Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck

If retaining the name Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck is challenging, imagine what it must be like to remember his full name, Florian Maria Georg Christian Graf Henckel von Donnersmarck. This German filmmaker was born as one might suppose with such names and surnames in the bosom of an aristocratic family, in 1973, in the city of Cologne. During his childhood his family traveled a lot, and he came to live in New York, Berlin, Frankfurt and Brussels. At the age of ten, his mother took him and his older brother Sebastian to the exhibition “Zeitgeist” at the Martin Gropius Bau in Berlin. She left a mark on his first approach to art and the creative process and inspired one of the first scenes of his film La sombra del pasado .

He had a Catholic upbringing, his father Leo-Ferdinand, as well as being a count, was president of the Order of Malta in Germany, and among his relatives is Ulrich Maria Karl Graf Henckel von Donnersmarck, his uncle, a Cistercian monk, who was abbot of the monastery. from Heiligenkreuz, in Austria. Precisely in the hostelry of this idyllic and quiet place, he was able to dedicate himself peacefully to writing the first draft of the script for La vida de los otros , his feature film debut.

He studied film directing at the Munich Film Academy. But his background is very broad and cosmopolitan. He has, for example, a degree in philosophy from New College at the University of Oxford. And he studied Russian for two years at St. Petersburg University, so he is fluent in this language, as well as native German, English, French and Italian. In his student and first-time stage, he shot many shorts, and the first, Dobermann (1998), earned him the Max Ophüls Award and the Shocking Shorts Award, among others. His brother Sebastian, less famous, was also attracted to the cinema, and perhaps his best-known contribution is that of co-writer of San Agustín , a miniseries about the saint of Hippo directed by the French Christian Duguay .

The first film that Florian remembers seeing was at the New York MoMA, the silent film Varieté , produced by his compatriot Erich Pommer. This really was starting strong, nda Disney cartoon movies. His first professional experience in a major production was with Richard Attenborough , he served as a creditor in a film about Ernest Hemingway’s love affairs in World War I, In Love and War (1996).

Florian is married to the executive Christiane Asschenfeldt, with whom he has had three children, in 2003, 2005 and 2007. His first feature film as a scriptwriter and director,  The Lives of Others (2006) surprised by his accurate picture of East Germany subjected to the tyranny of communism, and where its protagonist ( Ulrich Mühe ), dedicated to spying on people of dubious loyalty to the regime, is forced to wonder about the moral meaning of his work, when recording the conversations of an intellectual, man of the theater ( Sebastian Koch ). The film received all kinds of German and European awards, as well as winning the Oscar for best foreign film.

Given the numerous praises received for this film, the pressure was great when it came to undertaking his second film. He was surprised by the choice, because he chose to shoot in English a Hollywood remake of an entertaining French thriller, The Tourist (2010), which was based on Jérôme Salle ‘s The Secret of Anthony Zimmer (2005) . Although with posh stars, Angelina Jolie and Johnny Depp , and brilliant co-writers, Christopher McQuarrie and Julian Fellowes , plus the incomparable setting of Venice, and a correct direction, it tasted a little disappointing.

But with his latest film,  The Shadow of the Past (2018), he has returned to his native Germany, with what is perhaps his most ambitious film, as it addresses with enormous sensitivity the issue of the meaning of the artistic work, whose intimacy he knows above all the inspired creator –he was inspired in this conception above all by the German painter Gerhard Richter–, and this is framed by the historical circumstances that have marked 20th century Germany, that is, Nazism and Communism. With a wide canvas, the production design is superb, both in the sections that take place in Dresden and in Berlin, and it achieved two Oscar nominations in the categories of best foreign film and best photography. It has had a wonderful cast, where in addition to the young Tom Schilling andPaula Beer , the ambiguous, cynical, empty Koch, a former Nazi, shines again.

Regarding his meticulous way of working, one of his partners, the producer Quirin Berg, has said: “With Florian there are no “concepts” or “provisional versions”. He focuses on a subject thoroughly, digging deep. He takes the time he needs for this search and development process.”