Writer/Director, Amour
Nominated for: Best International Film

Michael Haneke is one of the most influential and acclaimed directors of the last two decades. Whether depicting the private and public struggles of a pre-war German hamlet in The White Ribbon (Palme D’or winner, 2009 Cannes Film Festival), the discontents of a French family in Cache or the surreptitious desires of a repressed Austrian musician in The Piano Teacher, Haneke always ensures that his characters’ pasts as well as their sublimated passions are never too far from reach, lurking in the shadows and ready to overtake them. He won his second Palme D’or at this year’s Cannes Film Festival with Amour.

Haneke was born in 1942. He studied philosophy, psychology and theatre in Vienna. From 1967-1970, he was a playwright with Südwestfunk (ARD), and has had theatre productions in Stuttgart, Düsseldorf, Frankfurt, Hamburg, Munich, Berlin and Vienna. Since 1970, he’s been a freelance director and screenplay writer.