Volker Schlöndorff Filmography

Born:: March 31, 1939 in Wiesbaden, Germany
Occupation:: Director, Screenwriter
Biography:: Acclaimed German filmmaker Volker Schlöndorff was educated at Paris' Lycee Henry IV and the Sorbonne; he majored in political science and economics. While still in Paris, Schlöndorff studied directing at the highly regarded IDHEC film school. He worked in France for four years as an assistant...Read More

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Strike

Crew: Director

Actors: Katharina Thalbach, Dominique Horwitz, Andrzej Chyra, Andrzej Grabowski, Wojciech Solarz, Ewa Telega

Synopsis: An ordinary working woman helps to spark a revolution in this historical drama inspired by a true story. Agnieszka Kowalska (Katharina Thalbach) has been working as a welder in the shipyards of Gdansk, Poland, since 1950, struggling to support her son since divorcing her husband. Working Read More

6/15/07
Ulzhan

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: David Bennent, Philippe Torreton, Ayanat Ksenbai

Synopsis: Five-star German director Volker Schlondorff (The Tin Drum, Swann in Love) helms the deliberately-paced existential drama Ulzhat, from a script authored by the famed Jean-Claude Carriere (The Mahabharata). As the film opens, world-weary Parisian schoolteacher Charles Simon (Philippe Torreton) Read More

2006
The Ninth Day

Crew: Director

Actors: Ulrich Matthes, August Diehl, Bibiana Beglau, Jean-Paul Raths, Ivan Jirik

Synopsis: Acclaimed filmmaker Volker Schlöndorff directed this story of a war of words between a Nazi soldier and a man of the cloth. In 1942, Henri Kremer (Ulrich Matthes) is a Catholic priest who, like three thousand other Catholic clergymen, has been sent to the Dachau prison camp by Nazi authorities for Read More

5/27/05
Die Verhoevens

2004
Epreuves d'Artistes

Actors: Pedro Almodóvar, Robert Altman, Michelangelo Antonioni, Roberto Benigni, Bernardo Bertolucci

2004
Ten Minutes Older: The Cello

Crew: Director

Actors: Amit Arroz, Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi, Mark Long, Alexandra Staden, Dominic West

Synopsis: Eight master directors of world cinema combine forces for this omnibus film that focuses cumulatively on the subject of time. Bookended by cello interludes, Ten Minutes Older: The Cello presents just one parameter to each of its filmmakers: no final entry can be more or less than ten minutes long. Read More

2002
The Legend of Rita

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Synopsis: Noted German director Volker Schlondorff helms this riveting exploration of 1970s West German political terrorism. The film opens with Rita (Bibiana Beglau) reminiscing to her unseen friend Tatjana of her life as a radical. Cut to a flashback of her along with her like-minded colleagues robbing a Read More

1/24/01
The Ogre

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: John Malkovich, Marianne Sägebrecht, Volker Spengler, Dieter Laser

Synopsis: Based on a novel by French author Michel Tournier, this drama chronicles the redemption of Abel, a French POW responsible for kidnapping dozens of young boys for recruitment by the Nazi SS during WW II. The film opens with black-and-white shots of Abel's childhood in Paris. The year is 1925 and Read More

1/8/99
Palmetto

Crew: Director

Actors: Woody Harrelson, Elisabeth Shue, Gina Gershon, Rolf Hoppe, Michael Rapaport

Synopsis: When new evidence confirms that he was framed, reporter Harry Barber (Woody Harrelson) is released from prison after serving two years. He then goes on to demonstrate repeatedly that he is the dumbest, most masochistic noir hero since Adam ate the apple. His original plan, to leave Palmetto, is Read More

1998
Die Nacht der Regisseure

Actors: Leni Riefenstahl, Wim Wenders, Margarethe von Trotta, Detlev Buck

Synopsis: Utilizing computer-generated effects and creative splicing to place Germany's most famous living directors in a fantasy movie house, filmmaker Edgar Reitz takes an innovative approach toward exploring the history of German cinema. In this magical theater, directors such as Leni Riefenstahl, Detlev Buck Read More

1995
A French Woman

Crew: Associate Producer

Actors: Emmanuelle Béart, Daniel Auteuil, Gabriel Barylli, Jean-Claude Brialy

Synopsis: One woman's conflicting emotions and the whims of fate prevent her from being faithful to the man she loves in this drama. In 1939, Jeanne (Emmanuelle Beart) marries Louis (Daniel Auteuil) shortly before he is called to duty during World War II. Jeanne does not deal well with loneliness, and she Read More

1995
Ich Will Nicht Nur, Dass Ihr Mich Liebt

Actors: Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Hanna Schygulla, Karl Heinz Böhm, Ingrid Caven, Andréa Ferréol

Synopsis: The title of this documentary on Rainer Maria Fassbinder is just slightly changed from the title of a film that director made in 1976, entitled Ich Will Doch Nur, Dass Ihr Mich Liebt (I Only Want You to Love Me). The wunderkind of postwar German filmmaking died at age 36 in 1982 after making over Read More

1993
Voyager

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Sam Shepard, Julie Delpy, Barbara Sukowa, Dieter Kirchlechner, Traci Lind

Synopsis: Set in the 1950s, Voyager concerns the travels of an American construction engineer (Sam Shepard) who is wandering throughout Europe, recounting his life story through a series of flashbacks while meeting a variety of new characters. At first, he meets a man whom he knew during his time as a Read More

1/31/92
The Handmaid's Tale

Crew: Director

Actors: Natasha Richardson, Robert Duvall, Faye Dunaway, Aidan Quinn, Elizabeth McGovern

Synopsis: In this dystopian fable, a librarian wife and mother becomes the childbearing pawn of a Christian theocracy. In the near future, as war rages across the fictional North American Republic of Gilead and pollution has rendered 99 percent of the female population sterile, Kate (Natasha Richardson) Read More

3/7/90
A Gathering of Old Men

Crew: Director

Actors: Holly Hunter, Richard Widmark

Synopsis: Gathering of Old Men was based on the novel by Ernest J. Gaines, who'd previously written The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman. Like Pittman, Gathering builds its narrative upon a tapestry of deep-bred racial intolerance in the South. When a bigoted white Louisiana tenant farmer is killed, black Read More

1987
Private Conversations

Actors: Arthur Miller, Dustin Hoffman, John Malkovich, Volker Schlöndorff, Stephen Lang

Synopsis: Winner of the Grand Jury Prize at the 1986 Sundance Film Festival, Christian Blackwood's Private Conversations is a behind-the-scenes look at the process of turning Arthur Miller's Pulitzer-prize winning stage-play Death of a Salesman into an Emmy and Golden Globe award-winning made-for-television Read More

1985
Death of a Salesman

Crew: Director

Actors: Dustin Hoffman, John Malkovich, Kate Reid, Stephen Lang, Charles Durning

Synopsis: In 1984, actor Dustin Hoffman starred in a critically-acclaimed Broadway revival of playwright Arthur Miller's classic Pulitzer Prize-winning drama Death of a Salesman. A year later, Hoffman and most of his fellow cast members starred in this made-for-TV production, the first English-language film Read More

1985
Swann in Love

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Jeremy Irons, Ornella Muti, Alain Delon, Fanny Ardant, Marie-Christine Barrault

Synopsis: This ambitious attempt to film a portion of Marcel Proust's epic novel Remembrance of Things Past stars Jeremy Irons as Charles Swann, a Jewish intellectual who has managed to overcome growing anti-Semitism in 19th century France and travels in an elite social circle. But Swann has become obsessed Read More

1984
Krieg und Frieden

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Jürgen Prochnow, Günther Kaufmann, Manfred Zapatka, Heinz Bennent

Synopsis: This two-hour documentary and fiction film was a cooperative writing effort by five different German writers and/or directors, one of the most noted being the 1972 Nobel prize winner Heinrich Böll. Böll was specifically responsible for three fictive episodes at the end of the film that promote an Read More

1983
Circle of Deceit

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Bruno Ganz, Hanna Schygulla, Jerzy Skolimowski, Gila Von Weitershausen, Jean Carmet

Synopsis: Bruno Ganz plays a West German journalist whose frequent assignments to war-torn nations have left him jaundiced. He is assigned to cover the civil war in Beirut. The combination of his harrowing experiences on the job and his after-hours relationship with widow Hannah Schygulla affects Ganz Read More

1981
Der Kandidat

Crew: Director

Synopsis: This informative political documentary puts together clips from newsreels, archives, and television to review the controversial career of Franz Josef Strauss who was running for Chancellor of West Germany at the time this documentary was made. Strauss founded the Christian Socialist Union and had Read More

1980
Kaleidoskop: Valeska Gert, Nur zum Spass-nur zum Spiel

Crew: Director, Producer, Screenwriter

Actors: Valeska Gert, Pola Kinski

Synopsis: Valeska Gert was a young actress and dancer in 1920's Berlin. At that time, she created a sensation with her highly athletic stile of dance. In her 70s, she made a number of films, including one for Volker Schlondorff, Coup de Grace. The stories she told about theater in Berlin in the '20s Read More

1979
The Tin Drum

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Mario Adorf, Angela Winkler, David Bennent, Daniel Olbrychski, Katharina Thalbach

Synopsis: In Volker Schlöndorff's award-winning adaptation of Nobel Prize winner Günter Grass' allegorical novel, David Bennent plays Oskar, the young son of a German rural family, circa 1925. On his third birthday, Oskar receives a shiny new tin drum. At this point, rather than mature into one of the Read More

1979
Deutschland im Herbst

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Caroline Chaniolleau, Lisi Mangold

Synopsis: This provocative film anthology contains nine short fiction and documentary films believed to have had great influence on the development of New German Cinema. Each of the five was directed by a different German filmmaker and are set during the politically tempestuous summer of 1977 in West Read More

1978
Le Coup De Grace

Crew: Director

Actors: Margarethe von Trotta, Matthais Habich, Rudiger Kirschstein, Mathieu Carrière

Synopsis: 1976's Coup de Grace (released in Germany as Der Fangschluss) was inspired by a Marguerite Yourcenar novel and directed by Volker Schlondorff. The story is set in Latvia in 1919, at the height of the Soviet Civil War. Margarethe von Trotta plays an aristocrat sympathetic to the Communist cause. Read More

1976
The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Angela Winkler, Mario Adorf, Dieter Laser, Heinz Bennent, Hannelore Hoger

Synopsis: The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum marks the directorial debut for actress Margarethe von Trotta, who co-directed the film with her then-husband Volker Schlöndorff. At a costume party, Katharina Blum (Angela Winkler) meets Ludwig Goetten (Jürgen Prochnow ) and spends the night with him. The next Read More

1975
A Free Woman

Crew: Director

Synopsis: In this drama, a divorcee has difficulty adjusting to life without her family as she tries to start a new life. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide Read More

1972
Der Moral der Ruth Halbfass

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Senta Berger

Synopsis: Der Moral der Ruth Halbfass is based on a true story, but modifies the facts slightly for cinematic purposes. The mores of the patriarchal German haute bourgeoisie regarding women are satirized here. Ruth (Senta Berger) has grown weary of being dependent on her wealthy husband, a playboy in his Read More

1972
Strohfeuer

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Margarethe von Trotta

Synopsis: Margarethe Von Trotta, who later became a well-known film director herself, stars in this film which is directed by her husband Volker Schlondorff. It tells the story of a woman whose divorce has just been finalized. At first, she is joyful and feels very free, but gradually the realities of Read More

1972
Der Plotzliche Reichtum der Armen Leute von Kombach

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Synopsis: Village life in the 1820s, whether in Germany or France, was much the same as it was in the Middle Ages. The peasantry was seen as a cash-cow for the landowning aristocracy, or for the government, according to circumstances. Their lot was extremely difficult, for they were heavily taxed and were Read More

1971
Baal

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

1970
Michael Kohlhaas

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: David Warner, Anna Karina, Inigo Jackson

Synopsis: Michael (David Warner) is an independent businessman and a happily married man with two children. Traveling to the market one day, he is victimized by a nobleman who demands compensation for crossing his land. Michael leaves two horses and a caretaker on the noble's land after he has paid for Read More

1969
Rece do Góry

Actors: Bogumil Kobiela, Tadeusz Lomnicki, Joanna Szczerbic, Jerzy Skolimowski

Synopsis: Polish filmmaker Jerzy Skolimowski directed Hands Up in 1967; he also wrote it, handled the art direction, and played a leading role. Skolimowski portrays Andrzej Leszcyzc, one of several doctors attending a medical school reunion in a sealed-up railway carriage. Between drinks, the disenchanted Read More

1967
Mord und Totschlag

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Anita Pallenberg, Hans-Peter Hallwachs, Manfried Fischbeck, Werner Enke

Synopsis: When a young woman accidentally kills her ex-lover during a fight, she decides to conceal the body. Unfortunately, however, our anti-hero is less than honorable and becomes involved with not one but both of the men she finds to help her with his disposal at a construction site. And that's just one Read More

1967
Young Torless

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Mathieu Carrière, Barbara Steele

Synopsis: Robert Musil's novel Die Verwirrungen des Zoglings Torless was the source for this allegorical German film. Mathieu Carriere plays Torless, a student in a costly boarding school during the glory days of the Hapsburg empire. While at school, Carriere is a bystander to the sadistic behavior of Read More

1966
Le Feu Follet

Crew: First Assistant Director

Actors: Maurice Ronet, Lena Skerla, Jeanne Moreau, Alexandra Stewart, Yvonne Clech, Mona Dol, Bernard Noel

Synopsis: Maurice Ronet plays an alcoholic writer, Alain Leroy, who is on the verge of suicide (his character is based on writer Jacques Rigaut, who killed himself in 1929). The psychiatrist assigned to Leroy is no help, advising his patient to seek a reconciliation with his wife, who is still smarting from Read More

10/11/63
Le Doulos

Crew: First Assistant Director

Actors: Jean-Paul Belmondo, Serge Reggiani, Monique Hennessy, Michel Piccoli, Jean Desailly, René Lefèvre

Synopsis: Confusion and wrong assumptions are the cause of tragedy in this stylish gangster noir by director Jean-Pierre Melville. Maurice (Serge Reggiani) and Silien (Jean-Paul Belmondo) are friends going way back, and both have had a shady past. Silien wants to leave his illegal activities behind him Read More

12/13/62
Leon Morin, Prêtre

Crew: First Assistant Director

Actors: Jean-Paul Belmondo, Emmanuelle Riva, Irène Tunc, Nicole Mirel

Synopsis: Jean-Paul Belmondo portrays Leon Morin, an altruistic priest who believes that any sin can be expunged by a good dose of faith. Emmanuelle Riva plays a wayward woman who long ago decided that the easiest way was the best. Belmondo makes it his mission to steer Riva onto the right path. Given the Read More

9/22/61
No End

Crew: Cinematographer

Actors: Friedrich Gulda, Barbara Dennerlein, Mitch Watkins, Harry Sokal, Wayne Darling

Synopsis: Friedrich Gulda and The Paradise Band perform Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's "The Marriage of Figaro", "Piano Concerto No. 26 'Coronation'", and "Piano Sonata in C Minor" in this release that brings the magic of live classical music from the stage into your living room. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Read More

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