Joseph Vilsmaier Filmography

Occupation:: Actor, Director, Executive Producer, Cinematographer, Producer, Screenwriter
Biography:: A cinematographer since 1972, Joseph Vilsmaier made an auspicious directorial debut with Herbstmilch/Autumn Milk (1988), which won several major awards in his native Germany and abroad. He has since become known for his offbeat tales and exquisite photography. His 1992 film Stalingrad was highly...Read More

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Geschichte vom Brandner Kaspar

Crew: Director, Producer

Actors: Michael "Bully" Herbig, Franz-Xaver Kroetz, Lisa Maria Potthoff, Peter Ketnath, Sebastian Bezzel

Synopsis: Franz-Xaver Kroatz stars in this wacky German fantasy comedy as Brandner Kaspar, an elderly German smith rapidly careening toward the end of his life, but in no hurry to leave. He's soon visited by Death, who attempts to whisk him off to the afterlife; instead, Brandner slips Death a few too many Read More

10/16/08
The Last Train

Crew: Cinematographer, Director

Actors: Gedeon Burkhard, Lale Yavas, Lena Beyerling, Sibel Kekilli, Juraj Kukura

Synopsis: Stalingrad director Joseph Vilsmaier teams with his wife, director and actress Dana Vávrová, for this harrowing look at the journey of three Berlin Jews to the dreaded Auschwitz Concentration Camp at the height of World War II. In 1942, Joseph Goebbles' herded scores of Berlin Jews into the Read More

2006
Leo und Claire

Crew: Cinematographer, Director, Producer, Screenwriter

Actors: Michael Degen, Franziska Petri, Suzanne von Borsody, Alexandra Maria Lara, Axel Milberg

2001
Marlene

Crew: Cinematographer, Director, Executive Producer

Actors: Ben Becker, Monika Bleibtreu, Heino Ferch, Katja Flint, Cosma Shiva Hagen

Synopsis: Director Joseph Vilsmaier's long-awaited biopic of screen legend Marlene Dietrich opens with the star's last public outing, her 1975 appearance at Carnegie Hall. Subsequently backtracking to 1929 Berlin, the film follows Dietrich's rise to fame and international adulation, turning a particularly Read More

2000
The Harmonists

Crew: Cinematographer, Director, Executive Producer

Actors: Ben Becker, Heino Ferch, Ulrich Noethen, Heinrich Schafmeister, Max Tidof

Synopsis: Joseph Vilsmaier (Stalingrad and Brother of Sleep) directed this fact-based German musical drama about a popular barbershop sextet in Nazi Germany of the '30s. In 1927, musician Harry Frommermann (Ulrich Noethen), attracted to music-shop assistant Erna (Meret Becker), joins ambitious vocalist Read More

3/12/99
Hunger - Sehnsucht Nach Liebe

Crew: Producer

Actors: Catherine Flemming, Kai Wiesinger, Christiane Horbiger, Jürgen Schornagel, Barbara Focke

Synopsis: Actress Dana Vavrova directed this German drama about a woman suffering from an eating disorder. Attractive Laura (Catherine Flemming) lives alone and holds down a Munich marketing job, stressful enough to trigger bulimic binges. When Laura gets a new boyfriend, Simon (Kai Wiesinger), she lives in Read More

1998
Brother of Sleep

Crew: Cinematographer, Director, Producer

Actors: André Eisermann, Joseph Vilsmaier, Dana Vávrová, Ben Becker, Angelika Bartsch, Michael Mendl

Synopsis: In this frankly bizarre fantasy story based on a novel by Austrian writer Robert Schneider, Elias Johannes Alder (Andre Eisermann) is born into a filthy, poverty-stricken village in the alps; his mother doesn't much care for him, and he later discovers he's the bastard son of the town's clergyman. Read More

1995
Stalingrad

Crew: Cinematographer, Director, Producer, Screenwriter

Actors: Dominique Horwitz, Thomas Kretschmann, Jochen Nickel, Dana Vávrová

Synopsis: This German battlefield drama, released on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the climactic 1943 defeat of the Nazi forces at Stalingrad in Russia, does not paint a pretty picture either of war itself or of the Germans fighting in that war. Out of hundreds of thousands of previously Read More

1992
Rama Dama

Crew: Cinematographer, Director, Producer, Screenwriter

Actors: Dana Vávrová, Werner Stocker, Ivana Chylkova, Josef Kemr

Synopsis: In this drama, a dauntless woman manages to give birth to two daughters as bombs drop all around her in World War II. She survives with them to rebuild Munich from the ashes and does the same with her own life. This feel-good feature was popular in Germany and featured many speeches in a Read More

1991
Herbstmilch

Crew: Cinematographer, Director, Producer

Actors: Dana Vávrová, Werner Stocker, Eva Mattes, Renate Grosser

Synopsis: In 1984, Anna Wimschneider, a woman who had been a farmgirl in Bavaria during World War Two published an autobiography which focused on her life during that period, and it became a huge bestseller. Her story, Herbstmilch, is brought to the screen by her fellow Bavarian, director Joseph Vilsmaier. Read More

1988