by Barbara Sukowa). Following the film's relative success, Mueller-Stahl found steady work in West German cinema throughout the 1980s.
Although he barely spoke English at this point of his life, Mueller-Stahl was cast as General Petya Samanov in the American television miniseries Amerika. The dystopian series depicted a version of the United States which was under Soviet military occupation, and in which Soviet general Samanov is the de facto ruler of the occupied country. "Amerika" was the second-highest rated miniseries of the 1986-87 U.S. television season.
Mueller-Stahl decided to to seek more acting roles in the United States, and made his American film debut in the crime drama "Music Box" (1989). He was cast in the role of Mike Laszlo, a Hungarian-American family man, who is exposed as a wanted war criminal who killed numerous civilians during the Siege of Budapest (1944-1945). The film won the "Golden Bear" at the 40th Berlin International Film Festival.
Mueller-Stahl next received the primary role of Polish-Jewish immigrant Sam Krichinsky in the family drama "Avalon" (1990). The film concerned the gradual assimilation of Krichinsky's family into modern American culture. The film was critically praised, and its screenwriter won the "Writers Guild of America Award for Best Original Screenplay".
In 1991, Mueller-Stahl played the role of Inspector Grubach in the mystery thriller "Kafka". The film depicted a conspiracy in 1910s Prague, and was loosely inspired by the works of Franz Kafka (1883-1924). The film under-performed at the box office, but gained a cult following.
During the same year, Mueller-Stahl played New York City-based taxi driver Helmut Grokenberger in the anthology film "Night on Earth". In the film, Helmut is an East German immigrant in the United States. He is a former professional clown, whose ineptness as a driver and ignorance of New York geography make him ill-suited for his new profession. The film was critically well-received.
In 1992, Mueller-Stahl played Meissen porcelain collector Baron Kaspar Joachim von Utz in the eponymous film "Utz". The film was an adaptation of a 1988 novel by Bruce Chatwin (1940-1989), concerning a passionate collector and his unwillingness to part with his collection, even at the offer of a better life abroad. For this role, Mueller-Stahl won the "Silver Bear for Best Actor" at the 42nd Berlin International Film Festival.
In 1996, Mueller-Stahl played Peter, the abusive father of concert pianist David Helfgott (1947-). The film concerns the negative effects of long-term physical and mental abuse of David by his father. Mueller-Stahl's role was critically praised, and he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. The award was instead won by rival actor Cuba Gooding Jr. (1968-).
In 1998, Mueller-Stahl played German scientist Conrad Strughold in the science fiction film "The X-Files", a spin-off of the then-popular television series "The X-Files" (1993-2002, 2016-2018). In the film, Strughold is a member of the Syndicate, a shadow government which collaborates with extraterrestrial would-be colonists. The film was a box-office hit, earning 189 million dollars at the worldwide box office.
In 2007, Mueller-Stahl played Semyon, a high-ranking member of the Russian mafia, in the gangster film "Eastern Promises". The film was critically praised, and appeared on many critics' top ten lists of the best films of 2007.Mueller-Stahl won the "Genie Award for Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role".
In 2009, Mueller-Stah played former Stasi colonel Wilhelm Wexler in the action thriller "The International". In the film, Wexler works with a merchant bank that has secret ties to drug cartels, powerful corporations, corrupt governments, and terrorist organizations,. The film earned about 60 million dollars at the worldwide box office, and was considered notable for drawing inspiration from real-world banking scandals of the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s.
Also in 2009, Mueller-Stahl portrayed Cardinal Strauss, Dean of the College of Cardinals and the Papal Conclave, in the mystery thriller "Angels & Demons". The film was an adaptation of a 2000 novel by Dan Brown (1964-). It concerns the assassination of fictional Pope Pius XVI, and a conspiracy trying to influence the election of his successor. The film earned about 486 million dollars at the worldwide box office, the highest-grossing film in Mueller-Stah's career.
In 2011, Mueller-Stahl received the "Honorary Golden Bear" at the 61st Berlin International Film Festival. His only film role in the 2010s was playing Fr. Zeitlinger in the experimental film "Knight of Cups ". The film uses images from tarot cards as a main theme, while elements of the plot were inspired by the "Hymn of the Pearl" (2nd century) and the "The Pilgrim's Progress" (1678) by John Bunyan.
By 2021, Mueller-Stahl was 90-years-old. He lives in semi-retirement in California, where he enjoys its pleasant climate. He has written a number of novels and short stories, and has taken painting as a hobby.- Actress
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Lead icon of the influential New German Cinema of the 70's & 80's, Schygulla's natural blonde beauty and amazing versatility keep her among the world's top actresses. She won best actress at Cannes in 1983 for The Story of Piera (1983) (aka "The Story of Piera"), an Italian/German co-production. The Turkish/German co-production, The Edge of Heaven (2007) (aka "The Edge of Heaven"), won the 2007 Cannes award for best screenplay. The now silver-haired actress appears to have shunned plastic surgery.
One of many protégés of Rainer Werner Fassbinder, who gave Schygulla especially tender treatment and nurturing, while he terrorized, manipulated, and slept with many of the other actors and filmmakers Fassbinder developed in his incestuous family-like theatrical and film troupes.
Over 12 years, Hanna Schygulla appeared in 23 Fassbinder movies (including his first feature film), the most-acclaimed being The Marriage of Maria Braun (1979) (aka "The Marriage of Maria Braun") (for which she won the Silver Bear), Lili Marleen (1981) and Berlin Alexanderplatz (1980). After a disagreement with Fassbinder, she did not appear in his final 4 movies. Their mentor/muse relationship is often favorably compared with that of Josef von Sternberg and Marlene Dietrich. Schygulla met Fassbinder while she was studying romance languages and taking acting lessons in Munich, then became a member of his collective theatre troupe, "Munich Action Theatre", which eventually evolved into his film group.
After Fassbinder's 1982 death, she appeared in a few commercial films, and when she does act now, concentrates on complex roles in films with unique, international social messages. Her better known non-Fassbinder movies include Kenneth Branagh's Dead Again (1991), Casanova (1987) (with Faye Dunaway), Andrzej Wajda's A Love in Germany (1983) (aka "A Love in Germany") and Margarethe von Trotta's Sheer Madness (1983) (aka "Sheer Madness"). She's renowned for portraying strong, sensual women, and her language ability enables her to appear in films produced by many countries. Her singing was featured in Lili Marleen (1981) and Sheer Madness (1983) (aka "Sheer Madness"). Since 1997, she has turned away from movie acting, primarily to chanson singing, recording CDs, appearing in the movie, Hanna Schygulla Sings (1999) and, in 2007, a one-woman autobiographical musical (including songs of Janis Joplin, Édith Piaf, Billie Holiday, Brecht). She was the lead and sang in a live Vanessa Beecroft conceptual art piece in a German castle, with Fassbinder's long-time associate, Irm Hermann, plus 23 other women. Schygulla has worked on producing films about Berlin's Holocaust memorial, and about her work with Fassbinder.
Many of Fassbinder's film plots reflect his bizarre working relations with cast and crew, and he often reserved the most glamorous costumes and dramatic roles for Hanna Schygulla, intentionally pressuring his other talented actresses, such as his feisty ex-wife Ingrid Caven, and the abused Irm Hermann. The extremely tense relationships in the all-female The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant (1972) (aka "Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant") somewhat reflect real-life interactions of Hermann, Schygulla (both are in the movie), Fassbinder, and his mother.
Hann Schygulla's childhood family situation somewhat parallels her role, typifying Germany's moral dilemmas at the end of World War II, in The Marriage of Maria Braun (1979) (aka "The Marriage of Maria Braun"). Schygulla was born on Christmas Day 1943, in Kattowice, Upper Silesia (then a section of Poland annexed by the Third Reich). Her German father was an infantryman in Italy, who was in a POW camp until she was 5. After the war, the German population was expelled from the Kattowice area.- Actor
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Paul Wegener was born in Arnoldsdorf, West Prussia, part of the German Empire. His birthplace is currently part of Poland, under the name "Jarantowice". Wegener's family included a number of scientists, the most notable being his cousin Alfred Wegener (1880-1930). Alfred is remembered as the originator of the theory of continental drift.
Paul has no known relation to another Paul Wegener (1908-1993), who served as a Nazi Party official and an officer of the Schutzstaffel (SS).
Paul Wegener initially followed legal studies in college, but dropped out in order to become a theatrical actor. By 1906, he was part of an acting troupe led by Max Reinhardt (1873-1943). Reinhardt went on to become a film director. By 1912, Wegener himself had become interested in the film medium, and sought roles as a film actor.
In 1913, Wegener heard of an old Jewish legend, concerning the Golem. He wanted to adapt the legend into film, and started co-writing a script with Henrik Galeen (1881-1949). Their script was adapted into the film "The Golem" (1915), with Wegener and Galeen serving as the two co-directors. The film was a success and established Wegener as a celebrated figure in German cinema. Wegener returned to adapting the Golem legend into film, by directing a parody film in 1917 and the more serious "The Golem: How He Came into the World" (1920). The 1920 film remains one of the classics of German cinema. Wegener's other films often reflected his personal interests, such as trick photography, the supernatural, and mysticism.
He continued his film career into the 1930s, and made the transition from silent films to sound films. Under the Nazi regime (1933-1945), several actors and directors faced persecution or exile. Wegener instead found himself favored by the regime and appeared regularly in Nazi propaganda films of the 1940s. Wegener personally disliked the regime (which had persecuted a number of his friends and associates) and reputedly financed a number of German resistance groups.
In 1945, with World War II over and Berlin in ruins, Wegener took initiative as president of an organization intended to improve the living standards for surviving citizens of Berlin. He continued to appear in theatrical productions from 1945 to 1948, although he was suffering from an increasingly poor health.
In July 1948, Wegener collapsed on stage during a theatrical performance. The curtain was brought down and the rest of the performance was canceled. It was his last acting role, as he retired in an attempt to recuperate. He died in his sleep in September 1948. He was survived by his last wife Lyda Salmonova (1889-1968).- Actress
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Nina Hoss was born on 7 July 1975 in Stuttgart, Baden-Württemberg, Germany. She is an actress, known for Phoenix (2014), Tár (2022) and A Most Wanted Man (2014). She has been married to Alex Silva since 2015.- Director
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Walter Ruttmann was born on 28 December 1887 in Frankfurt-on-Main, Germany. He was a director and writer, known for Metropolis (1927), Mannesmann - Ein Film der Mannesmannröhren-Werke (1937) and Acciaio (1933). He was married to Christine Margarete Helene Prasch, Nina Hamson, Erna Treitel and Maria Christina Agnes Sommer. He died on 15 July 1941 in Berlin, Germany.- Actress
- Soundtrack
A prominent German film actress born on 30 September 1887 at Madiven, Java, the daughter of a forest ranger in the service of the Dutch authorities. Sent at the age of ten to Baden-Baden to study, she later entered the cinema thanks to her marriage in 1917 to the actor Fritz Dagover who was 25 years her senior. They divorced in 1919 but not before he had introduced her to director Robert Wiene and other notables of German cinema. She made her screen debut in Fritz Lang's Harakiri (1919). Immediately after she appeared in Wiene's classic expressionist film, "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari" (aka The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920)). Apart from three trips -- one to Sweden in 1927, another to France in 1928-9 and one to Hollywood in 1931 -- most of Lil Dagover's career and fate was linked to that of the German cinema, where her role was usually that of the frail, menaced heroine. She continued to star in a great number of films during the Nazi era. Among her best performances were her roles in Congress Dances (1931), in Gerhard Lamprecht's The Higher Command (1935) and in Veit Harlan's The Kreutzer Sonata (1937). She also acted in the Deutsches Theatre Berlin, the Salzburg Festival, at forces shows and at war theaters. At one time, she was reported to have been a close friend of Adolf Hitler. In 1944, she received the War Merits Cross. Dagover continued her career in post-war Germany, playing many supporting parts until the late 1970s.- Actor
- Producer
- Director
Moritz Bleibtreu is a German actor born on August 13, 1971 in Munich growing up in Hamburg. He first appears in children's television series Neues aus Uhlenbusch (1977) at the age of six. His breakthrough was the role called "Abdul" in the movie Knockin' on Heaven's Door (1997). He also became internationally known for his work on Run Lola Run (1998), The Experiment (2001) and World War Z (2013). In Germany, He is well known for the classic stoner-movie called Lammbock (2001) in which he plays the leading role. He speaks fluent German, English, French and Italian and is the son of Austrian actors Hans Brenner and Monica Bleibtreu.- Actor
- Additional Crew
Max Schreck was born in Berlin. He worked in an apprenticeship until his father's death before enrolling into a school for acting. He toured the country with his peers and was a member of several theaters until he became a part of Max Reinhardt's group of innovative German actors. He played mostly out of the norm characters, the elderly and the grotesque, because of his talent and passion for make-up and costume fabrication. Although film was a challenge in which he excitedly and hopefully participated, he had small roles in films that are scarcely available, and his real career was in German theatre. He played hundreds of roles in his lifetime. He was married to Fanny Normann, a fellow performer whom he met a short time after his actor's education and shared many times with on stage. They had no children. He died on the morning of February 20th, 1936 from a heart attack.- Actress
- Costume and Wardrobe Department
- Soundtrack
Angela Winkler was born on 22 January 1944 in Templin, Brandenburg, Germany. She is an actress, known for Suspiria (2018), The Tin Drum (1979) and The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum (1975).- Director
- Writer
- Producer
Uli Edel was born on 11 April 1947 in Neuenburg am Rhein, Germany. He is a director and writer, known for The Baader Meinhof Complex (2008), Christiane F. (1981) and Das Adlon. Eine Familiensaga (2013).- Director
- Writer
- Producer
Percy Adlon is best known for his film "Bagdad Cafe" aka "Out of Rosenheim." He was born on June 1, 1935 in Munich, the son of Paul Rudolf Laubenthal, a prominent opera singer, and Susanne Adlon, and grew up in Ammerland/Starnbergersee, in the Bavarian countryside. He studied art and theater history, and German literature at Munich's Ludwig-Maximilian University, took acting and singing classes, and was a member of the student theater group. He started his professional career as an actor, became interested in radio work, was a narrator and editor of literature series and a presenter and voice-over actor in television for 10 years.
In 1970 he made his first short film for the Bavarian Television, followed by more than 150 documentary films about art and the human condition. His first one-hour portrait "Tomi Ungerer's Landleben" started a very successful co-operation with Benigna von Keyserlingk who became the Adlon's television producer of documentaries and feature films.
Percy and Eleonore Adlon formed their film production company, pelemele FILM GmbH, in 1978. Their first project was the docu-drama "The Guardian and his Poet" about the Swiss poet Robert Walser for which they won 2 Adolf-Grimme Awards in Gold (best writer/director, best actor). Their first feature film "Celeste", drew international attention at Cannes in 1981. "Bagdad Cafe", 1987, started their co-operation with Dietrich v. Watzdorf (Bayerischer Rundfunk) The story of Jasmin Münchgstettner and the Cafe owner Brenda became a symbol of friendship and warmth, and is loved all over the globe. Marianne Sägebrecht whom Percy Adlon discovered in 1979 became a cult figure, and Bob Telson's song "Calling You" a classic.
Percy and Eleonore Adlon live in Pacific Palisades, California, working together with their son Felix whose first feature film "Eat Your Heart Out" (1997) they produced with their US company Leora Films. Felix was also the lead in the Adlons' docu-fantasy "The Glamorous World of the Adlon Hotel". (Bavarian TV award).
In 1997 Percy Adlon started working with a digital camera. He filmed a three hour special about the draftsman Tomi Ungerer for ARTE; Mozart's "Magic Flute" with images of today's Berlin; Esa-Pekka Salonen and the LA Phil; 22 short films based on unknown masterpieces by Johann Strauss, Jr.; a 90 minute film about his past and present relationship with his hometown Munich, "Mein Munchen", and he completed his tenth feature film "Hawaiian Gardens" and a documentary Koenig's Sphere - the story of the monumental world trade center sculpture that was damaged but not destroyed in the 9/11 attack.
Remembering his roots in theater, in 2002 Percy Adlon directed Donizetti's Elisir d'Amore at the State Opera unter den Linden, Berlin, followed in March 2004 by the world premiere of Wilfried Hiller's opera Wolkenstein at the State Opera Nuernberg, Germany.
Percy and Eleonore Adlon's recent work also includes their own adaptation of Bagdad Cafe for the stage as a musical. Music by Bob Telson. It premiered on July 6, 2004, at the Barcelona Teatre Musical. In 2007, the Adlons completed "Orbela's People", a documentary about a time with a Maasai family in Ngorongoro, Tanzania.
Percy Adlon is the recipient of the Officer's Cross of the Federal Republic of Germany, and the Bavarian Order of Merit. He is a voting member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.- Cinematographer
- Director
- Camera and Electrical Department
Karl Freund, an innovative director of photography responsible for development of the three-camera system used to shoot television situation comedies, was born on January 16, 1890, in the Bohemian city of Koeniginhof, then part of the Austria-Hungarian Empire (now known as Dvur Kralove in the Czech Republic). Freund went to work at the age of 15 as a movie projectionist, and by the age of 17, he was a camera operator shooting shot subjects and newsreels. Subsequently, he was employed at Germany's famous UFA Studios during the 1920s, when the German cinema was the most innovative in the world.
At UFA, Freund worked as a cameraman for such illustrious directors as F.W. Murnau and Fritz Lang. For Murnau's The Last Laugh (1924) (aka The Last Laugh), screenwriter Carl Mayer worked closely with Freund to develop a scenario that would employ the moving camera that became a hallmark of Weimar German cinema. One of the most beautiful and critically acclaimed silent films, The Last Laugh (1924) is considered the perfect silent by some critics as the images do most of the storytelling, allowing for a minimal amount of inter-titles. The collaborative genius of Murnau, Mayer, and Freund meant that the images communicated the integral part of the narrative, visualizing and elucidating the protagonist's psyche. Freund filmed a drunk scene with the camera secured on his chest, with a battery pack on his back for balance, enabling him to stumble about and produce vertiginous shots suggesting intoxication.
Director Ewald André Dupont gave credit for the innovative camera work on his masterpiece Variety (1925) (aka Variety) to Freund, praising his ingenuity in an article published in The New York Times. Freund was one of the cameramen and the co-writer (with Carl Mayer and director Walter Ruttmann) on Berlin: Symphony of Metropolis (1927) (Berlin: Symphony of a Great City), an artistic documentary that used a hidden camera to capture the people of the city going about their daily lives. Always technically innovative, Freund developed a high-speed film stock to aid his shooting in low-light situations. This film also is hailed as a classic. Other classic German films that Freund shot were The Golem (1920) (aka The Golem) and Lang's Metropolis (1927).
Now possessing an international reputation, Freund emigrated to the U.S. in 1929, where he was employed by the Technicolor Co. to help perfect its color process. Subsequently, he was hired as a cinematographer and director by Universal Studios, where he cut his teeth, uncredited, as a cinematographer on the great anti-war classic All Quiet on the Western Front (1930), Universal's first Oscar winner as Best Picture.
Universal's bread and butter in the early 1930s were its horror films, and Freund was involved in the production of several classics. Among his Universal assignments, Freund shot Dracula (1931) and Murders in the Rue Morgue (1932), and directed The Mummy (1932). The Mummy (1932) was Freund's first directorial effort, and co-star Zita Johann, who disliked Freund, claimed he was incompetent, which is unfair, seeing as how the film is now considered a classic of its genre. The film uses the undead sorcerer Imhotep's pool with which he can impose his will over the living by spreading some tana leaves on the water, as a visual metaphor for the subconscious. The film is arresting visually due to Freund's cinematic eye that created a sense of "otherness." The film is infused with a dream-like state that seems rooted in the subconscious mind. Freund's other directorial efforts at Universal proved less satisfying.
Moving to MGM, Freund directed just one more motion picture, Mad Love (1935) (aka The Hands of Orlac) a horror classic that utilized the expressionism of his UFA apprenticeship. With the great lighting cameraman Gregg Toland as his director of photography, the collaboration of Freund and Toland created a European sensibility unique for a Hollywood horror film. The compositions of the shots featured arch shapes and utilized the expressive shadows of the best of the European avant-garde films of the 1920s.
But MGM wanted Freund for his genius at camera work. He shot the rooftop numbers for The Great Ziegfeld (1936), another Best Picture Oscar winner, and worked with William H. Daniels, Garbo's favorite cameraman, on "Camille" (1936). He shot Greta Garbo's Conquest (1937) solo, though he never worked with Garbo again. That same year, he was the director of photography on The Good Earth (1937), for which he won an Academy Award for Best Cinematography.
Other major MGM pictures he shot were Pride and Prejudice (1940), for which he received an Academy Award nomination, Tortilla Flat (1942), and A Guy Named Joe (1943). He also worked for other studios, shooting Golden Boy (1939) for Columbia. In 1942, he pulled off a rare double: he was nominated for Best Cinematography in both the black and white and color categories, for The Chocolate Soldier (1941) and Blossoms in the Dust (1941), respectively.
One of the last films he shot for MGM was Two Smart People (1946), starring Lucille Ball. In 1947, he moved on to Warner Bros, where he shot the classic Key Largo (1948) for John Huston. His last film as a director of photography was Michael Curtiz' Montana (1950), which starred Gary Cooper.
Always the technical innovator, Freund founded the Photo Research Corp. in 1944, a laboratory for the development of new cinematographic techniques and equipment. His technical work culminated in his receipt of a Class II Technical Award in 1955 from the Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences for the design of a direct-reading light meter. That same year, he had the honor of representing his adopted country at the International Conference on Illumination in Zurich, Switzerland.
It was perhaps inevitable that the technical and innovation-minded Freund would get to work for a brand new visual medium, television. Lucille Ball, whom he had photographed when she was a contract player at MGM, became his boss when he was hired as the director of photography at Desilu Productions, owned by Ball and her husband, Desi Arnaz. Desilu hired the great Freund as its owners were determined to shoot the show I Love Lucy (1951) on film rather than produce the show live, as was standard in the early 1950s. Most shows were shot live, while a film of the program was simultaneously shot from a monitor, a process that created a "kinescope." The kinescope would be shown in other time zones on the network's affiliates. Desilu's owners disliked the quality of kinescopes, and needed Freund to come up with a solution to their problem of how to maintain the intimacy of a live show on film.
Freund agreed that the show should be shot on film rather than live, as film enabled thorough planning and allowed for cutting, which was impossible with live TV. Freud knew that film would allow Desilu to eliminate the fluffs which were a staple of early television, and would allow the producers to re-shoot scenes to improve the show, if needed.
I Love Lucy (1951) had to be filmed before an audience to retain the immediacy of a live TV show, which meant that the traditional, time-consuming methods of studio production with one camera would not work. Freund decided to shoot I Love Lucy (1951) with three 35mm Mitchell BNC cameras, one of each to simultaneously shoot long shots, medium shots and close-ups. Thus, the editor would have adequate coverage to create the 22 minutes of footage needed for a half-hour commercial network show.
The then-innovative, now-standard technique of simultaneously shooting a situation comedy with three 35mm cameras cut the production time needed to produce a 22-minute program to one-hour. The cameras were mounted on dollies, with the center camera outfitted with a 40mm wide-angle lens, and the side cameras outfitted with 3- and 4-inch lenses. The resulting shots were edited on a Movieola. A script girl in a booth overlooking the stage cued the camera operators. Due to extensive rehearsal time before the show was shot live, the camera operators had floor marks to guide them, but Freund's system was enabled by the script girl overseeing their actions via a 2-way intercom. The system made the shooting, breaking-down, and setting-up process for the next scenes on the three sets of the I Love Lucy (1951) stage very economical in terms of time, averaging one and one-half minutes between shots.
Freund worked out the lighting during the rehearsal period. Almost all of the lighting was overhead, except for portable fill lights mounted above the matte box on each camera. In Freund's system, there were no lighting changes during shooting, other than the use of a dimming board. Since the lighting was mounted overhead on catwalks, power cables were kept off the floor, which facilitated the dollying that was essential for making the system work fluidly.
Freund's solution to the problem of shooting a show on film economically was to make lighting as uniform as possible, taking advantage of adding highlights whenever possible, since a comedy show required high-key illumination. Due to the high contrast of the tubes in the image pickup systems at the television stations, contrast was a potential problem, as any contrast in the film would be exaggerated upon transmission of the film. To keep the film contrast to what Freund called a "fine medium," the sets were painted in various shades of gray. Props and costumes also were gray to promote a uniformity of color and tone that would not defeat Freund's carefully devised illumination scheme.
In a typical workweek, the I Love Lucy (1951) company engaged in pre-production planning and rehearsals on Monday through Thursday. I Love Lucy (1951) was filmed before a live audience at 8:00 o'clock PM on Friday evenings, and Freund's camera crew worked only on that Friday and the preceding Thursday. Freund, however, attended the Wednesday afternoon rehearsal of the cast to study the movements of the players around the sets, noting the blocking and their entrances and exits, in order to plan his lighting and camera work. Thursday morning at 8:00 o'clock AM, Freund and the gaffers would begin lighting the sets, which typically would be done by noon, the time the camera crew was required to report on set to be briefed on camera movements. Then, Freund would rehearse the camera action in order to make necessary changes in the lighting and the dollying of the cameras.
It was during the Thursday full-crew rehearsal that the cues for the dimmer operator were set, and the floor was marked to indicate the cameras' positions for various shots. For each shot, the focus was pre-measured and noted for each camera position with chalk marks on the stage floor. Another rehearsal was held at 4:30 PM with the full production crew. Though a full-dress rehearsal was held at 7:30 PM, with the attendance of the full crew, the cameras were not brought onto the set. The director would take the opportunity to discuss the plan of the show and solicit input from the cast and crew on how to tighten the show and improve its pacing.
The next call for the entire company was at 1:00 PM on Friday to discuss any major changes that were discussed the previous night. After this meeting, the cameras would be brought out onto the stage, and at 4:30 PM, there would be a final dress rehearsal during which Freund would check his lighting and make any required changes.
After a dinner break, the cast and production crew would hold a "talk through" of the show to solicit further suggestions and solve any remaining problems. At 8:00 PM, the cast and production crew were ready to start filming the show before a live audience. Before shooting, one of the cast or a member of the company had briefed the audience on the filming procedure, emphasizing the need for the audience's reactions to be spontaneous and natural.
Shooting was over in about an hour due to the rapid set-ups and break-downs of the crew, which shot the show in chronological order. Due to the thorough planning and rehearsals, retakes were seldom necessary. Camera operators in Freund's system had to make each take the right way the first time, every time, to keep the system working smoothly, and they did. An average of 7,500 feet of film was shot for each show at a cost that was significantly less than a comparable major studio production.
Freund also served as the cinematographer on the TV series Our Miss Brooks (1952), which was shot at Desilu Studios, and Desilu's own December Bride (1954). It was no accident that Desilu productions turned to Karl Freund to realize their dream of creating a high-quality show on film. Freund had the broadest experience of any cameraman of his stature, starting in silent pictures, and then excelling in both B&W and color in the sound era. With his penchant for technical innovation, he was the ideal man to develop solutions for filming a television show. Freund met the challenge of creating high quality filmed images in a young medium still handicapped by its primitive technology.
Freund became the dean of cinematographers in a new medium, with Desilu's I Love Lucy (1951) and its other shows recognized as the gold standard for TV production. His work ensured the fortunes of Desilu Productions, and the personal fortunes of Desilu owners Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball, as he provided them with quality films of each show that could be easily syndicated into perpetuity, whereas the live shows filmed secondarily off of flickering TV monitors as kinescopes could not.
After retiring as a cinematographer, Freund continued his research at the Photo Research Corp. He died on May 3, 1969.- Writer
- Director
- Producer
Hans-Christian Schmid was born on 19 August 1965 in Altötting, Bavaria, Germany. He is a writer and director, known for 23 (1998), Storm (2009) and Lichter (2003).- Actress
- Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
- Additional Crew
Irm Hermann was born on 4 October 1942 in Munich, Bavaria, Germany. She was an actress and assistant director, known for Five Last Days (1982), The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant (1972) and The Merchant of Four Seasons (1972). She was married to Dietmar Roberg. She died on 26 May 2020 in Berlin, Germany.- Director
- Writer
- Actor
Andreas Dresen was born on 16 August 1963 in Gera, German Democratic Republic. He is a director and writer, known for Stopped on Track (2011), Cloud 9 (2008) and Grill Point (2002).- Actor
- Composer
- Music Department
The unwanted son of a prostitute, Bruno S. was beaten so severely by his mother at age 3 that he became temporarily deaf. This led to his placement in a mental institution; he spent the next 23 years in various institutions, often running afoul of the law. Despite this past, he a self-taught painter and musician; while these were his favorite occupations, he was also forced to take jobs in factories such as driving a fork lift. Director Werner Herzog saw him in the documentary Bruno the Black - One Day a Hunter Blew His Horn (1970) and vowed to work with him, which led to his major roles in The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser (1974) and Stroszek (1977). He was very difficult to work with, though, sometimes needing several hours of screaming before he could do a scene.- Actor
- Director
- Producer
Conrad Veidt attended the Sophiengymnasium (secondary school) in the Schoeneberg district of Berlin, and graduated without a diploma in 1912, last in his class of 13. Conrad liked animals, theater, cinema, fast cars, pastries, thunderstorms, gardening, swimming and golfing. He disliked heights, flying, the number 17, wearing ties, pudding and interviews. A star of early German cinema, he became a sensation in 1920 with his role as the murderous somnambulist Cesare in Robert Wiene's masterpiece The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920). Other prominent roles in German silent films included Different from the Others (1919) and Waxworks (1924). His third wife, Ilona (nicknamed Lily), was Jewish, although he himself wasn't. However, whenever he had to state his ethnic background on forms to get a job, he wrote: "Jude" (Jew). He and Lily fled Germany in 1933 after the rise to power of Adolf Hitler, and he became a British citizen in 1939. Universal Pictures head Carl Laemmle personally chose Veidt to play Dracula in a film to be directed by Paul Leni based on a successful New York stage play: "Dracula". Ultimately, Bela Lugosi got the role, and Tod Browning directed the film, Dracula (1931). In his last German film, F.P.1 Doesn't Answer (1932), Veidt sang a song called "Where the Lighthouse Shines Across the Bay." Although the record was considered a flop in 1933, the song became a hit almost 50 years later, when, in 1980, DJ Terry Wogan played it as a request on the Radio 2 breakfast show. That single playing generated numerous phone calls, and shortly thereafter the song appeared on a British compilation album called "Movie Star Memories" - a collection of songs from 1930s-era films compiled from EMI archives. The album was released by World Records Ltd., and is now out of print but can still be ordered online ("Where the Lighthouse Shines Across the Bay" is track 4 on side 2). Veidt appeared in Germany's first talking picture, Bride 68 (1929), and made only one color picture, The Thief of Bagdad (1940), filmed in England and Hollywood. His most famous role was as Gestapo Maj. Strasser in the classic Casablanca (1942); although he was not the star of the picture, he was the highest paid actor. He died while playing golf, and on the death certificate his name is misspelled as "Hanz Walter Conrad Veidt". Because he had been blacklisted in Nazi Germany, there was no official announcement there of his death. His ex-wife, Felicitas, and daughter Viola, in Switzerland, heard about it on the radio.- Director
- Writer
- Producer
A controversial film maker, Wolfgang Petersen has at once been lauded for his professionalism and attention to detail and decried for turning out a string of standard commercial Hollywood blockbusters. The son of a naval officer, Petersen held a lifelong fascination with the sea and naval subjects. He was born in Emden and attended drama school in Hamburg. Having already made some 8 mm films while at school, he proceeded to direct as well as act at the Junges Theater in Hamburg (later renamed the Ernst-Deutsch-Theater). In 1966, he joined the newly formed Deutsche Film- und Fernsehakademie Berlin (DFFB) where he made several short films while simultaneously directing plays in Hamburg. Having caught the eye of German television networks, Petersen went on to direct a string of TV movies which often dealt with such contentious issues as environmental pollution and underage sex. An early success and also his first cinematic release was the taut psychological thriller One or the Other (1974), which starred Jürgen Prochnow and Elke Sommer. This led to more regular assignments on the ever-popular detective series Tatort (1970) for which Petersen directed six episodes.
In 1980, Petersen was commissioned by Bavaria Studios to direct Das Boot (1981), based on a 1971 novel by Lothar G. Buchheim. Filmed on a budget of 32 million DM, it became the most realistic and harrowing portrayal of life aboard a submarine in wartime filmed to date, the action of 'Das Boot' being set during the battle of the North Atlantic and culminating in an abortive attempt to cross the British-controlled strait of Gibraltar into the Mediterranean. The film concluded with a bitterly ironic climax. 'Das Boot' (re-released as a miniseries in 1985) starred Petersen's long-standing collaborator Jürgen Prochnow (who became an international star as a result) and was nominated for six Academy Awards (including Best Director and Best Writing). In its wake, Petersen directed and co-wrote a children's fantasy --again filmed at the Bavaria facilities near Munich-- The NeverEnding Story (1984). Though successful at the box-office (especially in Germany), it did not attract universal critical appeal. By contrast, his second English-language film, the science fiction drama Enemy Mine (1985) was only a modest financial success but rated better in reviews over the years, the Los Angeles Times describing it as "surprisingly coherent, surprisingly enjoyable".
In 1987, Petersen moved to Santa Monica, California. For a while, he was part of an A-list of directors tasked with helming mega-budget blockbusters starring big name actors like Clint Eastwood, Harrison Ford, George Clooney and Brad Pitt. Most were palpable box-office hits, especially In the Line of Fire (1993) (often cited as his best Hollywood enterprise), Air Force One (1997) and the historical epic Troy (2004), which grossed $497.4 million worldwide. Reviewer reception for Troy tended to be lukewarm to cool, even more so with the disaster movies Outbreak (1995) and The Perfect Storm (2000), the latter criticized as suffering from "a lack of any actual drama or characterization". Attracting even lower critical esteem was Petersen's remake of Irwin Allen 's original 1972 disaster movie, Poseidon (2006). It ended up both a box office and a critical flop in the U.S. with only the superior CGI special effects gaining plaudits. Poseidon was nominated for the Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Remake. Following this debacle, Petersen withdrew from Hollywood and had a decade-long hiatus before directing his final picture, the German heist drama Vier gegen die Bank (2016).
Petersen's second wife was the assistant director and script supervisor Maria-Antoinette Borgel with whom he had a son. Petersen died from pancreatic cancer on August 12 2022 in Brentwood, California.- Actor
- Soundtrack
Benno Fürmann was born on 17 January 1972 in Berlin, Germany and worked as a waiter, bouncer and drifter before attending acting lessons at the Lee Strasberg Institute in New York. After returning to Germany, he played several minor parts in movie and television projects until his breakthrough performance in Die Bubi Scholz Story (1998). In recent years, he appeared in critically acclaimed TV movies (Wolfsburg (2003)) as well as international productions such as Joyeux Noel (2005).- Helmut Griem was born on 6 April 1932 in Hamburg, Germany. He was an actor, known for Cabaret (1972), The Damned (1969) and Fabrik der Offiziere (1960). He was married to Helga Koehler. He died on 19 November 2004 in Munich, Bavaria, Germany.
- Werner Krauss was born on 23 June 1884 in Gestungshausen, Sonnefeld, Bavaria, Germany. He was an actor, known for The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920), Paracelsus (1943) and Robert Koch: The Battle Against Death (1939). He was married to Liselotte Graf, Maria Bard and Paula Saenger. He died on 20 October 1959 in Vienna, Austria.
- Director
- Writer
- Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
After school, Frank Beyer studied theater studies. He started his career with an internship at the theater and as a stage dramaturge. He later attended the Film School in Prague (FAMU). While still a student, he became Kurt Maetzig's assistant and accompanied films such as "Castles and Cats" (1957). With his graduation film "Two Mothers" from 1957, based on Berthold Brecht's "The Caucasian Chalk Circle", he also made his directorial debut. Beyer made anti-fascist films such as "Naked Among Wolves" from 1963 and "Jakob the Liar" from 1974. But he also worked on film comedies.
With the genre piece "Karbid und Sauerampfer" from 1963, he made his breakthrough as a celebrated director of comedies. Frank Beyer became the most important filmmaker in the GDR alongside Gerhard Klein, Joachim Kunert and Konrad Wolf, but his works also caused political controversy. His work "Trace of the Stones" premiered in 1966, but was removed from the cinema program after three days - due to anti-socialist content. The film with Manfred Krug was not shown in cinemas again until 1989. The director repeatedly challenged the ideas of those responsible for GDR culture.
This was followed by his expulsion from the state film production company DEFA. Beyer was then hired for the theater in Dresden, but he was constantly exposed to obstacles from the state. In 1980 he received permission to make films in the Federal Republic of Germany. The showing of his 1977 film "The Hideaway" was initially banned in the GDR because the main actor, Manfred Krug, had fled to West Germany. The film was only shown to the public a year later. In 1983, Beyer's film "The Stay" was not shown at the Berlinale due to Polish protests: a German SS man is innocently accused of murder while in Polish captivity.
Beyer's late film works dealt with socially critical and political themes. This is how the title "End of Innocence" came about in 1991, which is about the Germans and the atomic bomb based on a template by Wolfgang Menge. "She and He" followed in 1992, about a marital crisis. In 1995 "Nikolaikirche", a film about a family during the time of reunification, was made. Two years later, Beyer remade Carl Zuckmayer's "The Captain of Köpenick" with Harald Juhnke. The director delivered autobiographical information about Manfred Krug with the film title "Abgehaut". Other important film titles include "Königskinder" (1962), "The Seven Affairs of Dona Juanita" (1973), "The Second Skin" (1981), "Bockshorn" (1983) and "The Big Feast" from 1992.- Actress
- Writer
- Soundtrack
Shortly after being discovered by director Percy Adlon in a 1977 production of "Adele Spitzeder", Marianne Sägebrecht was cast as Madame Sanchez/Mrs. Sancho in the Director's TV special Herr Kischott (1980), a spin on "Don Quixote". Eventually, the actress became a muse (for lack of better term) to Adlon and consecutively starred in leading roles in several of the Director's films, one of which garnered Sägebrecht commercial success: the performance as Jasmin Münchgstettner, a woman who mysteriously appears just to bring luminosity to the old, beaten down, and spiritually deprived Bagdad Café in, Bagdad Cafe (1987), earned her a German Film Award.- Director
- Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
- Producer
After graduating from high school in 1988, Rothemund initially began working as a production manager and assistant director for his father and other filmmakers such as Bernd Eichinger. In 1994 he assisted French director Gérard Corbiau in the filming of the Oscar-nominated drama "Farinelli". Rothemund made his directorial debut on television: from 1996 onwards he directed the series "Wilde Jungs - Two to Fall in Love" for Sat.1. In 1997 he also directed two episodes of "Lawyer Abel" for ZDF in collaboration with screenwriter Fred Breinersdorfer, which won the Telestar award. Rothemund made his first feature film in 1998: He was awarded the Bavarian Film Prize and the 3sat Audience Prize for the highly acclaimed cinema event "The strange behavior of sexually mature city dwellers during the mating season".
Rothemund's second feature film "Harte Jungs" was widely recognized by cinema audiences in 2000. In 2002, with the television film "Hope Dies Last", the director resumed his collaboration with author Breinersdorf, which proved to be extremely successful: the bullying drama won the Golden Camera, the Gold Grimme Prize and the 3sat Audience Prize excellent. The director received the VFF TV Movie Award in 2003 for the television crime thriller "The Duo - The Lover". Rothemund worked again with Breinersdorf in 2004 for the film "Sophie Scholl - The Last Days", with both now also appearing as co-producers. The film impressively illustrates the last days of the life of the "White Rose" resistance fighter during the Nazi era.
Rothemund presented "Sophie Scholl" in February 2005 as one of the three German competition entries at the 55th Berlinale. He himself won a "Silver Bear" for directing and for Julia Jentsch in the lead role. A few months later, Rothemund's film was nominated for an Oscar in the "Best Foreign Film" category.- Actor
- Stunts
- Producer
Götz George, born in Berlin in 1938, is the son of the famous actor Heinrich George and his wife, the actress Berta Drews. After first appearances on the stage of Berlin's Hebbel Theater during his childhood, Götz George was trained as an actor by the recognized teacher Else Bongers. At the age of 15, Götz George started his career as a movie actor. In 1960 he received his first major award (the Bundesfilmpreis) for his appearance in the film 'Jacqueline' (directed by Wolfgang Liebeneiner), followed by the German Critics Award in 1961. A year later he received the public "Bambi"-award as the most popular German actor. Between 1959 and 1969 Götz George appeared in 26 cinema features, among them 'Kirmes' (directed by Wolfgang Staudte), 'Das Mädchen und der Staatsanwalt' (director Jürgen Goslar), 'Liebe will gelernt sein' (director Kurt Hoffmann), 'Sie nannten ihn Gringo' (director Roy Rowland) and 'Ostwind' (director Jean-Luc Godard). George's next movie production was 'Aus einem Deutschen Leben', directed by Theodor Kotulla, in 1977, where he gave a highly praised performance as the KZ commander Rudolf Höss. The movies 'Abwärts' in 1984 and 'Zahn um Zahn' in 1985 (the latter based on the TV-series 'Schimanski') were both successful at the box office and among critics. In 1985, George received the German Cinema Award (Charlie-Chaplin-Schuh) and the Gold Ribbon (Bundesfilmpreis) as best German movie actor. After starring in 'Zabou' in 1987 (another 'Schimanski'-adaption for cinema) and the action thriller 'Die Katze' in 1988, Götz George appeared in 'Der Bruch', the first East-West-German co-production for cinema, directed by Frank Beyer in 1988. The location of his next film was Argentina, where he starred in the movie 'Blauäugig', produced in 1989 under the direction of Reinhard Hauff. In 1991 George played a lead role in Helmut Dietl's comedy 'Schtonk', a big success in Germany among audience and critics, and official German nomination for the Oscar. For this performance, George again received the Gold Ribbon (Bundesfilmpreis) as best actor. Perhaps his most prominent achievement, however, was the role of the serial killer Fritz Haarmann in Romuald Karmakar's movie 'Der Totmacher', for which he received the Coppa Volpi, the actor's award of the Venice Film Festival in 1995 and, once more, the Gold Ribbon (Bundesfilmpreis) in 1996. In the same year he again appeared in another highly successful film by Helmut Dietl, 'Rossini'. In early 1997, George starred in the movie 'Das Trio', directed by Hermine Huntgeburth, and during the last two months he was filming the thriller 'Solo für Klarinette', directed by Nico Hofmann, a movie adaption of the successful novel by Elsa Lewin. In summer of 1998, Götz George starred as Josef Mengele in Roland Suso Richter's film 'After the Truth / Nichts als die Wahrheit'. In 2000 he played the advertiser Eddie Kaminski in the feature film 'Commercial Man', directed by Lars Kraume, he was strange bird Heinrich in 'Gott ist tot' (2001, written and directed by Kadir Sözen) and designer Jost in 'Maria an Callas' (2004/5, written and directed by Petra K. Wagner).
During the seventies, Götz George worked for television and theater. Among others, notable stage appearances were in 'Troilos und Cressida' (as Troilus), in 'Martin Luther und Thomas Münzer' (as Luther), in 'Endstation Sehnsucht' ('A Streetcar Named Desire' - as Kowalski), in 'Dantons Tod' (as Danton) and in 'Platonow' (as Platonow). Though Götz George has been a popular German movie actor for four decades, he gained his perhaps most unique popularity for the impersonation of the police detective Horst Schimanski in the 'Tatort' TV-series from 1981 to 1991. Aside from their success in Germany, the 'Schimanski' films have introduced George to TV-audiences worldwide: 427 million people have watched so far. Moreover, George's appearances in numerous other successful TV features have made him the most well-known and mostly decorated German actor of our time. After a six-year-intermission, Schimanski returned to German TV-screens in the end of 1997 and has been continued since. Other successful TV-appearances include 'Schulz & Schulz' (1989-93), 'Das Schwein' (1994), 'Der Sandmann' (1995), and 'Die Bubi Scholz Story' (1997). In 1999 Götz George was shooting for the TV feature film 'Die Spur meiner Tochter' in Marocco.The year 2000 started with two further 'Schimanski' movies and was closed with shoots for the TV movie 'Liebe macht blind' in South Africa. ), 'Vinzenz & Claire' followed in 2002. In 2003 und 2004 Götz George starred in 'Blatt & Blüte' (director: Michael Kreindl), 'Alpenglühen I+II' (director: Hajo Gies), and in 'Einmal so, wie ich will' (Regie: Vivian Naefe) along with the suspense-packed feature 'Geheimnissvolle Freundinnnen', filmed by young director Oliver Elias. In 2002 Götz George played one of the leads in the TV movie 'Mein Vater', which won the Emmy Award for best foreign feature film in 2003. The 'Schimanski'-episodes 'Der Golem' and 'Asyl' were nominated for the Emmy in 2004.- Actress
- Director
- Writer
Franka Potente was born on 22 July 1974 in the German city of Münster, to Hildegard, a medical assistant, and Dieter Potente, a teacher, and raised in the nearby town of Dülmen. After her graduation in 1994, she went to the Otto-Falckenberg-Schule, a drama school in Munich, but soon broke off to study at the Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute in New York. After a notable debut in Nach Fünf im Urwald (1995), the role of the heroine in Run Lola Run (1998), directed by her then longtime companion Tom Tykwer was her national breakthrough. After some other successful movies in Germany, she starred in several Hollywood productions, most prominently The Bourne Identity (2002) and The Bourne Supremacy (2004) and lived one year in Los Angeles. After her return to Berlin, she continues working with German and international directors.- Cinematographer
- Director
- Actor
Michael Ballhaus was a German cinematographer. He worked on many American films, including Baby It's You (1983), Old Enough (1984), After Hours (1985), The Color of Money (1986), The Last Temptation of Christ (1988), Goodfellas (1990), Dracula (1992), The Age of Innocence (1993), Gangs of New York (2002), and The Departed (2006).
Ballhaus was nominated three times for the Academy Award for Best Cinematography, for Broadcast News (1987), The Fabulous Baker Boys (1989), and Gangs of New York (2002), but never won.
His son Florian Ballhaus is also a cinematographer who worked on Flightplan (2005) and The Devil Wears Prada (2006).
Ballhaus died on 11 April 2017, at the age of 81.- Director
- Writer
- Producer
As the son of a Lufthansa manager, Henckel von Donnersmarck spent his childhood and school years in New York, Berlin, Frankfurt am Main and Brussels, where he passed his international high school diploma in 1991. He then spent two years studying in Leningrad (Saint Petersburg) with the following job as a Russian teacher. From 1993 to 1996 he studied PPE philosophy, political science and economics at New College, Oxford. In 1996 he completed a directing internship with Richard Attenborough. In 1997 he began studying feature film directing at the University of Television and Film in Munich. The four-minute short film "Dobermann" was made in 1999, for which he also wrote the book. The work received the rating "Particularly Valuable" and became part of the "Next Generation Role" of "German Cinema in Cannes". At the same time, the work marked his national breakthrough with numerous awards, including the Max Ophüls Prize in 2000.
This was followed by a commissioned work for Universal and Gaumont TV, "Les Mythes Urbains" from 2001. In 2002, he directed the short film "The Templar" in collaboration with producers Max Wiedemann and Quirin Berg. Awarded as "particularly valuable", the five-minute film was shown as part of the Hof Film Festival. The work was awarded, among other things, the Eastman Prize and the Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau Prize in 2003. Henckel von Donnersmarck became a German star of international cinema with his first feature film "The Lives of Others". In 2006 he was awarded the "Bavarian Film Prize", the "European Film Prize", the "Peace Prize for German Film", the "Quadriga Prize" and a nomination for the "Golden Globe".
On February 25, 2007, "The Lives of Others" was awarded the "Oscar" for "Best Foreign Language Film" at the 79th Academy Awards in Los Angeles, which also marked his international breakthrough as a filmmaker. In 2010 he directed his second feature film, the romantic thriller "The Tourist", starring Angelina Jolie and Johnny Depp.
In his private life, Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck is married to the lawyer Christiane Asschenfeldt and is the father of two children.- Actress
- Producer
- Writer
Henny Porten was born January 7, 1890, in Magdeburg, Germany. She had one of the longest careers of any German actress and was highly sought after because of her wonderful thespian skills. Henny's career would stretch over six decades, from 1906 to 1955. Her first film was in Apachentanz (1906), making her one of the earliest film actresses anywhere in the world. At the age of 65, Henny filmed her last production entitled Die Schätze des Teufels (Das Fräulein von Scuderi (1955)). Henny died in Berlin, Germany, on October 15, 1960, at the age of 70.- Actor
- Director
Ulrich Mühe was born on 20 June 1953 in Grimma, East Germany. He was an actor and director, known for The Lives of Others (2006), Funny Games (1997) and Der letzte Zeuge (1998). He was married to Susanne Lothar, Jenny Gröllmann and Annegret Hahn. He died on 22 July 2007 in Walbeck, Saxony-Anhalt, Germany.- Director
- Actress
- Writer
Leontine Sagan was born on 13 February 1889 in Vienna, Austria-Hungary [now Austria]. She was a director and actress, known for Mädchen in Uniform (1931), Men of Tomorrow (1932) and Showtime (1946). She was married to Dr. Victor Fleischer (dramatist). She died on 20 May 1974 in Pretoria, South Africa.- Director
- Writer
- Producer
Hans Weingartner was born on 2 November 1977 in Feldkirch, Vorarlberg, Austria. He is a director and writer, known for The Edukators (2004), Das weiße Rauschen (2001) and 303 (2018).- Actress
- Make-Up Department
Juliane Köhler was born on 6 August 1965 in Göttingen, Lower Saxony, Germany. She is an actress, known for Downfall (2004), Aimee & Jaguar (1999) and Nowhere in Africa (2001). She has been married to Michael Rösch since 1996. They have two children.- Writer
- Director
- Producer
Oskar Roehler was born on 21 January 1959 in Starnberg, Bavaria, Germany. He is a writer and director, known for Die Unberührbare (2000), Silvester Countdown (1997) and Agnes and His Brothers (2004). He has been married to Alexandra Fischer-Roehler since August 2000.- Actress
- Soundtrack
Martina Gedeck was born in Munich. After spending a year in the US, she studied drama at the Berlin University of the Arts. Martina's film career began while she was still at drama school. Her filmography covers practically all genres of film.
Gedeck has won a total of 23 major cinema and TV awards. She was nominated as Europe's best actress on her role in "Mostly Martha". The film was later remade with Catherine Zeta-Jones playing her role.
Her films were twice selected as Germany's entry to the Oscars. In 2007, "The Lives of Others" with her in the lead role won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film. In 2009 she again had the title role in Germany's Oscar contender "The Baader Meinhof Complex", also nominated for the Golden Globes.
Martina Gedeck resides in Berlin, Germany.- Director
- Actor
- Writer
Sönke Wortmann was born on 25 August 1959 in Marl, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. He is a director and actor, known for The Miracle of Bern (2003), Maybe... Maybe Not (1994) and Drei D (1988). He has been married to Cecilia Kunz since May 2002. They have three children.- Actress
- Soundtrack
Born on 12 November 1978 in Bucharest, Romania, Alexandra Maria Lara fled to Germany with her parents when she was four and half years old. After graduating at the French High School, she studied acting at the Theaterwerkstatt Charlottenburg from 1997 and 2000, but had already played leading characters in several TV shows and movies such as Die Bubi Scholz Story (1998). Due to her critically acclaimed performance in The Tunnel (2001), she has appeared in several successful national and international projects, most notably the Oscar nominated Downfall (2004).- Director
- Writer
- Actor
Wolfgang Becker was born on 22 June 1954 in Hemer, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. He is a director and writer, known for Good Bye Lenin! (2003), Schmetterlinge (1988) and Child's Play (1992).- Director
- Writer
- Producer
Max Färberböck was born on 22 September 1950 in Munich, Germany. He is a director and writer, known for Bella Block (1993), Aimee & Jaguar (1999) and Jenseits (2001).- Actress
- Director
- Writer
Katja Riemann was born on 1 November 1963 in Kirchweyhe, Weyhe, Lower Saxony, Germany. She is an actress and director, known for Suck Me Shakespeer (2013), Rosenstrasse (2003) and Bandits (1997).- Cinematographer
- Camera and Electrical Department
Igor Luther was born on 5 August 1942 in Banská Bystrica, Slovenský stát [now Slovakia]. He was a cinematographer, known for Die Eroberung der Zitadelle (1977), Eins (1971) and Coup de Grâce (1976). He died on 7 June 2020 in Rijeka, Croatia.- Director
- Writer
- Producer
Born in 1973 in Hannover, Germany, Dennis Gansel studied at Munich Film School HFF. Remarkably his first feature length movie Das Phantom (2000) was shot while he was still studying. Between his movies Girls on Top (2001), Before the Fall (2004) and The Wave (2008) he spent a long time struggling for the budget of the films. During these times he shot commercials. Dennis Gansel lives in Berlin.- Director
- Writer
- Editor
Philip Gröning was born on 7 April 1959 in Düsseldorf, West Germany. He is a director and writer, known for Into Great Silence (2005), Love, Money, Love (2000) and The Police Officer's Wife (2013).- Actress
- Additional Crew
- Soundtrack
One of the pre-eminent divas of post-war German cinema, Hannelore Elsner (born 'Elstner') was the consummate actress: a gifted and versatile performer with a penchant for intense roles, often as emancipated, strong-willed women. A Bavarian engineer's daughter (her father died of tuberculosis when she was eight), 'Hanni' first took acting classes in Munich where she also debuted on stage at the Kammerspiele and the Kleine Komödie. She appeared on screen from 1959, initially in teenage melodramas and 'Paukerfilms', later featuring as a regular guest star on TV in procedural crime dramas like Isar 12 (1961) and Stahlnetz (1958) . From the late 60's, Elsner alternated 'sexy roles' (such as her native American maiden in Christoph Kolumbus oder Die Entdeckung Amerikas (1969) ) with more demanding fare. Under the direction of such prominent film makers as Wolfgang Staudte, Edgar Reitz and Alf Brustellin, she proved her diverse range, headlining, respectively, in the satirical caper comedy Die Herren mit der weissen Weste (1970), the period biopic Der Schneider von Ulm (1978) and the hard-luck drama Der Sturz (1979). Among many other notable big screen credits were the romantic drama Der grüne Vogel (1980) (directed by István Szabó) and the delightful Otto Sander farce Wer spinnt denn da, Herr Doktor? (1982). Elsner's powerful tour-de-force acting showcase Die Unberührbare (2000) won her the first of two German film awards as Best Actress, as well as a Silver Hugo at the Chicago International Film Festival. A patrician beauty well into middle age, she captured a large fan base on the small screen as star of Lady Cop (1994), a role which developed from two previous guest spots as a Chief Inspector in the long-running police series Tatort (1970).
She was married and divorced twice. Her subsequent life partner (from 1999) was Günter Blamberger, a professor of German philology. Her memoirs, entitled "Im Überschwang - Aus meinem Leben", appeared in 2011. Hannelore Elsner died after a long battle with cancer on April 21 2019 at the age of 76.- Actor
- Producer
- Cinematographer
Tom Schilling was born on 10 February 1982 in Berlin, Germany. He is an actor and producer, known for A Coffee in Berlin (2012), Before the Fall (2004) and Who Am I (2014).- Sibel Kekilli is a German actress of Turkish origin. With her debut in Fatih Akin's movie "Head On" she gained major public attention. The film won the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival 2004 and her acting performance received several national and international prizes, among them the highly prestigious German film award Lola for Best Actress.
Since then Kekilli played in several national and international productions like "Eve Dönüs" ("Home coming"), awarded Best Actress at the Antalya Film Festival, aside with Josef Bierbichler and Hanna Schygulla in "Winter Journey" ("Winterreise) or the leading role Umay in Feo Aladags "When We Leave" ("Die Fremde") in 2010 which lead to Best Actress Award at the Tribeca Film Festival and once again the Lola award among others.
Apart from other movie roles, as the very successful comedy "What a man" (2011) directed by Matthias Schweighöfer, she has been investigating in the highly regarded German series "Tatort" since 2010.
She has also become widely known as part of the main cast for her role as Shae in the HBO award-winning series "Game of Thrones" (Season 1 until Season 4). - Actor
- Writer
- Additional Crew
During the heyday of German silent cinema, Rudolf Klein-Rogge was the prototype for the master criminal, the irredeemable arch villain or mad scientist. Born in Cologne, he served as a cadet in a Prussian military academy before finishing his matriculation. He then began to attend acting classes and studying art history in Berlin and Bonn, making his debut on the stage in 1909. After playing in theatres in towns and cities along the Rhine and northern Germany for nearly ten years, he started making films in 1919.
His villainous roots first came to the fore in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920), but he really established his reputation in a series of classic expressionist films written by his then-wife Thea von Harbou and directed by Fritz Lang. Of these, the most memorable were his forceful Moriarty-inspired portrayals of the titular character in Dr. Mabuse, the Gambler (1922), and its later sequel, The Testament of Dr. Mabuse (1933). The latter, which has an evil mastermind directing his empire from a madhouse, was so obviously aimed at the Hitler regime, that it was banned by Joseph Goebbels. Klein-Rogge's other noteworthy appearances include King Etzel in Die Nibelungen: Siegfried (1924) and Die Nibelungen: Kriemhild's Revenge (1924); and his insane scientist C.A. Rothwang, creator of the robot creature in Fritz Lang's masterpiece Metropolis (1927). A powerful personality possessed of an almost hypnotic stare and a strong, resonant voice, Klein-Rogge continued on through the 1930's in supporting roles. However, the period of expressionist cinema in Germany had all but run its course and he died in relative obscurity in Graz, Austria, in April 1955.- Actor
- Composer
- Music Department
Lars Eidinger, born in Berlin, studied at the prestigious Ernst Busch Academy of Dramatic Art in Berlin.
Since 1999 he has been an ensemble member at the Berliner Schaubühne. His portrayals of Hamlet and Richard III. in the productions of Thomas Ostermeier were internationally acclaimed and made him into a formative actor of the Schaubühne.
Next to his theater work, Lars Eidinger is featured in numerous national and international cinema and television productions, amongst others in Alle Anderen (directed by Maren Ade, 2008), Goltzius & The Pelican Company (directed by Peter Greenaway, 2011), Was bleibt (directed by Hans-Christian Schmid, 2011), Tatort - Borowski und der stille Gast (directed by Christian Alvart, 2012), Clouds of Sils Maria (directed by Olivier Assayas, 2013), Familienfest (directed by Lars Kraume, 2014), Personal Shopper (directed by Olivier Assayas, 2015), SS-GB (BBC, directed by Philipp Kadelbach, 2015), Mathilda (directed by Alexey Uchitel, 2014-15), Die Blumen von gestern (directed by Chris Kraus, 2015), Terror (directed by Lars Kraume, 2016), Werk ohne Autor (directed by F. H. v. Donnersmarck), Babylon Berlin (directed by Tom Tykwer, Hendrik Handloegten, Achim von Borries), Sense 8 (directed by Lana and Lilli Wachowski), Twins (directed by Lamberto Bava, 2016), Maryline (directed by Guillaume Gallienne, 2016), Dumbo (directed by Tim Burton, 2017), High Life (directed by Claire Denis, 2017).
Alle Anderen by Maren Ade, in which Lars Eidinger plays the male lead role alongside Birgit Minichmayr, was awarded the Silver Bear of the Berlinale in 2009. He was nominated for the German TV Prize as Best Actor in 2010 for Verhältnisse and 2013 for Polizeiruf - Der Tod macht Engel aus uns allen. In 2013, Lars Eidinger received the German Film Critics' Prize as Best Actor and in 2014 the Grimme Award. In 2017, Lars Eidinger was again nominated fort he German TV Prize as Best Actor for Terror and Familienfest, which won the prize as Best Film.
In addition to acting, Lars Eidinger is a musician and DJ. He lives in Berlin.- Actor
- Soundtrack
Sebastian Koch is one of the most internationally sought-after German actors of his generation. After stage engagements in Berlin, Bochum and Darmstadt, the Karlsruhe native was twice awarded the "Grimme Prize" in 2002 for the title role in Peter Keglevic's "Der Tanz mit dem Teufel - Die Entführung des Richard Oetker" (Dance with the devil - The kidnapping of Richard Oetker) and for his acting performance as Klaus Mann in the family story "The Manns" by Heinrich Breloer. He also received the "Bavarian Television Award" for his portrayal of Klaus Mann. His international breakthrough came in 2006 with director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck's Oscar-winning theatrical success "The Lives Of Others". For his outstanding portrayal of the GDR writer Georg Dreyman, Koch received numerous nominations and awards, including the 2007 Italian Foreign Press Award, the "Globo d'Oro" for Best European Actor.
He has since appeared in numerous international film productions. His performances in the historical drama "Napoleon" alongside Isabella Rossellini, Gérard Depardieu and John Malkovich, and alongside Catherine Deneuve in Benoît Jaquot's "Princesse Marie" (Marie Bonaparte, 2004) brought him great attention. He starred in Constantin Costa-Gavra's Hochhuth adaptation "Amen" (2002) and played the title role in Jo Baier's documentary "Stauffenberg". He received the "German Television Award" for his portrayal of Nazi criminal Albert Speer in Heinrich Breloer's multi-part series "Speer and Hitler".
Together with Paul Verhoeven, Sebastian Koch filmed the World War II drama "Black Book" (Zwartboek, 2006) and was nominated for an "Emmy Award" in 2008 for his portrayal of the title role in the international co-production "The Sea Wolf", based on Jack London's classic. He also appeared in Jaume Collet-Serra's "Unknown" (2011) with Liam Neeson, as well as Mike Figgis' "Suspension Of Disbelief" (2012). He assumed the lead role in the most successful Greek film of 2012, "God Loves Caviar" (O Theös Agapäei To Chaviäri), alongside John Cleese and Catherine Deneuve. Koch starred alongside Bruce Willis in John Moore's "A Good Day To Die Hard" (2013) and in the pilot of Ridley Scott's US series "The Vatican" (2014). He then co-starred with Daniel Auteuil in the German-French feature film "Kalinka" (Au Nom De Ma Fille, 2015) and with Oscar winners Eddie Redmayne and Tom Hooper in Hooper's Oscar-nominated bestselling adaptation "The Danish Girl" (2016). That same year, Sebastian Koch joined Tom Hanks in front of the camera for Steven Spielberg's "Bridge Of Spies", a story about brokering the first agent exchange in the Cold War - the film was nominated for an "Academy Award". Koch was lauded for his leading role in Kai Wessel's "Fog In August" (2016). In "Bel Canto" (2017), a film by Paul Weitz, he stars alongside Julianne Moore and Ken Watanabe. In the 5th and 6th seasons of the US series "Homeland", he played the German entrepreneur Otto Düring. The film "Never Look Away", yet another collaboration with director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, gained international attention after it premiered at the Venice International Film Festival in fall 2018 and was nominated for several Oscars and Golden Globes. Sebastian Koch received the "Bambi" in the category "Best Actor National" for the role of Prof. Seeband in 2018. In 2021, he was awarded the European film prize "Die Europa" at the Braunschweig International Film Festival. Most recently, Sebastian Koch starred in the German-Austrian thriller series "Euer Ehren" (Your Honor), which is set to air in spring 2022 on the German public broadcaster Das Erste. He was also involved in the creation of the scripts.
Sebastian Koch has been a member of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) since July 2019.
In addition to his acting work, he regularly delights audiences with symphonic-scenic readings, including "Paradise" with violinist Daniel Hope, "Dream Story" with the Hubert Nuss Jazz Quartet and recently "The Kreutzer Sonata" after L. Tolstoy, which Sebastian Koch dramaturgically adapted and conceived as a stage play with piano and violin.- Actor
- Writer
- Director
Mario Adorf, a tell-tale name indeed. Mario calls to mind the actor's Italian roots (his father was a Calabrian surgeon) whereas Adorf reveals his German origins (his mother was a radiologist from the German region Eifel). As for the full name Mario Adorf it echoes to perfection the international character of this living legend's long career. Born in 1930, Mario Adorf was still studying drama at the famous Otto Falkenberg School in Munich when he landed his first role in the first installment of the "O8/15" series in 1954. It was a small part but it didn't go unnoticed and got him new roles in German films, the most remarkable of which being that of Bruno Lüdke, the mentally retarded serial killer in Robert Siodmak's 1957 masterpiece "Nachts, wenn der Teufel kam". It earned him his first prize (the German Film Award of the outstanding young actor of 1958). After this Mario Adorf's career turned international. His Mediterranean looks, his rugged face, his dark oily frizzy hair and his volubility made him an ideal villain in European-made westerns, spy or mafia films. These flicks - made in the 1960s - were mostly just commercial and Adorf hammed his parts but he did it so brilliantly that he alone made them watchable. From the 1970s on, the quality of his films improved and Adorf could lend his remarkable acting talents to more ambitious works such as "Il Delitto Matteotti", in which he was a striking Mussolini, or "Die Blechtrommel", where he was terrifying as a boorish grocer contaminated by Nazism. The list of great directors he worked with is impressive: Robert Siodmak, Volker Schlöndorff, Wolgang Staudte, Michel Deville, Dino Risi, Mikhaïl Kalatozov, Luigi Comencini, Peter Fleischmann, Billy Wilder, John Frankenheimer, Claude Chabrol, Fassbinder... Likewise he served many a great author, either in the theatre (Shakespeare, Tennessee Williams, Richard Nash) or the big or small screen (Grass, Böll, Schnitzler, Heny Miller, Joseph Conrad, Gorky, Patrick Süskind...). He also sang and wrote books (five novels and one memoir). Hyperactive for more than fifty-five years now, Mario Adorf, still in fine form at the age of seventy-eight, is still ... hyperactive!- Actor
- Director
- Writer
Maximilian Schell was the most successful German-speaking actor in English-language films since Emil Jannings, the winner of the first Best Actor Academy Award. Like Jannings, Schell won the Oscar, but unlike him, he was a dedicated anti-Nazi. Indeed, with the exception of Maurice Chevalier and Marcello Mastroianni, Schell was undoubtedly the most successful non-anglophone foreign actor in the history of American cinema.
Schell was born in Vienna, Austria on December 8, 1930, but raised in in Zurich, Switzerland. (Austria became part of Germany after the anschluss of 1938), then was occupied by the allies from 1945 until 1955, when it again joined the family of nations.) He learned his craft on the stage beginning in 1952, and made his reputation with appearances in German-language films and television. He was a fine Shakespearean actor, and had a huge success with "Richard III" (he has also appeared in as the eponymous prince in a German-language version of "Hamlet").
Schell made his Hollywood debut in 1958 in the World War II film The Young Lions (1958) quite by accident, as the producers had wanted to hire his sister Maria Schell, but lines of communication got crossed, and he was the one hired. He impressed American producers as his turn as the friend of German soldier Marlon Brando, and subsequently assayed the role of the German defense attorney in the television drama Judgment at Nuremberg (1961) on "Playhouse 90" in 1959. He was also cast in the big screen remake, for which he won the 1961 Academy Award for Best Actor, beating out co-star Spencer Tracy for the Oscar. He also won a Golden Globe and the New York Film Critics Circle Award for the role. Schell ultimately won two more Oscar nominations for acting, in 1976 for Best Actor for The Man in the Glass Booth (1975) and in 1978 as Best Supporting Actor for Julia (1977) (which also brought him the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Supporting Actor). He has twice been nominated for an Emmy for his TV work, and won the 1993 Golden Globe for best performance by an actor in a supporting role in a series, mini-series or made-for-TV movie for Stalin (1992).
Schell has also has directed films, and his 1974 film The Pedestrian (1973) ("The Pedestrian"), which Schell wrote, produced, directed, and starred in, was nominated for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar and won the Golden Globe in the same category. His documentary about Marlene Dietrich, Marlene (1984), was widely hailed as a masterpiece of the non-fiction genre and garnered its producers a Best Documentary Oscar nomination in 1985. In 2002, Schell released Meine Schwester Maria (2002) (My Sister Maria), a documentary about the career of and his relationship with Maria Schell. Since the 1990s, Schell has appeared in many German language made-for-TV films, such as the 2003 film Alles Glück dieser Erde (2003) (All the Luck in the World) and in the mini-series The Hard Cops (2004), which was based on Henning Mankell's novel. He has also continued to appear on stage, appearing in dual roles in the 2000 Broadway production of the stage version of "Judgment at Nuremberg", and most recently in Robert Altman's London production of Arthur Miller's play "Resurrection Blues" in 2006. He died on 31st of January 2014, aged 83, in Innsbruck, Austria.- Ursula Werner was born on 28 September 1943 in Eberswalde, Germany. She is an actress, known for Cloud 9 (2008), F for Freaks (2019) and All About Me (2018).
- Birgit Minichmayr was born on 3 April 1977 in Linz, Upper Austria, Austria. She is an actress, known for Downfall (2004), The White Ribbon (2009) and Everyone Else (2009).
- Birol Ünel was born on 18 August 1961 in Silifke, Mersin, Turkey. He was an actor, known for Head-On (2004), Enemy at the Gates (2001) and Soul Kitchen (2009). He died on 3 September 2020 in Berlin, Germany.
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Robby Müller was born on 4 April 1940 in Willemstad, Curaçao, Netherlands Antilles. He was a cinematographer and actor, known for Breaking the Waves (1996), Paris, Texas (1984) and Repo Man (1984). He died on 3 July 2018 in Amsterdam, Noord-Holland, Netherlands.- Actress
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Maria Schrader was born in Hanover, Federal Republic of Germany, on September 27th, 1965. She directed and co-wrote the screenplay of the awards-winning film Liebesleben (2007). As well, she directed Stefan Zweig: Farewell to Europe (2016) and the Emmy-award wining miniseries Unorthodox (2020) (Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Directing for a Limited Series). She is well known for acting in Nobody Loves Me (1994), Aimee & Jaguar (1999), The Giraffe (1998), Deutschland 83 (2015), Deutschland 86 (2018) and Deutschland 89 (2020).- Director
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Christian Petzold was born in Hilden in 1960. After studying German and Drama at the Freie Universität Berlin, he enrolled in Berlin's German Academy for Film and Television (DFFB). There he studied film direction while at same time working as an assistant director to Harun Farocki and Hartmut Bitomsky. After graduation, Christian Petzold made several interesting TV films. In 2000, his first theatrical feature, The State I Am In (2000), about a couple of left-wing terrorists, is released and makes a strong impression and earning its director both the German Film Award and the Hessischer Best Film Award. By 2012, this prolific creator has managed to make two more TV films and five additional features, among which Yella (2007), the sensitive portrait of a young woman who tries to escape the grip of her violent and possessive husband, and especially Barbara (2012), which won the 'Best Director' award at the Berlinale. This fine drama plunges the viewer into the everyday life atmosphere of the GDR like few films before and serves as a showcase for its director's talents.- Actor
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This elegant actor of the golden age of German cinema appeared in several masterpieces, before the cameras of such inspired geniuses as Lang, Lubitsch and Murnau. Vocation had come rather late in his life, though. Abel was indeed already 33 when he made his first film. Beforehand, he had been a forester, a gardener and a shopkeeper. But one day, while watching a film with Asta Nielsen, he was struck by revelation. He decided at once to become an actor and with the help of Nielsen in person he started a fruitful screen career. He also wrote and directed a few films. He died too soon aged only 57, but having honored the German screen with his noble, dignified figure in more than a hundred pictures.- Producer
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Maren Ade was born in Karlsruhe on 12 December 1976 to a couple of teachers.She studied cinema at Munich's Hochschule für Fernsehen und Film. As of 2001 she co-founded, together with Janine Jackowski, a fellow graduate from HFF, the "Komplizen" film company. It is through Komplizen that Maren would later co-produce, among others, "Arabian Nights", Miguel Gomes' masterpiece. After two shorts in 2000 and 2001 made under the auspices of her film school, she co-produced, wrote and and directed Der Wald vor lauter Bäumen (2003), her first feature. A grueling drama about the difficult beginnings of a new teacher, the movie impressed both audiences and critics. Incidentally, it is of interest to specify that its school scenes were entirely shot within the walls of the educational institution where her mother was teaching at the time. This promising effort was followed six years later by Everyone Else (2009), which although taking place in a totally different setting (the Sardinian seaside in the glory of Summer) also concerns characters unsure of themselves. A taut drama as well, it revolves around two holiday making newly married couples and describes in a Roman Polanski-like manner the wicked relationships they share. But her greatest success came in 2015 and 2016 with Toni Erdmann (2016), an offbeat comedy with a philosophical approach, which enthused the festival-goers at Cannes, allegedly making them "roar with laughter", and later making unexpected profit in art houses throughout the world. And it is true that a father playing dirty tricks on his daughter (meant to make her realize she is wasting her life) is no ordinary entertainment. As a matter of fact, after only three full-length movies to her credit, Maren Ade has become a name that counts in today's German cinema.- Katrin Sass was born on 23 October 1956 in Schwerin, German Democratic Republic. She is an actress, known for Good Bye Lenin! (2003), The Weissensee Saga (2010) and Bürgschaft für ein Jahr (1981). She was previously married to Siegfried Kühn.
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Born in 1978 in Hagen, North Rhine-Westphalia. In 2000, Jan-Ole Gerstner moved to Berlin, where he did an internship at the production company "X-Films Creative Pool" ("Run Lola Run", "The White Ribbon"). He then became Wolfgang Becker's personal assistant in the production of "Good Bye, Lenin!" Gerster began his studies in writing and directing in 2003 at the German Film and Television Academy in Berlin. During his studies he directed several short films and co-wrote with Wolfgang Becker the script of the "Krankes Haus" episode for the collective film "Deutschland 09". His first film "Oh Boy" was an unexpected success at the German box office. He also won numerous awards, are six Lola (the German equivalent of the Oscars). His second feature film, "Lara", a remarkable psychological study which, like "Oh Boy" is set over a 24-hour period, also won numerous awards, including the well-deserved Best Actress Award for Corinna Harfouch.- Actress
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Sandra Hüller was born in Suhl. She studied acting at the Ernst Busch Academy of Dramatic Arts in Berlin. For her performance of Anneliese Michel in Hans-Christian Schmid's drama Requiem she won The Silver Bear for Best Actress. She is internationally known for her starring role in Maren Ade's Toni Erdmann, for which she won among others the European Film Award and the Toronto Film Critics Association Award for Best Actress.- Director
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David Wnendt was born in 1977 in Gelsenkirchen, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. He is a director and writer, known for Look Who's Back (2015), Combat Girls (2011) and Sun and Concrete (2023).- Director
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Yasemin Samdereli was born on 15 July 1973 in Dortmund, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. She is a director and writer, known for Almanya: Welcome to Germany (2011), Who Am I? (1998) and Together Forever - Secrets of 50+ Years of Marriage (2018).- Producer
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Karl Baumgartner was born in 1949 in Brunico, Bolzano, Trentino-Alto Adige, Italy. He was a producer and executive, known for Underground (1995), Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring (2003) and Tulpan (2008). He died on 18 March 2014 in Frankfurt am Main, Hesse, Germany.- Director
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Romuald Karmakar was born in Wiesbaden on February 15 1965. The son of a French mother and an Iranian father lived with his parents in Athens from 1977 until 1982, and then relocated with his family to Munich, where he graduated from high school in 1984. The same year, he bought a Super 8 camera and started to make short films, including "Eine Freundschaft in Deutschland" (1985), in which he plays a young Adolf Hitler. The short documentary "Coup de boule" (1987) chronicles a bizarre ritual in a French army camp, where recruits bang their heads against the doors and lockers of their barracks. His short documentary "Demontage IX, Unternehmen Stahlglocke" won the award for Best German Short at the renowned Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen.
Karmakar returned to military surroundings for his first feature-length documentary: "Warheads" (DE/FR 1992) follows a German veteran of the foreign legion and an English mercenary during their stays in regions like French-Guyana and the battle-torn Croatia. "Warheads" garnered very positive reviews.
Karmaker's final breakthrough came with his first dramatic feature "Der Totmacher", an intimate study of serial killer Fritz Haarmann, who was played in the film by Götz George. The film premiered in the competition of the Venice IFF and George won the festival's Best Actor Award. At the German Film Awards, "Der Totmacher" took home the trophies for Best Film, Best Actor and Best Direction. It was also nominated at the European Film Awards in 1995 as 'Young European Film of the Year'.
Karmakar presented "Das Frankfurter Kreuz" (1998), an episodic drama set in a seedy dive bar on New Year's Eve, in the Panorama section of the 1998 Berlin IFF. The film marked his first collaboration with actor Manfred Zapatka, whom Karmakar has admired since Zapatka's portrayal of a pimp in Sohrab Sahid Saless' "Utopia" (1983). He again worked with the actor on "Das Himmler-Projekt" (2000), in which Zapatka recites the infamous three hour speech Heinrich Himmler held in front of 92 SS generals in 1943. The film premiered in the Forum section of the Berlin IFF. It went on to win the 3Sat-Dokumentarfilmpreis, and Karmakar and Zapatka also received a special prize at the Grimme Awards.
Despite mixed reviews, Karmakar's next drama feature "Manila" (2000), which portrays a group of travelers stranded at the Manila airport, garnered several awards, including the Silver Leopard at the Locarno IFF and the award for Best Screenplay (for Karmakar and his co-authour Bodo Kirchhoff) at the Bavarian Film Awards.
Following the experimental music documentary "196 BPM" (2002), Karmakar premiered two new films at the 2004 Berlin IFF: His much acclaimed documentary "Land der Vernichtung" (2004), which addresses the involvement of a Hamburg police battalion in the murder of 1,7 million Jews in Poland in 1942/1943, screened in the Panorama section of the festival. Meanwhile, the romantic drama "Die Nacht singt ihre Lieder" (2004), starring Frank Giering, Anne Ratte-Polle, Manfred Zapatka and Marthe Keller, screened in the official competition, but had a lukewarm critical reception.
After releasing the music documentary "Between the Devil and the Wide Blue Sea" (2005), Karmakar re-teamed with actor Manfred Zapatka for the project "Hamburger Lektionen": Similar in form to the "Das Himmler-Projekt", the film presents a scenic reading of lectures originally held by a radical Islamic cleric in Hamburg.
Karmakar contributed the segment "Ramses", a portrait of an Iranian bar owner in Berlin's red-light district, to the omnibus film "Deutschland '09 - 13 kurze Filme zur Lage der Nation" (2009). With "Ramses", Karmakar also paid tribute to "Utopia", one of his personal favorite (which he also requested to be screened in a retrospective dedicated to him in Vienna in 2010).
"Villalobos" (2009), which focuses on DJ Ricardo Villalobos, concluded Karmakar's loose trilogy of documentaries on music and club culture. This was followed by "Die Herde des Herrn" (2011), which looks at the aftermath of the death of Pope John Paul II and the finding of his successor Pope Benedict XVI. "Angriff auf die Demokratie - Eine Intervention", an engaging look at the political and economic crisis in Europe, premiered in the Panorama section at the 2012 Berlin IFF.
During the following years, Karmakar completed several short to mid-length documentaries and film essays, including his contribution to the German pavilion at the 55. Biennale in Venice. From 2012 until 2013, Karmakar was a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University. In November 2014, he received the DEFA-Stiftung's award for exceptional achievements in German Cinema. The 2017 Berlin IFF saw the world premiere of Karmakar's feature-length documentary "Denk ich an Deutschland in der Nacht", in which he portrays five influential DJs of the German techno and electronic scene.- Director
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Rainer Simon was born on 11 January 1941 in Hainichen, Saxony, Germany. He is a director and writer, known for The Woman and the Stranger (1985), Jadup und Boel (1988) and Aus unserer Zeit (1970).- Actress
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Katharina Thalbach was born on 19 January 1954 in East Berlin, East Germany. She is an actress and director, known for The Tin Drum (1979), Der Minister (2013) and I've Never Been to New York (2019). She is married to Uwe Hamacher.- Director
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Veit Harlan was born on 22 September 1899 in Berlin, Germany. He was a director and actor, known for Die goldene Stadt (1942), Der große König (1942) and Jud Süß (1940). He was married to Kristina Söderbaum, Hilde Körber and Dora Gerson. He died on 13 April 1964 in Capri, Italy.- Matthias Habich was born on 12 January 1940 in Danzig, Germany [now Gdansk, Pomorskie, Poland]. He is an actor, known for Enemy at the Gates (2001), Downfall (2004) and The Reader (2008).
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Ulrich Köhler was born on 15 December 1969 in Marburg, Hesse, Germany. He is a director and writer, known for Bungalow (2002), Sleeping Sickness (2011) and In My Room (2018).