Florian Opitz

Florian Opitz at the 2015 Grimme Prize

Florian Opitz (* 1973 in Saarbrücken ) is a German documentary film director, author and journalist.

Life

Opitz studied history , psychology and English and American literature at the Universities of Heidelberg and Cologne . In 2000 he finished his studies with a Magister Artium . In addition to his studies, he wrote for various national newspapers and music magazines. Opitz has been making documentaries since 1998. He developed and realized numerous documentaries for various German and European broadcasters, worked for various political magazines and gave seminars on documentary film as a guest lecturer at various universities. So far, Opitz's films have dealt with political, historical and social issues.

In 2009 he was awarded the Grimme Prize for his cinema debut The Big Sale . The film was also pre-nominated for the German Film Prize 2008. It was invited to over 40 international film festivals, screened in theaters in 8 countries and was one of the most successful German documentaries in the 2007 cinema year even after viewers.

In 2012 Opitz ran his second movie Speed ​​- In Search of Lost Time, very successfully in the cinema across Germany. The book of the same name was published by Riemann Verlag ( Random House ) in autumn 2011 .

In 2015, Opitz was awarded the Grimme Prize for writing and directing for the second time for the film D Files: The Power of the Power Companies .

Nigeria

At the beginning of September 2007, Opitz was arrested together with Andy Lehmann while filming in the oil town of Warri in Nigeria and later charged with conspiracy and espionage. The indictment accused Opitz and Lehmann of having given false information on entry in order to get a tourist visa. They pretended to be scientists even though they were filmmakers. In addition, they are said to have violated the Nigerian Official Secrets Act, passed in 1990, according to which the making of films and photos of pipelines, refineries, oil installations, ships and other facilities of the Nigerian oil industry in the disputed Niger River Delta is prohibited. According to the BBC , this can be punished with up to 14 years in prison.

Opitz and Lehmann were able to prove to the court that they had neither given false information when entering the country nor had they entered with a tourist visa. Rather, the background to their arrest was a domestic political power game, in which the aim was to calm down a non-governmental organization (NGO) active in the Niger Delta , with which Opitz and Lehmann had worked in Nigeria and whose head and deputy were also charged.

The embassy vouched for the two Germans with a verbal note, who then left their custody at the secret service and took up quarters in the embassy building, but were not allowed to leave the country for the time being and had to appear at further court hearings. A high-ranking German business delegation, accompanied by the Minister of State in the Foreign Office , who traveled to Nigeria in October 2007, presented to the President. The interaction of all diplomatic, legal and political means finally enabled Opitz and Lehmann to leave on October 30, 2007. Until then, the legal proceedings had not been set down, nor had the alleged sensitive evidence against the two filmmakers and the NGO been released for inspection.

At the beginning of November, the Nigerian public prosecutor finally closed the case against Opitz, Lehmann and the two co-accused NGO employees.

Movies

• 1998 Jack Kerouac - On the Road , Arte
• 2000 lightning girls in action. Women in the Wehrmacht , WDR
• 2001 Tibet - Myth and Reality , Arte
• 2002 The end of perplexity - The emergence of a new culture of protest , WDR / Arte
• 2002 Goliath's nightmare. Globalization critic since Genoa , WDR
• 2003 blood for oil. Wars for the black gold , WDR / ARD
• 2003 The Arabs - Story of an Enemy , WDR / ARD
• 2004 The hunt for the killer virus , WDR / ARD
• 2005 End of the war on the Rhine, Ruhr and Weser , WDR
• 2007 The big sell-out (Opitz's 1st movie)
• 2009 24 h Berlin - A Day in the Life (Director of an episode)
• 2012 Speed ​​- In Search of Lost Time (2nd feature film)
• 2013 Secret Villa Hügel
• 2014 File D: The Power of Electricity Corporations
• 2018 System Error (3rd feature film)
• 2019 at the top - the discreet world of the super-rich

Web links

Commons : Florian Opitz  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Homepage of Opitz
• Florian Opitz interviewed by Jakob Buhre in May 2007
• Movie about acceleration: "We have to remove the fear factor". In: Spiegel Online . September 26, 2012, accessed January 22, 2017 . 
• Daniel Sander: "As a punk rocker, I was more relaxed". In: Spiegel Wissen 1/2013. February 19, 2013. Retrieved January 22, 2017 . 

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} Florian Opitz , grimme-preis.de
2. ↑  ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) (no archive version available)
3. ↑ 45th Grimme Prize 2009: The Big Sale , grimme-preis.de
4. ↑ http://mmm.verdi.de/archiv/2007/11/internationales/unter_spionageverdacht ( Memento from February 12, 2013 in the web archive archive.today )
5. ↑ System Error - website for the film. Retrieved April 20, 2018.
6. ↑ Top - The Discrete World of Billionaires - Website for the film. Retrieved February 11, 2019.