Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck

Writer/Director FLORIAN HENCKEL VON DONNERSMARCK was born in Cologne, Germany in 1973. He spent his childhood and youth in New York, Berlin, Frankfurt, and Brussels.

In 1991, he went to Leningrad to study Russian Language and Literature. He graduated two years later in Saint Petersburg as a state-certified teacher of Russian as a foreign language.

From 1993 to 1996, he completed a degree in Politics, Philosophy, and Economics at Oxford University. After an internship with director Lord Richard Attenborough, he decided to study fiction-directing and enrolled at the University of Television and Film in Munich. His four-minute student film Doberman, which he shot in 1998 from his own script, was screened at over forty festivals throughout the world and won him many awards, among them the Max-Ophuls Prize and the “Shocking Shorts Award” from Universal Studios.

His first full-length film, The Lives of Others, which he again wrote and directed, brought Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck over forty international awards, and the film won the 2007 Academy Award® for Best Foreign Language Film.

He is a member of the French Order of Arts and Letters, the Bavarian and Northrhine-Westfalian Orders of Merit, and the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences.

He resides in Los Angeles with his wife and three children.

© 2010 GK Films and Columbia Pictures