Hans Weingartner

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Hans Weingartner as a jury member at the São Paulo Film Festival 2013.
Hans Weingartner at the Cineplex Münster at the preview of his film Free Rainer (2007)

Hans Weingartner (born October 22, 1970 in Feldkirch , Vorarlberg ) is an Austrian film director , film producer and author .

Live and act

Hans Weingartner grew up as one of eight children in a district on the outskirts of Feldkirch , Vorarlberg in Austria . Even as a teenager he experimented with the video camera, made action films with a lot of pyrotechnics , stunts and chases with the moped .

After graduating from high school , he first worked as a canoe guide in Canada and as a ski instructor in Austria . He later moved to Vienna , where he first studied physics for one semester and then neuroscience .

At the beginning of his studies he took part in a programming competition organized by the city of Vienna and was voted “Austria's programmer of the year”. His program called "Supersonic", the development of which he had started as part of a summer job at the company AKG in Vienna, simulated any acoustic room to generate frequency responses . With the prize money, he traveled to the USA, where he bought his first professional video camera, which he then used to make short films.

Parallel to his scientific orientation, he trained as a camera assistant at the Association of Austrian Cinematographers . He also worked as a production assistant at the Viennese location of the American feature film Before Sunrise (1995), in which he also made a short appearance as a coffeehouse guest.

He then moved to Berlin , where he completed his studies at the neurosurgical department on the Benjamin Franklin campus of the Charité .

Then he changed the subject and began to study film at the Art Academy for Media in Cologne . His diploma film Das weisse Rauschen (2001), shot largely in his own shared apartment with a budget of only 42,000  DM, was the first long feature film produced at this school. The film is about a young man suffering from schizophrenia . Weingartner researched this topic in clinics and with those affected for a year. During that time he received a scholarship from the state of North Rhine-Westphalia for the gifted .

The film premiered at the Max Ophüls Preis film festival in Saarbrücken and was awarded the festival's main prize. It also won the First Steps Award , the German Film Critics' Award for the best debut film and the sponsorship award for the best graduate film . Daniel Brühl received the German film award for best leading actor in 2002 for his portrayal of a schizophrenic young man , thereby making his breakthrough as a character actor.

In the summer of 2003, Weingartner made the capitalism-critical film The fat years are over , which was shown in May 2004 as the first German contribution after a break of 11 years in the competition at the Cannes International Film Festival , where it sparked great enthusiasm. It then came to the cinema in over 50 countries and reached around 1.5 million visitors. The film achieved cult status among the younger generation in many countries .

In 2006 he founded the production company Kahuuna Films in Berlin as the successor to Y3 Film, which he had previously set up for the production of The Fat Years Are Over .

In 2007 came his satire Free Rainer - Your TV Lies in the Cinema, with Moritz Bleibtreu in the lead role of the worn-out TV producer Rainer, who rallies a troop of rebels who, by manipulating TV ratings, trigger a cultural revolution in Germany.

In 2009 the episode film Germany 09 - 13 short films on the state of the nation was released , in which, in addition to Weingartner, directors Fatih Akın , Wolfgang Becker , Dominik Graf , Sylke Enders , Romuald Karmakar , Nicolette Krebitz , Isabelle Stever , Hans Steinbichler and Tom Tykwer were involved. The project, which consists of feature films and documentaries, is based on the film Deutschland im Herbst (1978) and examines the current political and social reality in Germany. The episode The Dangerous Man filmed by Weingartner is based on the investigation against the social scientist Andrej Holm .

In 2012 he received a nomination for the German Film Award for directing The Sum of My Individual Parts . The film presents a mentally unstable mathematician (played by Peter Schneider ) at the center, which after a stationary state hospital treated psychosis ends up on the road and makes friends there with a Ukrainian boy. The two of them flee the city together and build a hut in the forest.

Weingartner is repeatedly praised for his excellent acting work. The actors in his films often win awards and have received numerous awards. Daniel Brühl , for example, received his first German film award in 2002 , the Lola in Gold , for his portrayal of a schizophrenic young man in Weingartner's film Das weisse Rauschen . Burghart Klaußner also won the German Gold Film Award for Best Supporting Actor in 2005 for his performance in Weingartner's The Fat Years Are Over . The film helped him achieve his big breakthrough as a German film star. Peter Schneider was nominated for the German Film Prize in 2012 for his portrayal in Weingartner's film The Sum of My Individual Parts . Elsa Schultz-Gambard received the Undine Award for best leading actress for her portrayal of the character Pegah in Free Rainer in Vienna in 2008 .

Thematically, he repeatedly criticizes social conditions in his films . How it acts The fat years are over of three young opponents of globalization , who use anarchic actions against the excesses of capitalism. In Free Rainer he turns against a media society that indulges in mental idleness through excessive consumption of trash television. Ines Walk wrote about this on film-zeit.de: "The director's work represents a new kind of political cinema that has not been seen in Germany for a long time."

He often combines his social criticism with the presentation of utopias that (sometimes ironically broken) show alternative paths and conditions. Hanns-Georg Rodek wrote about this in Die Welt : "Hans Weingartner is one of the few filmmakers who have not yet let reality drive their utopias out."

In his films he also likes to focus on the interfaces between psyche and society and tries to link mental states with socio-political developments by describing people in psychological borderline situations (for example in Das weisse Rauschen and The Sum of My Individual Parts ).

Filmography

Directed unless otherwise noted

Awards

Web links

Commons : Hans Weingartner  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Weingartner, Hans im Munzinger-Archiv , accessed on June 7, 2018 ( beginning of article freely accessible).
  2. ↑ a b Biography of Ines Walk on film-zeit.de ( Memento of the original from May 21, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (Page accessed on May 21, 2014) @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.film-zeit.de
  3. ↑ Lumière - Database on movie attendance in Europe : The fat years are over (page accessed on March 10, 2008)
  4. ↑ website of Kahuuna film production
  5. ↑ Press kit for Free Rainer ( Memento of the original from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (Page accessed on December 17, 2011; DOC file; 904 kB)  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.pathefilms.ch
  6. ↑ Tykwer and Akin shoot episode film at spiegel.de, July 8, 2008 (accessed on February 23, 2012)
  7. ^ In: Berliner Morgenpost , July 9, 2008 (Edition 186/2008), p. 16
  8. ↑ gulli: news : Berlinale "Germany 09" - the Andrej Holm case goes to the cinema January 26, 2009 (accessed on February 23, 2012)
  9. ↑ Press information on Germany 09 (accessed on February 23, 2012)
  10. ↑ Archive of the German Film Prize  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.deutscher-filmpreis.de  
  11. ↑ Archive of the German Film Prize ( Memento of the original from November 8, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.deutscher-filmpreis.de
  12. ↑ Archive of the German Film Prize  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.deutscher-filmpreis.de  
  13. ↑ Undine Awards 2008
  14. ^ Criticism on filmspiegel.de
  15. ↑ Television is a substitute for life : Interview with Hans Weingartner on Spiegel Online
  16. ↑ From a film review of The Sum of My Individual Parts in Die Welt
  17. ↑ "Our life becomes a total casting" Interview with Hans Weingartner on zeit.de
  18. ↑ www.berlinale.de - Entry on the film "303" , short biography (page accessed on March 4, 2018)
  19. ↑ Ludwigshafen Film Festival: Iris Berben receives award for acting . Article dated July 10, 2018, accessed July 10, 2018.
personal data
SURNAME Weingartner, Hans
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian film director, film producer and author
DATE OF BIRTH October 22, 1970
PLACE OF BIRTH Feldkirch , Vorarlberg