Director's Portrait:

XXL in every respect. A man two meters tall, equipped with boyish charm, Prussian-blue eyes, gold-blond hair, the best of manners, great sensitivity and outstanding ambition: Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck. He makes remarks such as: "I have respect - for life and for art." And he promises: "No matter what films I make, I will never deliver anything that seems amateur." He is not interested in spiritless films for the critics. His aim is to shape his own character convincingly, so that his films are also good. He wants to reach his audience emotionally, and if he does not succeed in that, he is the one who has made the mistake.

He is a debutant who has proven himself a professional in the best sense of the word with his first feature The Lives of Others. Aesthetically consistent, moving, great narrative cinema from a youngster - this is something we have missed for a long time. His complex material about dictatorship in the GDR has even outdone - with seven Lolas - the trophy count of Tom Tykwer's Run, Lola Run. Up until then, he had only been known in the world of short films, where, however, he had collected almost all the prizes available in the field. And as one can see from his short film Dobermann, for example, Donnersmarck certainly possesses a talent for comedy as well.

The film world was surprised: Who is this man who stands out among so many, who has demonstrated such mastery with his first film for the cinema? He is no master from out of the blue. He began practicing early, consuming narrative European literature with tremendous enthusiasm: an "addiction to education" that came upon him as puberty developed ("compensation for a lack of coolness"). He discovers the whole canon of literature - Thomas Mann, Stefan Zweig, Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky - and loses sleep at night because he knows no more than a couple of essays by Kleist. He needs the complete works!

The desire for perfection has remained; the desire to think everything through, to reach everything and everyone. The audiences came in droves (1.3 million by June), the German parliament went to the cinema en block, and even the German President Koehler flew to the old capital city Bonn to view the film together with school children.

The 33-year-old filmmaker was aware that the topic of Communist dictatorship would give rise to discussion, and what is more - that is exactly what he wanted. No system of spies in the world, the director knows, is as comprehensive as that of the GDR was: more than a quarter of a million people were employed by the "State Security" (Stasi) to sound out their fellow citizens. This is a bitter truth that has now - in the 17th year after German reunification - been examined in a feature film for the first time. Donnersmarck did not make his material into a didactic film, but backed a technique of emotionalizing personification. Peter Schneider, German author and member of the German Film Award jury, summed this up: "For a long time, there was a tendency to portray the GDR as a state where no one really suffered and the Stasi was regarded as something of a joke." He went on to say that The Lives of Others was the first serious attempt at showing how the Stasi terrorized millions of GDR citizens. Even though the Stasi officer and the poet that he keeps under surveillance were not taken directly from official files, Donnersmarck insists that his film plot is very close to reality. "Everything could have happened that way at that time in GDR history."

The director experienced the Stasi-debate "as something necessary for Germany, but also as something sad. I can imagine that the success of, shall we say, Run Lola Run was a reason for pure celebration for Tom Tykwer. For me, there is also a sense of despair over The Lives of Others and its victory march. Daily, I receive letters from people who tell me how they were mistreated and how they recognize themselves in the film. And the poet Guenter Ullmann sent me one of his volumes of poetry, with a grateful dedication. He was the one who - after endless, brutal Stasi interrogations - had all his teeth pulled, because he was convinced that bugs had been implanted in them (in fact, his closest friend was an IM - an unofficial Stasi employee - something he simply could not fathom). And the next day, the actor Henry Huebchen tells an audience of millions that people in artists' circles laughed at the Stasi rather than anything else. That is the kind of roller-coaster ride I have experienced over the last 4 months. I will be glad to leave the subject behind me. I have just turned down a big American project because it would have brought me back into contact with the same set of themes."

With characteristic decisiveness, he counters isolated critics' verdicts that The Lives of Others is a populist, consensus film: "As if it was an argument against a film that it appeals to almost everyone, and thus to very different people - Birthler, Biermann, and the Bundestag etc! Those who repeat this verdict presumably want Germany to be lumbered with the kind of mediocrity that has induced so many 'consensus people', from Wilhelm Weiller to Wolfgang Petersen, to flee the country! If 'consensus film' is supposed to mean the same as 'trivial' or even 'bad film', then I want to make a lot more bad and trivial films in my career. What would those critics say of films like Casablanca or Godfather Part II? They must be the worst films of all time, for absolutely everyone thinks that they are good, and not - as in my case - almost everyone. I wish that The Lives of Others was much more of a consensus film!"

He is pleased that there has been a "consensus" about his film among the most significant personalities of the GDR: Wolf Biermann, Vera Lengsfeld, Siegmar Faust, Joachim Gauck, Thomas Brussig and Baerbel Bohley, for example. "They all, and many others, have publicly declared the extent to which the film expressed their way of life and feelings in the GDR." 1.3 million visitors and still under the Top 10 after 13 weeks, sensationally good international sales for "considerable sums" at the market in Cannes: this almost satisfies even someone like Donnersmarck, who sets himself the highest possible standards in every respect.

Donnersmarck currently lives in Berlin, but he does not belong to the so-called 'Berlin School'. "I don't believe that there are 'schools' for good directors. Of course, Robert Zemeckis has more affinity with Steven Spielberg than with Oliver Stone, but 'school' would still be the wrong word. Directing means establishing one's own taste as the sole measure of everything. And not that of any school members or of some teacher or other. The very nature of the profession means that a director has to be an extreme loner. The term 'Berlin School' is a forlorn attempt to use Berlin's 'hipness' in order to create a virtue out of necessity: the aesthetics of underfinanced (and for that reason often underrated) films."

When Donnersmarck received his Lola for the Best Direction, he said rather succinctly: "Somebody had to get it." He feels quite comfortable among his fellow prize-winners: "Actually, all those that I regard highly have also won this prize: Tom Tykwer for Run Lola Run, Josef Vilsmaier for Comedian Harmonists, Wolfgang Becker for Good Bye, Lenin!, Caroline Link for Beyond Silence. No, they have forgotten at least one. Rainer Kaufmann for Cold is the Evening Breeze."

Of course, he is now among the most frequently wooed directors in the country, receiving invitations here and there, and compliments like a good placing in BUNTE's list of the 55 most lovable Germans. That is all very nice, but not important. "The only thing that has really changed in my life," he says, "is that I have left behind that Don Carlos feeling; a sense that my life is passing year after year without me being able to create and find my audience. I have lost the fear that I am composing poetry for the hard-drive. And that was a terrible anxiety."

The Lives of Others has a star-studded cast. The leading actors Sebastian Koch, Ulrich Muehe and Ulrich Tukur came from the grande dame of dramatic agents, Erna Baumbauer. More than eighty years old, she upholds unerring standards of quality, and when she read Donnersmarck's screenplay, she was moved to tears. Then he knew: "I will be able to make the film now. She is my Delphi," he says. "On 13 January 2006, she advised me: 'Don't accept any offers in the next twelve months, and don't make any decisions about what you are going to tackle next.' And those who defy the oracle arouse the anger of the gods." For quite some time now, he has been haunted by the material for an erotic thriller. And because he is anxious for "true eroticism" to stay alive despite the current omnipresence of porno-websites and ads for telephone sex, he may well decide in favor of that material on 14 January 2007.

A man of stature, in every sense of the word: we can be quite sure that Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck will make many more very different films for us, for the audience.