Director Profile
Oliver Hirschbiegel
Position: Director
Country: Germany
The life of director Oliver Hirschbiegel, born in 1957 in Hamburg, Germany, was early influenced by a Waldorf school, whose authority-critical education methods he took quite literally: Hirschbiegel left school in his teens to work as an apprentice cook at sea.
He then studied painting and graphics in the Academy of Fine Arts in Hamburg where, under Sigmar Polke, he soon started experimenting with photography, video and film. By creating room installations and staging performances he found his first approach to directing. Together with the video and film maker Gabor Body he developed the video magazine Infermental.
In 1986 Hirschbiegel sold his first story Das Go! Projekt! to the German broadcast network ZDF, only on condition that he would be allowed to direct it himself. Das Go! Projekt! was well received by critics and Oliver Hirschbiegel received further offers. In the years to follow, he staged various thrillers and murder mysteries for the television (Das Urteil in 1997, Todfeinde in 1998), which were awarded with renowned TV prizes, as well as 14 episodes of the television crime series Kommissar Rex and two episodes of the Tatort series. With Downfall, he was able to book another great success at the cinema, for which he received an Oscar nomination. Just an Ordinary Jew is his latest film.
Films in the Festival
Just an Ordinary Jew
A journalist in Hamburg wrestles with the contradictions of being a Jew in modern Germany in this tour-de-force monologue from the director of Downfall.