The German film community is mourning the unexpected death of Good Bye, Lenin! director Wolfgang Becker at the age of 70 after a stern illness. H
The German film community is mourning the unexpected death of Good Bye, Lenin! director Wolfgang Becker at the age of 70 after a stern illness.
He had just completed principal photography on his sixth feature, The Hero Of Friedrichstrasse Station, based on Maxim Leo’s novel of the same name.
Becker graduated from the German Film & Television Academy in Berlin (dffb) in 1987 with his directorial debut Butterflies (Schmetterlinge). Adapted from a low story by Ian McEwan, the film won the Saarland Prime-Minister’s Award at the Max Ophüls Prize Film Festival, a student Academy Award and the Golden Leopard in Locarno in 1988.
Butterflies was followed by his second feature Child’s Play (Kinderspiele) in 1992, before Becker joined forces with directors Tom Tykwer and Dani Levy and producer Stefan Arndt to launch Berlin-based production powerhouse X-Filme Creative Pool which has been behind some of the most memorable German films of the past 30 years.
The company’s films include Tykwer’s Run Lola Run, Becker’s Good Bye, Lenin!, Levy’s Go For Zucker! and Sebastian Schipper’s Absolute Giants, as well as European co-productions such as The White Ribbon, The Dark Valley and Franz. X-Filme has also made high-end TV series including Babylon Berlin and The Queen’s Gambit.
“We set out to make films that have a clear and distinct authorship,” Becker told Screen in 2019, the year the company celebrated its 25th anniversary. “This can be with the director and author as one person or with a screenwriter and director working together on a screenplay – and the goal should be to aim for large audiences. We didn’t want to be an ivory tower for narcissistic auteurs.”
In 1997, Becker’s third feature, Life Is All You Get, premiered in competition at the Berlinale and went on to win three German Film Awards at a ceremony held in a hangar at the former Tempelhof Airport, with Becker jiving with special guest Diana Ross on stage.
Six years later, his next film, Good Bye, Lenin!, was a German box-office sensation with more than 6 million tickets sold. The comedy also sold to more than 60 countries around the world, and turned its lead actor Daniel Brühl into an international star.
In 2013, Becker was reunited with Brühl for his adaptation of Daniel Kehlmann’s eponymous novel Ich und Kaminski.
“I don’t write my own screenplays and am relying on someone else as a writer,” said Becker of the long wait between films in 2019.
As well as directing his own films and often offering practical advice in the editing room to his fellow X Filmers Tykwer and Levy, Becker taught the next generation of filmmakers at Berlin’s dffb, the Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg and the Academy for Media Arts in Cologne (KHM).
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