Volker Schlöndorff

Volker Schlöndorff is a German director and screenwriter. He studied filmmaking in Paris and worked for ten years in France before he founded his own production company in Berlin in 1973. He won an Oscar as well as the Golden Palm at the 1979 Cannes Film Festival for The Tin Drum, based on the novel by Günter Grass. This film launched his international carrier which continued with many selections at international film festivals such as the Berlin Film Festival for The Handmaid’s Tale (1990) and Legend of Rita (2000) or the Venise Film Festival for Der Unhold (1996). One aspect of Schlöndorff's films is their strong literary inspiration: many of his films are adaptations of famous literary works by Arthur Miller, Günter Grass, Marcel Proust, Michel Tournier, and others. Schlöndorff teaches film and literature at the European Graduate School in Switzerland. Diplomacy (2014), a Franco-German historical fiction adapted from a play by Cyril Gély, received the Best adaptation award at the 2015 Césars and Return to Montauk (2017) was selected at the 67^th Berlin International Film Festival. His TV film, Der namenlose Tag (The nameless day) received the Best TV Direction Award at the Romy Gala in Austria. In 2021 and 2022 he made two documentaries Zeitzeugengespräch (Eyewitness Talk) and The Forestmaker, about reforestation in Africa.