Volker Schlöndorff

Volker Schlöndorff is a Berlinbased German filmmaker who won an Oscar as well as the Palme d’Or in Cannes for The Tin Drum (1979). Mr. Schlöndorff is famous for his cinematic adaptation of major literary works but also his interest in post-war German politics. He studied economics and political science in Paris and worked as assistant director to Alain Resnais, Louis Malle, and Jean-Pierre Melville. In 1966, he directed Young Törless. Based on the Robert Musil’s novel, this film is considered to be the beginning of of the German New Wave. In the 1980s he lived and worked in New York, directing The Death of a Salesman with Dustin Hoffman and Margaret Atwood’s Handmaid’s Tale. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, he returned to Berlin, becoming chief executive for the UFA studio in Babelsberg. Mr. Schlöndorff is currently a Trustee of The American Academy in Berlin.

His major films include The Lost Honor of Katherina Blum, Coup de Grace, Swann’s Way, A Gathering of Old Men, The Handmaid’s Tale, The Legends of Rita, and The Ninth Day, about a priest imprisoned at the Dachau concentration camp. His most recent work, Ulzhan the Forgotten Light, is set in Kazakhstan and about to open this fall.