Schlondorff In Montreal

The noted German director Volker Schlöndorff will give a master class at the Montreal World Film Festival, to be held next month. The director, one of the masters of the German New Wave movement of the 1970s and 1980s, won an Academy Award and many other honors for his big screen adaptation of the international bestseller THE TIN DRUM.  Born in Wiesbaden in 1939, Volker Schlöndorff was educated at the Sorbonne and the IDHEC in Paris and served his apprenticeship as assistant to iconic French directors Jean-Pierre Melville, Alain Resnais and Louis Malle during their most prolific periods in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Returning to Germany, he made his directorial debut with YOUNG TORLESS, which won the critics’ prize in Cannes in 1966. His big break came in 1975 in a film he co-directed with his wife Margarethe Von Trotta. THE LOST HONOUR OF KATHARINA BLUM, adapted from a story by Heinrich Boll, was an international sensation both in its native Germany and throughout the world. THE TIN DRUM, an adaptation of Gunther Grass’ celebrated anti-war novel won him the Oscar and the Cannes Palme d’Or.

The director has worked in many genres but is best known for his adaptations of famous literary works, including the works of Arthur Miller (DEATH OF A SALESMAN, 1985), Marcel Proust (SWANN IN LOVE, 1983) and Margaret Atwood (THE HANDMAID’S TALE, 1990). 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, which 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, will be shown at this year’s Festival, which runs from August 23 to September 3.

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