European Film Awards's blog

The noted German director, board member of the prestigious European Film Academy, Volker Schlöndorff, will give a master class at the upcoming Montreal World Film Festival it was announced. “Volker Schlöndorff is one of key members of the New German Cinema, that group of young filmmakers who, with talent, imagination and a daring choice of subjects, radically changed postwar German cinema,” said MWFF President Serge Losique. “It is a great privilege to be hosting his master class in Montreal.”

Born in Wiesbaden, Germany in 1939, Volker Schlöndorff was educated at the Sorbonne and l'IDHEC in Paris and served his apprenticeship as assistant to Jean-Pierre Melville (Léon Morin, prêtre, 1961), Alain Resnais (Last Year at Marienbad, 1961) and Louis Malle (Le Feu follet, 1963). Returning to Germany, he made his own directorial debut in Young Törless, which won the critics' prize in Cannes in 1966 but it wasn't until The Lost Honour of Katharina (1975, co-directed with his wife, Margarethe von Trotta), that he made his breakthrough at the German box office. Four years later The Tin Drum based on the Günter Grass novel, won the Palme d'or in Cannes and the Oscar for best foreign film.

Though considered to be part of the German New Cinema, Schlöndorff's work is singular within this movement for his choice of material and his independent style. An aspect of his films which sets them apart is their strong literary inspiration. Many of his films are adaptations of famous literary works: in addition to the Musil, Böll and Grass novels, works by Heinrich von Kleist (Michael Kohlhaas, 1969) Arthur Miller (Death of a Salesman, 1985), Marcel Proust (Swann in Love, 1983), Margaret Atwood (The Handmaid's Tale, 1990), and others.

More recently Schlöndorff has turned to social and historical subjects in such films as The Legends of Rita (2000), The Ninth Day (2004) and Strike (2006). His latest film Calm at Sea (2011), deals with an incident during the German occupation of France in WWII, in which 150 young Frenchman are selected to be shot in retribution for the assassination of a German officer. Calm at Sea will be shown at this year's Montreal World film Festival, which runs from August 23 to September 3.