Volker Schlöndorff

Career overview

Volker Schlöndorff, born on 31 March 1939 in Wiesbaden, Hesse, Germany, is a German filmmaker who has built a career primarily as a director. Early in his professional life he worked as an assistant director on Alain Resnais’s Last Year at Marienbad and on Jean‑Pierre Melville’s Léon Morin, Priest in 1961. He later emerged as a leading figure of the New German Cinema movement, gaining recognition for literary adaptations such as Kněz Léon Morin, Proč posedl amok pana R., and Mladý Törless. His reputation as a director was cemented by the 1979 film The Tin Drum, an adaptation of Günter Grass’s novel, which earned both the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film and the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival that year.

Beyond directing, Schlöndorff has been active in the broader film community. In 1991 he served as head of the jury at the 41st Berlin International Film Festival. He held the position of chief executive at the UFA studio in Babelsberg and has engaged in post‑war German political discourse. Since then he has taught film and literature at the European Graduate School in Saas‑Fee, Switzerland, where he conducts an intensive summer seminar. His body of work, encompassing over one hundred credited projects, reflects a sustained commitment to adapting literary sources for the screen.