Volker Schlöndorff

Volker Schlöndorf (Wiesbaden, Hesse, Germany, March 31, 1939) is a German film director, screenwriter, producer, documentarian and actor. He is considered one of the key directors of the so-called new German cinema, a movement into which he introduced many of the characteristics learned from the Nouvelle Vague.

Biography

He left his parents' home to go to a Jesuit boarding school in French Brittany with the intention of learning French for a couple of months. He stayed there for three years. He would start his film career in Paris, where he moved with his family when he was seventeen.

He studied political science and economics at the Sorbonne and directing at IDHEC, the famous film school, and began his professional career in 1960 as an assistant director on several Nouvelle Vague films: with Alain Resnais in his well-known film Last Year in Marienbad (1961), Louis Malle in A Private Life (1962), The Wisp or Long Live Maria!, or Jean-Pierre Melville in The Confidant (1962).

His first film was a short film shot in 1965, Wen Kummert's, which was banned in France because it dealt with the Algerian war. In 1966 he directed Young Törless , an adaptation of the novel written by Robert Musil 60 years earlier. This film received the FIPRESCI award at the Cannes Festival as well as the German Film Awards for best film, screenplay and director, becoming one of the mainstays, along with Fassbinder and Herzog, of new German cinema.

Later, he filmed an episode of the film Der Paukenspieler (1967), Mord und Totschlag (1967), a film that had the leading role of one of the muses of the Rolling Stones, Anita Pallenberg, who also appeared in The Rebel (1969), a film set in the Middle Ages.

He was married to actress/writer/director Margarethe von Trotta.

Among the many awards his work has received are the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film and the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival for The Tin Drum (1979), based on the original novel by Günter Grass.

Schlöndorff adopts different novel styles for his films that generally engage with the theme of post-war politics in Germany. He has also served as Executive Director of the UFA studio in Babelsberg.

As an author of documentaries, the cycle of interviews he conducted with Billy Wilder in 1992 stands out: Billy Wilder, how did you do it? and Billy Wilder speaks (1996).

Filmography

Directed films

Scripts

• Return to Montauk (Rückkehr nach Montauk, 2017)
• Die Stille nach dem Schuß (1999)
• Der Unhold (The ogre(1996)
• Death of a traveler (1985)
• The love of Swann (1984)
• Die Blechtrommel (The Canopy drum(1979)
• The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum (1975)
• Young Törless (1966)

Awards and distinctions

Oscar Awards

Cannes International Film Festival

Venice International Film Festival