13/04/2010

Film, theatre and opera director Werner Schroeter, who was born in 1945 in Thuringia, died last night. He had just celebrated his 65th birthday last week.

The major filmmaker was one of the leading figures of the New German Cinema of the 1970s. His filmography includes The Death of Maria Malibran (1971), The Kingdom of Naples (German Film Award for Best Director in 1979), and Palermo, which starred his muse Magdalena Montezuma and won the Berlin Golden Bear in 1980.

Schroeter twice participated in competition at Cannes, with Day of the Idiots (1981) and Malina (1990), both of which triumphed at the German Film Awards.

Schroeter also made several documentaries, his latest (and antepenultimate film) being The Queen (2000). In 1996, he received an Honorary Leopard at the Locarno Film Festival.

In 2008, his 40-year-long career earned him a Special Lion at the Venice Film Festival, where he presented his final film (after the 2002 French/German/Portuguese co-production Two, starring Isabelle Huppert), the literary adaptation This Night [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile].

Schroeter’s last stage production was his beloved "Tosca" at the Paris Opera Bastille, in May 2009.

(Translated from French)