Joseph Vilsmaier, the German director of Stalingrad, The Harmonists and Marlene Dietrich biopic Marlene, has died. He was 81.

Vilsmaier's agent on Wednesday confirmed media reports that the director "died peacefully at his home" in Bavaria on Tuesday.

Born in Munich in 1939, Vilsmaier studied music and worked as a technician before gaining a foothold in the film business in the early 1960s, starting as a runner. He worked his way up, initially as a cameraman for German television, lensing episodes of popular crime series Tatort and the cult 1980s trucker drama Auf Achse, before directing his first feature, Autumn Milk, in 1989 when ...