- Born
- Born in Hamburg, Germany, in 1957. In his teens he left high school and worked as a cooker in a boat.
Then he studied painting and graphism in the Academy of arts in Hamburg where he also started experimenting with video and photography. Those experimental movies attracted the attention of some producers of the German TV.
Hirschbiegel became popular thanks to his tv movies (especially dramas and thrillers). In 2001 he shot his first movie for cinema: "Das Experiment" that won several awards in many festivals all around the world. That movie is an intense investigation of the aggressive behaviour in a simulated prison environment.
His second movie, "Mein letzter Film", released in 2002, is a 90 minutes' monologue about a woman in her fifties who wants to re-start his life.
In 2004 "Downfall" was released, his third movie, and till now his greatest success. "Downfall" is about the last 12 days of life of Adolf Hitler narrated out of the sight of her young secretary, Traudl Junge. That movie has stirred up much controversy because it portrays Hitler and the Nazis as human beings and not just as evil.
Hirschbiegel has demonstrated in all his movies to be an specialist of dramas set in claustrophobic environments.- IMDb Mini Biography By: Enrique Bocanegra enrique_bocanegra@hotmail.com - There he attended the Waldorf school. Afterwards, his wanderlust drove him to sea, where he worked as a kitchen boy. Returning to Hamburg, Hirschbiegel enrolled at the local University of the Arts for Graphics and Painting. Hirschbiegel developed his artistic activities in the areas of photography and film. He founded the video magazine "Infermental" with director Gabor Gody. In addition, Hirschbiegel also worked as an actor: he took on roles in the TV productions "Rosemaries Wedding" (1985) and "Losberg" (1986). The television film "The Go! Project" marked his debut as a television director and author in 1986. Hirschbiegel received the Grimme Prize for the "crime scene" crime thriller "Kinderspiel" (1992).
Hirschbiegel subsequently made a name for himself as the director of the crime series "Kommissar Rex", of which he appeared in 14 episodes for Sat.1 from 1993 to 1996. In 1996 he shone in the ARD series "Wilde Herzen" with the thriller "Trickser", for which he received a Grimme Special Prize. Hirschbiegel was awarded the Bavarian Television Prize in 1999 for his film "Todfeinde - The Wrong Decision" (1998). Finally, Hirschbiegel's film debut followed in 2001: Moritz Bleibtreu played the main role in "The Experiment", with which the director showed the moral manipulability and aggression of the human character based on a social psychological experiment carried out in the USA in 1971. For this film he received the Bavarian Film Prize and an Oscar nomination in 2002. In 2001 he received the directing award at the World Film Festival in Montreal for "The Experiment". Another television film, "My Last Film," which Hirschbiegel directed, followed in 2001.
In 2004, Hirschbiegel's directing work in the Adolf Hitler film adaptation "Downfall" caused a great stir. In the film, produced by Bernd Eichinger, Bruno Ganz plays an Adolf Hitler full of human weaknesses in the midst of the final fighting of the Second World War in Berlin, who hardly corresponds to the usual image of the Holocaust perpetrator. Eichinger also wrote the screenplay for the film, based on the bestseller of the same name by Joachim Fest and the notes of Hitler's secretary Traudl Junge ("Until the Last Hour", 2002) edited by Melissa Müller. By breaking a taboo, Hirschbiegel and Eichinger caused great excitement and intense debates in the German cultural world about the meaning and purpose of "humanizing" the historical Hitler figure. Overall, the production received positive reactions in the international film world. Together with Bruno Ganz and producer Bernd Eichinger, the director received the Bambi for the best German film in autumn 2004, for which "Downfall" was awarded. At the 2005 Academy Awards, "Downfall" was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film.
In April 2005, "Downfall" became the most successful German film to date in Great Britain, where it grossed 1.3 million pounds in its first month. Hirschbiegel realized another very unusual project in 2006 with "An Ordinary Jew". The piece is a one-man show, carried by the self-confident and sometimes cynical reflections of Ben Becker. The brave decision to bring a 90-minute monologue to cinemas was appreciated by audiences and critics alike. In 2007 he was a jury member of the 3rd Zurich Film Festival chaired by US producer Albert S. Ruddy. The film "Five Minutes of Heaven" was released in Great Britain and Ireland in 2009 with Leam Neeson in the lead role. His 2013 biopic film "Princess Diana" was met with devastating international criticism. At the Berlinale 2015 he presented his film "Elser - He would have changed the world".- IMDb Mini Biography By: Christian_Wolfgang_Barth
- Says he will remain an European director, although it is a great opportunity to work in Hollywood.
- A Waldorf graduate, he studied painting and graphic arts at the University of Visual Arts in Hamburg.
- Fan of the Hamburg soccer team HSV.
- Invited to join AMPAS in 2005.
Contribute to this page
Suggest an edit or add missing content