Oliver Schmitz (director)

Oliver Schmitz (* 1960 in Cape Town , South Africa ) is a South African director , film editor and screenwriter of German descent. He was best known for his films Mapantsula , Hijack Stories and Geliebtes Leben as well as for his contributions to the German series Doctor's Diary and Turkish for Beginners .

life and career

Oliver Schmitz was born as the son of German immigrants in the South African port city of Cape Town, where he grew up and attended school. After graduating from high school in Cape Town, Schmitz was from 1978 to 1982 at the Michaelis School of Fine Art , which is affiliated with the University of Cape Town . At the same time he was co-manager and DJ of the Cape Town discotheque Scratch from 1980 to 1982 , which was closed by the police after three years because the owners refused to adhere to the apartheid laws of segregation and always "mixed audiences" Left club. In 1981 he had an art exhibition called Art-Pop Militants in the Loader Street Gallery in Cape Town , which he ran together with Mario Pissarra , among others . From 1983 to 1984 he finally trained as a film editor at Momentum Films in the South African city of Johannesburg and then moved to Germany, where he was employed as an editor for Westdeutscher Rundfunk (WDR) from 1985 and worked there until 1986, before joining settled back in his native country. From 1987 he worked there as director and editor for the anti-apartheid documentary film initiative Afravision , for which he worked up to and including 1994. During this time, the productions of Mapantsula (1987/88), a multi-award-winning film, for which Schmitz acted both as a screenwriter and as a director, also fell. A documentary entitled The People's Poet followed in 1988, directed by Schmitz.

The director and screenwriter was already active before that time and directed the documentary The Twilight Zone , among other things . Further productions for Afravision in the following years were Fruits of Defiance (1989/90) and Hlanganani (1990). He then worked from 1990 to 1992 for Schlemmer Film GmbH in Cologne as a screenwriter for the movie Soft Targets and was then hired as a screenwriter for Channel 4 in Great Britain in 1993 . He co-wrote the screenplay for the television series The Line and was also active as a screenwriter (including for the pilot) on the comedy series Shacking up . He then joined the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) that same year, directing the pilot Dark City and the documentary Video Revolution . Schmitz continued to work closely with SABC in the years that followed, where he acted as a director, sometimes as a scriptwriter and sometimes in both roles. Until 1996 he was active in three other noteworthy SABC productions. The 1994 film Nelson Mandela Inauguration , which he directed, worked in cooperation with Schmitz's former employer, the Afravision production company.

In 1995 Schmitz was engaged both as a screenwriter and as a director for the multi-part series Rhythm and Rights . The Godfather of Soweto followed in 1996 , with the former student at the University of Cape Town writing the script for the pilot. In 1997 Schmitz worked with ARTE and produced the documentary Jo'burg Stories as a director for the Franco- German cooperation television station , which was awarded the Prix du Documentaire at the film festival organized by Vues d'Afrique in Montreal that same year . In 1998, Schmitz worked in a South African-Canadian cooperation as the director of In Search for Common Ground , a documentary series. In 1999 he was involved in two films, including the Pathé documentary film Boesman & Lena - The Making Of based on the South African play of the same name by Athol Fugard from the 1960s. After having worked as a director, screenwriter and editor in the multi-award-winning film Hijack Stories in 2000 , he moved to Germany again, where he initially worked primarily for Pro 7 and RTL . He directed films such as The Best Piece (2002), What You Always Wanted To Say About Singles (2003), Princess Makes Blue (2004) and Suddenly Famous (2004). In 2006 he was also active in the episode film Paris, je t'aime as a director and screenwriter, working on the twelfth episode ( Place des fêtes ), which is dedicated to the 19th arrondissement of Paris .

In 2005 Schmitz finally got into the production of Turkish for Beginners , where he directed 24 of the total of 52 episodes. Even before Edzard Onneken and Christian Ditter , the two other directors of the series, he was actually the main director of the award-winning series. Schmitz also received some of the coveted prizes from the film and television sector for the series, which was even nominated for an Emmy , among other things . After directing the film Mein Vater, der General in 2005 , he joined the Doctor's Diary team as a director in 2006, parallel to his time with Turkish for Beginners . He had almost as much success with the series as he did with Turkish for Beginners , although he only directed four episodes of the series himself. Awards that Schmitz achieved with the series, among others: German TV Award 2008 , German Comedy Award 2008 and Adolf Grimme Award 2009 . Furthermore, in 2006 he was also used as a director in two or three episodes of Arme Millionär and was the director of the film Fleisch in 2007 . After working almost continuously for Turkish for beginners up to this point , Schmitz also worked as a director of Der Trickser in 2008 . From 2009, two sequels of Mein Vater, der General , who is also known as Alone Among Daughters , finally followed . In 2009 he worked as a director for Alone Among Schoolchildren and finally in Alone Among Mothers in 2010 (premiere: January 25, 2011). In between he directed the film Geliebtes Leben (Originally: Life, Above All (aka Chanda's Secrets) ) from 2009 to 2010 . For the latter film he received the Prix François Chalais at the Cannes International Film Festival in 2010 . Months later, Geliebtes Leben was shortlisted for an Oscar as an official South African contribution in the category: Best Foreign Language Film , but could not make it into the five nominated contributions in 2011 .

Schmitz, who speaks fluent German in addition to his mother tongue English, but also has basic knowledge of Afrikaans and Zulu , currently lives mainly in Berlin . Furthermore, Schmitz already has a lot of international filming experience, which he gained while filming in Algeria , Germany, France, Finland , Great Britain, Zimbabwe , South Africa, Western Sahara , etc.

Nominations and Awards

Nominations

Turkish for Beginners

International Emmy Award 2009 in the category: Best Comedy Series

Awards

Mapantsula

AA VITA Film Award 1988 in the category: Best Director
AA VITA Film Award 1988 in the category: Best Screenplay
Interchurch Film Prize 1988 (?)
One Future Prize at the Munich Film Festival in 1989 in the category: Best Director
Human Rights Medal 1990
South African Film and Television Award 2006 in the category: Best South African Film of the Decade

Jo'burg Stories

Prix du Documentaire at the 1997 Montreal Film Festival, organized by Vues d'Afrique

Hijack Stories

Bronze Tanit at the Carthage International Film Festival 2002
Menzione Speziale at the Festival Cinema Africano 2002

Turkish for Beginners

German Television Award 2006 in the category: Best Series

Golden nymph at the Festival de Télévision de Monte-Carlo 2006 in the category: Outstanding European Comedy TV Series

Prix Italia 2006 in the Category: Best TV series or serial drama

Cinéma Tous Ecrans 2006 in the category: Best international series (together with Edzard Onneken )

Adolf Grimme Prize 2007 in the category: entertainment (together with Josefine Preuss as actress, Edzard Onneken as also involved director and Bora Drachtkin as chief screenwriter)

Rockie Award at the Banff World Television Festival 2008 in the category: Best Telenovela or TV Series

Doctor's Diary

German Television Award 2008 in the category: Best Series

German Comedy Award 2008 in the category Best Comedy Series

Adolf Grimme Prize 2009 in the category: entertainment (together with Diana Amft as actress, Steffi Ackermann as producer and Bora Drachtkin as chief screenwriter)